Blaming the wrong people
If you haven’t read “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn, I heartily recommend it. Zinn addresses the unnatural state of racism. Zinn claims, and he offers powerful evidence to support his claim, that racism between African slaves and poor white servants in early America was manufactured and promoted by white slave owners. The slave owners were perpetually terrified that slaves and servants, who at first enjoyed camaraderie and cooperation, would rise up together and overthrow them. Once racism was artificially introduced it successfully divided them, and a threat from a combined insurrection was substantially diminished. The slave owners learned the dark art of blaming the wrong people.
Of course, the idea of “divide and conquer” is as old as Sun Tzu and “The Art of War.” People in power frequently obscure their crimes by the distracting practice of pitting the lower classes against each other. This has practically become an article of faith in the Republican Party. Donald Trump recognized the usefulness of such misdirection and started using it immediately. No sooner had he descended his famous elevator in 2015 than he began attacking immigrants and Muslims, mischaracterizing them as rapists, murderers, drug dealers and terrorists. And he has been doing something like that ever since.
These days MAGA achieves division in part by trying to co-opt people of colour. “Blacks for Trump” was one result. If anyone doubts MAGA’s insincerity, notice not a single black person has been picked for Trump’s cabinet thus far. Many people, including black people, were deliberately frightened into believing that caravans of immigrants were headed for the American border to murder their families and take their jobs when in fact no such thing was happening. As soon as Trump got elected he turned his back on many of the people he tricked into voting for him. He no longer needed them.
The problem is most of these people don’t feel betrayed, even though they have been betrayed, and many of them never will feel betrayed. People prefer to believe a lie, even if it’s an obvious lie, because it’s far more convenient and far less humiliating to do so. It is easier now than it has ever been to dismiss rational arguments against a belief or prejudice with the wave of a hand. People have been conditioned to believe that tens of thousands of people are in on a vast conspiracy against them, and much of what is known to be true is viewed with suspicion, no matter how compelling the supporting evidence may be.
For decades Republicans have been deliberately blaming the wrong people for many of today’s societal woes. They have been hiding the evidence of this misdirection in plain sight and have gotten away with it. For example, it is generally known that trickle down theory doesn’t work, that is, the idea that if you give tax breaks and investment advantages to the wealthy one percent, the benefits will “trickle down” to lower echelon workers in the form of higher salaries, improved corporate infrastructure and improved conditions. And yet the disappearance of the middle class, the inability of the average person to buy a home, the intractable minimum wage and obscenely increasing bonuses for CEOs continue unabated. So even though we know that trickle down theory doesn’t work, we seem powerless to do anything to stop the practice and consequences of it.
Much of America’s economic woes are blamed on the wrong people — frequently immigrants. This preposterous lie is believed by MAGA and repeated by people who know better.
Americans proved this yet again in the recent election when they voted for Trump. They already knew his previous term produced a huge tax break for millionaires and billionaires. They already knew that the money the government lost in such a tax break had to be made up somehow. They already knew that the tax break combined with a botched pandemic caused a huge jump in the cost of living. So what did they do? They voted for Trump again. Because it was easier to blame immigrants and Biden than it was to change their beliefs and actually recognise what they already knew. It continues to be, in short, easier to blame the wrong people than to shift their ossified worldview.
Above all, people often need something or someone to hate for their troubles. When bad things happen it’s human nature to look around for someone to blame and hate. It is an unfortunate and ugly impulse of human nature to blame the wrong person or persons for a problem, and simply not care about the obvious injustice of such a thing. Immigrants are not the problem Republicans claim they are, but too many MAGAs are too deeply invested in believing this lie to ever change.
One possible answer is education. If we start right away, we can make sure that the emerging generations do not perpetuate this lie. The battle against ignorance is a slow, tedious, never ending process. We are already beginning with a four year disadvantage. But we might as well get started now, because the alternative is to stop and do nothing. I don’t know about anyone else, but that’s not my way. And I don’t believe it’s yours, either.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.