The Pacific Standard published an article on June 3rd, 2019 titled, “The Fear of ‘ White Extinction” Is Promoting Racial Bias Among Americans”. The article perfectly summarized how white Americans fear losing their demographic majority and Trump has exploited this fear to his advantage. Writer Tom Jacobs writes, “if being white is part of your identity, and you fear ‘your people’ are facing an existential threat, it’s entirely possible that no defensive measure would sound too extreme.” This rationale has given the green light for Trump to unleash his malignant narcissism on his policies and strategies to achieve his self-serving goals.
Trump has been effective in demonizing non-whites and using the irrational fear of white extinction or the loss of an elevated social status as a way of solidifying his racially biased supporters. The strategy of introducing the threat, creating racial bias, has led to preferences for conservative policies, policies Trump never supported before he decided to become a fake conservative could win him the presidency. Long-time associates of Trump have written about his past support of Democratic candidates, his pro-choice stance, and his lack of fiscal responsibility.
Joe Biden wants to heal the divisions between the races that Trump has deepened. However, Trump plans to continue his white supremacist dog-whistling once he is out of office so employing strategies to disempower his rhetoric is essential. The Biden Administration’s plan to increase interracial harmony must include respectful attention to the white extinction anxiety as well as sensitivity to the emotional trauma of systemic racism.
Since Trump’s re-election, Republican members of Congress have remained silent, embarrassingly neutered by the most immoral, dishonest, incompetent, and psychologically compromised president in American history. Republicans have handed their party over to a man the majority of them dislike and who embarrasses their legacy every day both nationally and globally. The reason for their fealty to Trump who many of them called a cancer, xenophobe, mobster, misogynist, and snake- oil salesman was becoming transparent; the hunger for power and personal and professional opportunism. Both political parties have their flaws, however, the Republican’s sellout to Trump’s autocratic takeover of their party puts them ahead of the Democrats on the flow meter.
Now that America has rejected Trump, congressional Republicans (besides the equally racist, power-hungry hypocritical clones), have the opportunity to recommit to what the GOP authentically represents. One discouraging statistic is out of roughly 200 congressional lawmakers only 27 have acknowledged Joe Biden is the President-elect. Judges in the state after state have thrown out every voter fraud accusation case Trump’s legal team has presented. The declaration of a Trump victory in light of Biden’s overwhelming win is a blatant ploy to damage the chances of a smooth transition of power for the new administration. The Republicans are feeding into Trump’s plan to continue to control and degrade their party.
The challenge for Senators who have shown some integrity by standing up to Trump is to band together and shun his sideshow of election fraud and call him out for the enemy of democracy that he is. Senators Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Ben Sasse, and Mitt Romney have at times voted country over party in opposition to Trump. If they are willing to resist efforts by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to continue to inflict toxic Trumpism on our country after Trump is gone, maybe they will be spared the retribution the rest of the GOP will suffer.
In a Dec. 1, 2020 article in the Daily Beast, Republican political journalist and editor-at-large for the Daily Beast, Rick Wilson wrote, “Republicans shouldn’t merely be allowed to drift away from Trump with a shrug and a ‘ let’s put this behind us.” Wilson’s anger ad disappointment dominate his writing as he ends his article with, “only exposure, pain, humiliation, and incarceration will lead to a moment of reckoning for the GOP. It should start at the top and work down from there.”
