-
Ivan G Thompson
a book bubble about
The Making of A Great America Made in the Image of TRUMP
Religion & Spirituality
Author Insight
The All-White Appeal
When I saw CPAC’s straw poll still widely favored Trump despite his past and ongoing scandals, I wondered what is his appeal? The same appeal that propelled him from dark horse candidate to front-runner. It’s his MAGA rhetoric, which is a not-so-well-hidden repackaging of white supremacy. In this book, I wrote that it’s a vision of a 1950s-like America where all people of color are subordinate politically, legally, economically, socially, educationally, etc. This Trump-type sentiment is mirrored in new Mississippi legislation that would carve out an all-white leadership in a city of 80% black residents. “Eighty per cent of the white residents in Mississippi’s majority-Black capital city would be included in a proposed new judicial district with hand-selected prosecutors and judges…It would create a new unelected judicial district within the city, with two judges, two prosecutors and two public defenders. The judges would be appointed by Mississippi’s chief supreme court justice, Michael K Randolph, a conservative who is white. The prosecutors would be appointed by the state attorney general, Lynn Fitch, a white Republican. The district would be policed with an expansion of the Mississippi capitol police whose chief, Bo Luckey, is white, in a role appointed by the Mississippi commissioner of public safety, Sean Tindell, who is also white. Eighty-two per cent of Jackson’s residents are Black…” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2023/feb/15/mississippi-jackson-judicial-district-unelected-judges-prosecutors
Book Excerpt
The Making of A Great America Made in the Image of TRUMP
Trump’s Vision of America
“Americans are deeply, and for the moment immutably, divided by whether or not they’re nostalgic for what had long been a White-dominated country. Trump’s better-than-expected showing, particularly among White evangelicals, merely shows that he turned out more of the nostalgic.” (Milbank, 2020)
I was watching President Trump’s pre-emptive victory speech on election night, and I saw it again. I have seen it before at many of his rallies and press conferences. What did I see? I saw a room full of white people. It jumped out at me, and it was striking, unsettling. Several days later, I dreamt about that gathering again, and I realized that I was so disturbed because this gathering reflected a Trumpian America. An America where whites were like an elite ruling class in which an occasional token black would flit by like a spec in the background. In this Trumpian vision of America, blacks and other minorities had no significant roles, no leadership responsibility, and certainly no voice. It reminded me of what I envisioned the 1950s to be like. In my vision of the 1950s, white people owned/led mostly everything, and black people had a place out of view on a lower plateau.
Click Follow to receive emails when this author adds content on Bublish
Comment on this Bubble
Your comment and a link to this bubble will also appear in your Facebook feed.