...about Trump's trips to Mexico and Detroit, and what they were meant to achieve. Though rightbloggers may pretend to think so, no one really believes Trump will make much headway with black and Hispanic voters. It’s now axiomatic that Trump talks about non-white people as a way of talking to white people.
What’s more interesting is to consider why he bothers to talk to them. It's possible that Trump’s people are trying to remove any embarrassment from the decision to vote for Trump; if, for example, white folks are embarrassed by his racially-insensitive statements, maybe if his team shows him in a black church or standing at a lectern next to a Mexican President, that’ll ease their minds -- the presumption being that white people really want to vote for Trump and will do so if only you remove these perceptual roadblocks with a little theater.
As I mention in the column, there's a problem with this theory: It's hard to believe anyone who might vote for Trump would also be thinking, 'I dunno, maybe he's too racist." But maybe I've been looking at it the wrong way: Maybe the Trump team's presumption is that a majority of voters really want Trump just because he's a famous TV star and a classy name brand, and the things he says don't really matter -- they're just mistakes he keeps making; or, rather, he's doing what he's supposed to by acting brashly "politically incorrect" -- the problem is, he has to be offensive to achieve that effect. It's a dilemma!
This might explain the vagueness and vacuity of his policies, as shown by the recent confusion over whether he was "softening" or "hardening" his immigration plan. To him, it's a nuisance that policies have to be part of the pitch in the first place. If only he could be silently resolute-yet-compassionate and let that be the end of it! If he can't, then the next best thing is to treat that whole part of the job, the meaning part, with such breezy contempt that eventually no one knows what to believe except that Trump is Trump.
It may turn out that immigration was never, as it was commonly portrayed back at the outset of his campaign, the come-on for Trump; maybe neither populism nor racism are important to it, either. it was always Trump himself as the gold-plated, silk-suited avatar of Americans’ hopes and dreams. I leave it up to you whether that’s more or less depressing than thinking he's a fascist.
No comments:
Post a Comment