The swift unraveling of Donald Trump’s presidency
What we’re watching now is the swift unraveling of Trump’s presidency. Trump’s animus towards competence and self-reflection has bit him in his flabby orange keister, and it increasingly looks like he’ll be unelectable in November. But that’s not even the worst of it for him.
Let’s be clear about what we’re seeing here. Trump hates people who don’t support him, especially minorities. The combination of Trump treating minorities generally as lesser than whites, with the centuries-long systemic oppression of black Americans, was the perfect storm for creating the uprising we see today. And most Americans support it. Not only that, but a whopping two-thirds of Americans think Trump actually worsened racial tensions in America after George Floyd’s murder. That means that a not-insignificant number of Trump’s own base think he worsened the situation.
This will inevitably be reflected in the polls in November. This is not the kind of thing that Americans forget. America has long been home to deep racial inequity and butted heads with the truth about our slave-owning forefathers. What I think we’re seeing now is a sincere and profound disgust with the fact that, as a people, we have not outgrown the moral villainy of America’s slave trade mentality. As this Vox article so accurately puts it, black bodies are treated as expendable.
This is what Trump will now be facing in November, more so than Joe Biden, and that’s what will be his most challenging obstacle to reelection. That’s the most difficult opponent he could ever face. For as much injustice as America has dealt, in her borders there is perhaps no force quite so formidable as the longing for justice.
Now, Americans are demanding justice, and throughout the day now we are watching protests against police brutality being met with police brutality. Such a response by police is worse than shameful; it is criminal, and at the very least treasonous in spirit if not definition.
We already know that Biden would be incomprehensibly better at dealing with America’s systemic racism — he doesn’t need to prove that to us — but Trump makes it ever worse for himself by being a low-rent klansman. Remember remember the third of November.
Democracy thrives in snarkiness