_
_
_
_
_
u.s. elections
Tribune
Opinion articles written in the style of their author." These texts are to be based on verified facts and must be respectful towards people, even though their actions may be criticized. shall feature, along with the author's name (regardless of their greater or lesser renown), a footer stating their office, academic title, political affiliation (if any) and main occupation, or the occupation related to the topic being assessed

Millions of American whites prefer a dictatorship

Polls show that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are tied in the presidential race, even though the latter has said he would suspend parts of the Constitution and construct an all-powerful executive branch with him as the head

Supporters of former US President Donald Trump protest near Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, on March 21, 2023
Supporters of former president Donald Trump protest near Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, on March 21, 2023.GIORGIO VIERA (AFP)

Rather than exist in a society where members of all ethnic groups have an opportunity for success, millions of American whites would approve of a dictatorship. Ten million would restore Donald Trump to the presidency by force. Recent polls show that Biden and Trump are tied in the presidential race even though Trump said he would suspend parts of the Constitution and construct an all-powerful executive branch with him as the head.

The white-controlled media have aided Trump. Former CNN president Jeff Zucker, who resigned from the network in 2022, admits that CNN’s coverage of Trump helped in the ascendancy of the former president. He has expressed regrets. In 2016, former CBS president Les Moonves said that Trump “may not be good for democracy,” but he’s “damn good for CBS.”

The media are choosing ratings over democracy. CNN Chairman and CEO Chris Licht was fired from the network because he presented a Trump Rally in the guise of a Town Hall. Maybe he thought he was hired to make money for the network.

The media’s idea of making money is to film Trump’s fantasy presidency. Cable is spending hours on Trump’s imitation presidential entourage arriving and exiting from court appearances. But the support for the former president among Republican voters is unwavering, regardless of the indictments and the scandals attached to Trump.

Their being out of touch with rising youthful demographics is why the Republican Party is approaching extinction. In the past, millions of voters have allowed them to coast along by scapegoating Blacks, Muslims, immigrants, Hispanics, LGBTQ+ persons, and others. They haven’t been challenged to create new ideas, which is how past political parties have thrived.

The mainstream press is an annex to the Republican National Committee. They coddle whites and humiliate and embarrass Blacks for cash. Wajahat Ali, the fastest mind on the TV panels, was terminated by CNN because he talked about white supremacy too much.

Whites and Black pundits, who are limited in what they can say, cast those who sought to overthrow the government as left behind economically. Studies show that January 6 was a middle-class insurrection. It involved those with pensions, vacation time, IRAs, and stocks. Police and firefighters participated. One of those who sponsored the riot was a food heiress, which brings up another excuse for insurrection offered by east coast columnists, especially the privileged white men who monopolize the editorial pages of The New York Times, even though the person in charge of opinion is a woman.

These columnists argue that the white working class is distant from the Democratic Party because the party represents the elites when the right has all the money. Moreover, a recent poll shows that Trump is gaining among college-educated whites, men and women.

Elitist billionaires are not only financing members of the Supreme Court but offering members trips on yachts and other gifts from wealthy people like Harlan Crow, who collects Nazi paraphernalia. Crow is also one of the backers of a possible third party called No Labels, meant to entice those for whom neither Trump nor Biden are attractive candidates. Biden will lose votes if the party is on the ballot.

Right-wing billionaires support voting suppression, anti-abortion legislation, and anti-LGBTQ rights. Billionaires from the right financed the drive to end Affirmative Action at Harvard, pretending that Chinese American students launched this action. Polls show that most Asian Americans support Affirmative Action.

During the press conference held after the Supreme Court decision ending Affirmative Action, Ed Blum, a white man, not the students, did all the talking. He’s the fifth white man to play Charlie Chan.

Cable provided the usual ignorant discussion of Black issues. None of the pundits on TV mentioned that Affirmative Action benefits white women the most — the hidden beneficiaries. Not even the women reporters and pundits. Judge Shira Scheindlin made this point in The New York Times.

Though international audiences see footage of thousands of women marching to protest the overturn of Roe vs. Wade and fight for abortion rights, most white women voted for Trump twice. One could say that their votes created the 6-3 right-wing majority that overturned Roe v. Wade. One of the judges was Amy Coney Barret, a member of a group called “People of Praise,” which believes women should be submissive to men.

Some white progressives are up to their usual silliness. They are pushing for the candidacy of Cornel West, a charismatic Black scholar who spends more time on television than writing scholarly papers. He was a fierce critic of former President Obama. But Blacks had nothing to do with promoting West’s candidacy, meant to siphon votes from President Biden and possibly elect Donald Trump.

In his pathetic attempt to gain a spotlight, despite the damage a second Trump presidency would be for Blacks, Dr. West doesn’t realize that his backers — white progressives — have more options than he does. They can slink into anonymity in the face of fascism or abandon Black issues as they did in the 1930s. His campaign manager is Dr. Jill Stein, a Putin dinner companion. Her Green Party bid in 2016 cost Hillary Clinton the election.

Far more dangerous is Trump supporter Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur. By running against Blacks, he uses the campaign strategy designed by the late Lee Atwater, who taught Republicans to use issues associated with Blacks, like busing, welfare, and crime, instead of using the N-word.

The new code word for Blacks is “woke,” though none of the demagogues who use the term know that Black author William Melvin Kelley introduced the term in 1962. Another code phrase for Blacks is Affirmative Action.

When asked about his attitude toward Racism on July 25 by a CNN interviewer, Ramaswamy said, “The right way to deal with what I view as the last final burning embers of racism is to let that quietly burn out rather than trying to put that fire out by accidentally throwing kerosene on it.” Reports and studies indicate that rather than “dying embers,” Racism is still a five-alarm fire. A recent report found that Blacks are subjected to tax audits more than whites. Though there were worldwide demonstrations against police brutality after the murder of George Floyd, nothing has changed in the rate of Blacks murdered by the police. In the West, they murder Hispanics.

Lending institutions make it harder for Blacks and Hispanics to secure mortgages. Black mothers have a higher infant mortality rate than white mothers because they receive inferior treatment. Black doctors Michael leNoir and Mack Roach charge that Black men with prostate cancer die more than White men for the same reason. (Hispanic immigrants have been sterilized without their permission).

The Republican Party continues to suppress the Black vote. Even when a far-right Supreme Court instructed Alabama to stop discriminating against Black voters, Alabama Republicans have defied the court! Are Alabama Republicans flirting with secession? Thirty-seven percent of Southerners favor secession, according to a 2021 poll by Bright Line Watch in conjunction with YouGov.

Ramaswamy, a modern-day Gunga Din whose parents were able to migrate from India because of the Civil Rights Movement, told a cheering Republican audience that he would eliminate Affirmative Action in every sphere of American life. Yet, The Daily Beast reports that he received Affirmative Action. They write, “He has called race-based college admissions ‘a cancer,’ but a Soros family fellowship for children of immigrants helped him accrue wealth as a grad student.”

His scapegoating of Blacks is selling well to white voters. He’s surging in the polls, putting him in third place behind Trump and Ron DeSantis. He’s a smooth debater, and so after the upcoming debate between Republican candidates, his poll numbers will increase.

The 2024 election will be a test for white voters. Will they re-elect a man whose followers threaten physical retaliation against those who oppose him? Who has threatened to occupy Black neighborhoods with troops and shoot protestors affiliated with Black Lives Matter?

White commentators dominated the discussion that followed the ending of Affirmative Action at Harvard. Even though Asian Americans were used to front a right-wing attempt to lower the presence of Latinos and Blacks in higher education, whites backed by right-wing billionaires controlled the discussion. I asked a Chinese American writer Jeff Chang his thoughts. He is the author of Who We Are and Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. He wrote:

“[Edward] Blum’s group Students for Fair Admissions sought Asian students to face their challenge to Affirmative Action after they failed with a white woman plaintiff named Abigail Fisher. They claimed before the courts to represent as many as 20,000 students, including many Asian Americans. But when the time came to produce evidence of discrimination, and after forcing Harvard to turn over nearly 100,000 pages of documents, they could not produce a single case. Then they disappeared their right-wing Chinese American parents and had an all-white lawyer squad mostly made up of former Clarence Thomas clerks present an argument that turned on their novel, ahistorical, thoroughly damaging reading of the 14th Amendment.

The Asian American students who did testify in the case were a Chinese American woman and a Vietnamese American man who had been accepted to Harvard because of their stories of racial discrimination. Justice Jackson wrote in her dissent that in the new admissions regime, a white student could write about his desire to be the fifth generation to attend the University of North Carolina, but a Black student writing about his desire to become the first in his family to do so could be legally suspect. Justice Roberts appended a strange loophole at the end of his majority opinion: ‘Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.’”

But what’s certain is that for the next 50 years, the courts will be adjudicating this line — whether and what is illegal to say about race. It’s almost as if Roberts and the court took a look at what race-censors like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott are trying to do in Florida and Texas and realized that those are the folks with whom they’ve made their bed.

The media will continue to pamper the millions of whites who brought Donald Trump to the presidency. But history will be unforgiving.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition

More information

Archived In

Recomendaciones EL PAÍS
Recomendaciones EL PAÍS
_
_