One could argue (and some have) that Donald Trump - as flawed, terrible, ignorant, incompetent, racist and narcissistic as he is - was exactly what America deserved.
Harsh, you say? Sure. But, heartbreakingly true. True because America and Americans have steadfastly refused to deal with the wounds of slavery, racism and classism that our nation continues to cling to under the table, as surely today as we did with Jim Crow in the decades before 1960.
That festering sore was exactly what Donald Trump tapped into to secure a core of Republican support - not all Republican support - but a core of it large enough to help him win the presidency in 2016. In the four years since, he continued to place his bets on that core, as he incited and still incites those who are afraid of becoming America's new minority. Those who fear it so much that they might be inclined to start a race war.
He started sharpening our deep-seated racist tendencies openly the moment he began peddling the birtherism lie about Barack Obama. He raised the stakes just after he rode down the Trump Tower escalator to call Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists that he would build a wall to keep out. And once in office, he made it his mission to make it seem as though a Black man had never been president by trying to erase every vestige of Obama's accomplishments: the Affordable Care Act, DACA, the Paris Climate accord, the Iran peace deal, the holds on oil-pipelines across Native American nations' properties. And, of course, over and over he would try to institute bans on Muslims from entering the country. Freedom of religion be damned - unless, of course, it was evangelical Christian.
Remember Trump's attack in mid-July 2019 on four freshmen members of Congress - all Democratic, all women of color who had, as all Democrats do, criticized the Republican president and his administration?
Trump tweeted like a middle schooler: "Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can't leave fast enough."
Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a Somali American; Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, a Black woman; Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, a Palestinian American; and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a Puerto Rican, are and were then all Americans - three of them born here and Omar brought as a child when her family immigrated here. She became a naturalized citizen in 2000 when she was 17.
Pressley screenshot Trump's tweet and declared, "THIS is what racism looks like."
Of course, it's always been a racial slur for white Americans to tell Americans of color, "Go back to your country." More pointedly to Black Americans, go back to where your ancestors were kidnapped before they were brought here as slaves to serve us.
Too late came the effort to take away Trump's social media megaphone. The damage was done. This immoral man was in the White House and another horned man had held siege with several thousand of his closest white-supremacists friends and a few thousand hoodwinked Americans who likely didn't really understand there would be violence and were just along for the Trump/rebel rush.
But, again, Trump didn't do this all by himself. He's had the full support and gleeful approval of a core of Americans who wanted some white champion to make it happen. So they didn't have to get their own hands dirty. So they could keep pretending they were color blind, but just wanted - something.
Some of them - us - think of it in euphemistic terms: Law and order, maybe. Or fiscal conservatism that means no so-called socialism or redistributed wealth or allotted college placements or prioritized jobs by population demographics. We and our politicians have created any number of flavors for any day's dog whistle to cloak justice, equality and equity.
By the way, America is expected to be equal halves white and nonwhite by 2045, and political polarization has increased as the percentage of nonwhite people swelled. That's why identity politics has taken on such a behemoth role in politics.
Barack Obama scared the bejesus out of too many white people - people who make up the overwhelming majority of those who self-identify as conservative. So it stands to reason that as soon as Obama was term-limited, Republicans elected a white-power president.
Lest anyone doubt that the impending 2045 half white/half nonwhite future isn't exerting some pressure on the fearful among white conservatives - even if they really think they're not fearful - consider this:
After the Jan. 6 Capitol assault, a whopping 75% of Republican voters still said, in a Morning Consult/Politico survey released Wednesday, that they approved of Donald Trump's presidency. What's more, Trump remained the overwhelming favorite among Republicans for the 2024 GOP nomination, with 42 percent support, followed by Mike Pence, Donald Trump Jr. and Ted Cruz.
But here's a comforting reminder: Trump's 74 million voters were outnumbered by Joe Biden's 81 million voters, and that 75% of Trump's Republican diehards make up less than 36% of 2020's total voters.
Still - talk about denial.
We should all be warned: America is still a fragile democracy terribly torn by our own collective racial and social sins. So torn, in fact, that all it took was four years of Donald Trump to bring us so near to ruin. When will we find a way to heal?