To A Friend Who Turned Out To Be A Donald Trump Supporter.

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Howard and I are both widowers and we both loved and currently miss our late wives desperately, so it wasn’t a bit unusual that we immediately connected. I liked this guy upon first contact, and with the pain of our mutual loss in common, when we first spoke over the phone I felt like I was talking to a fellow traveler and someone I had known for years.

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It turned out that we were also both passionate in our political views as well – I, a passionate progressive, and he’s just as passionate in his support of Donald Trump. Once we recognized our unusual situation, we decided to not only try to navigate it, but to try to turn it to our advantage by using our unique connection to get a better understanding of what motivates the political opposition. We recognized that we had an excellent opportunity to address the differences in our political philosophies without having to deal with the attendant hostility. We even spoke of collaborating on this article together, so I sent him these first two paragraphs in an attempt to try set the tone.

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But it turned out that, that wasn’t as easy as it sounded. When I asked Howard to explain to me why he supported Donald Trump, he asked me to give him a couple of days to think about it, but he never got back with me with a response. So I decided to turn it around and I started writing him about some of the many things I found wrong with Trump, and asked him how he could possibly ignore them. I also sent him the video below, and evidence of alleged Trump and Russian collusion reported by a Trump administration whistleblower:

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On 9/11/20 the Washington Post reported that “Last week, the director of national intelligence, Trump loyalist John Ratcliffe, told Congress that he would suspend in-person briefings on foreign election interference. This week, Brian Murphy, who until recently was a senior intelligence official at DHS, came forward with a whistleblower’s complaint alleging that senior department officials told him to falsify intelligence to play down Russian attacks and play up the purported threat from China and Iran. Murphy quotes acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf telling him that those instructions came straight from the White House.”

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In response, Howard posted the following:

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“To all my friends here, I sit in a brown recliner and have my computer on my lap. It is quiet and I marvel at the sense of community I feel here. The sense of quiet confidence with a driving goal. To reelect the President. It is lovely. I have not belonged like this in a while.”

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That told me two things – first, that Howard couldn’t tell me why he supported Trump, and second, that he had decided to ignore Trump’s flaws – even his possible treason.

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Prior to getting to know Howard I would have simply written someone like him off as just an ignorant fascist. But now I’m left with a dilemma – I know that’s not the case. I wish it were, because then I would have been able to simply dismiss him and move on. But now I can’t dismiss him – at least, not without knowing that I was being remiss. Because I know for a fact that Howard is not the least bit ignorant, and I’m confident that he’s not a bigoted fascist. So how then do I explain his seeming blind loyalty to Donald Trump?

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People like Howard, who are ordinarily intelligent and insightful people, yet, for some reason have a visceral attachment to a self-serving, bigoted, and corrupt politician like Donald Trump can’t simply be ignored, because they represent an insidious element within our body politic, and also a serious threat to our democracy. It’s not the people themselves that’s the problem, but the conditions that continue to create such people that represent a threat to our way of life. So to simply ignore what I’ve found to be the case here without examination would not only be reckless, but dangerously remiss, because it would be like ignoring a cancer that’s quietly eating away at our society.

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I’ve come to the conclusion that while many of the people who support Trump are indeed simply bigots, there are many, like Howard, who may not be consciously racist at all, but they’ve simply become accustomed to the relative comfort of a racist America. In the past, as they struggled through their lives they had the comfort of knowing that regardless to how challenging life became, they would always be protected from being at the bottom of the barrel. But that’s no longer the case. Now that they’ve seen a Black man become one of our most honored Presidents, a Black woman running for Vice President, and hordes of non-White individuals moving to the very top of our society, they feel both insecure, and under an intense threat for their own survival.

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And I can understand how they feel. It was one thing to see a young Black man like myself coming up back in the day, because I wasn’t a threat, but it’s completely another to see brilliant young, highly educated Black people like my grandkids coming up, because they are indeed more than capable of leaving many White folks behind. They have the confidence, education, and creativity to do it. Because they realize what we call “soul” is nothing less than creative brilliance straining to be unleashed, and it can be applied to much more than just music.

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That’s why “Make America Great Again” is such a popular slogan – because it recalls a time when America was great for White people and they were relatively secure. But the fact is, America has never been great in the sense that it’s been propagandized, and highly educated young Black people clearly recognize that fact, so now the chickens are coming home to roost.

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As I pointed out in a previous article, during the “Manifest Destiney” era (when Europeans came here and claimed that “God wants us to have this land”), and after being welcomed here by the Native Americans, they responded by presenting hosts with disease-infected blankets, and then brought in their army to eradicate them. So while we condemn the Nazis for killing 6 million Jews, American settlers killed as many as 10 generations of Native Americans in order to rob them of their land – and Trump is still robbing them of their natural resources as we speak.

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In addition, they moved on to either kill or make the lives of millions of African slaves miserable. Then after slavery, there was the Jim Crow era in which millions of African-Americans were discriminated against, brutalized, and in many cases murdered. And during that same time, the nation was also involved in WWII where Japanese-American citizens had their property seized and entire families were placed in concentration camps. In addition, the United States dropped not one, but TWO atomic bombs on the innocent men, women and children of Japan – and since they were noncombatants, that made it THE MOST horrendous act of terrorism in ALL of human history.

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But even then, “America the Beautiful” still wasn’t done – it went on to kill 3.1 million Vietnamese (2 million of which were innocent civilian men, women, and children), and then they did the very same thing to the people of Iraq (they were more compassionate with Iraqis, however – they only killed a million of them), and for no reason whatsoever, other than they didn’t like the cut of their jib.

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So American history is the most blatant lie ever told in the history of mankind. In America’s short 244-years of existence America has undoubtedly been THE most brutally evil nation in human history. While some enlightened Americans – both Christian and non-Christian – are still willing to fight for what America COULD be, the Trumplodytes are waging Holy Hell against even that – and ironically, the so-called “Evangelical Christians” are screaming the loudest, which speaks volumes about who they really are.

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This is why Howard can’t tell me what he likes about Trump. While he craves the security that our brutal past provided White people, on a subconscious level he recognizes the price that was paid for White security in terms of injustice and immorality. That makes it impossible for Howard to explain what he likes about Trump without also embracing the truth about our past and what Trump actually represents, and right-wing Christians have the exact same problem. So instead of clearly stating what they really like about Trump, MAGA fans embrace their ambiguous slogan, “Make America Great Again”. That allows them to embrace White supremacy with a wink, but without actually having to claim it as their philosophy. But that’s exactly what America has always been, a hell-hole of White supremacy since its very inception.
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But what Howard and his cohorts don’t understand is, they’re being bamboozled. As Trump’s recklessly self-centered response to the Coronavirus clearly demonstrates, Trump and the GOP don’t care any more about poor White folks than they do Blacks. Trump sees the poor, unwashed White masses as merely useful idiots to be used in his pursuit of self-aggrandizement, bigotry, and greed – and his all-inclusive bigotry also frowns upon people of their class.

So there you have it, Howard. Tell me where I’m wrong.

Staff Writer; Eric L. Wattree