
Twitter Is The New Nuclear Code
Discussions of racism/white identity politics/white supremacy confuse white identity with white supremacy! These discussions also completely ignore the space in-between: the shifting continuum that occurs during crises or perceived crises. These shifts are not the dormant/active expression of “identity;” instead, “whiteness” shifts in its political activity–not based on crises, but on the perception of power and in the easy comfort of familiar levers of blame.
One key dynamic in the shifting white vote that discussions have overlooked is every major black political advance has been followed by a massive backlash–black observers (non-media) knew that Barack Obama’s presidency would be followed by an inept white male, to refute the benchmark Obama set. Hillary never worked through this silent backlash, which acted as a passive bulwark for Trump. Its invisible presence, manifested on election day, again shows racism is tethered to power. Equality is about changing and realigning power relationships. Diversity is about sharing power, opening opportunity and institutions. Inclusion is about establishing authority, redefining the norms of the social system. Cries of “political correctness” conceal the white power fix — the sustained rigid rush of supremacy and identity maintained through power. White identity is the soft edge of racism. A bridge that traffics in both sides of racism, the denial and liberal pretense that blinds whites to racism’s hard edge.
Trump attached his open racist appeals to power, its exercise, but especially to its narratives: racial myths of threats and dangers were turned into mass conspiracies of lost jobs, high taxes, giant giveaways, and constant threats–all formed from group behavior assigned by race that must be refuted by power–white power.
His real agenda has proven uglier than his imaginary threats.
In another key dynamic of race-as-power: minorities in power are never allowed to push white people around, to berate them by ethnicity, to target them politically, to blame them collectively for the nation’s ills. That privilege is reserved for whites only! Its narrative is a defining cultural value–a limit and boundary–one which adapts its deviant beliefs to ensure inequality not among people but in power.
This contradiction–between people and power–allows non-racist whites, comfortable in their personal relationships, to feel secure in their power relationships: police will not shoot them, etc. However, Trump is about to tip this balance: his endorsement by excuses, denials, and deflections of white supremacy is egregious (He openly quotes white racist logic!) and embarrassing. It is forcing whites to go past identity and confront their relationships with power — seen in Trump’s new racist and cultural norms. Should power deny the vote? Should heritage be a celebration of the legacy of slavery and bondage? Should it openly discriminate? Should it limit the civil liberties as a class? Should it pardon former law enforcement officials found guilty of contempt for constitutional violations of the fourth amendment’s provisions on search and seizure against undocumented residents? Should it selectively ban travel from countries with large Islamic populations? Can the law provide for transgender Americans to be administratively dismissed from military service, under the freedoms guaranteed by the constitution?
“Rough-em-up” Trump is forcing a choice between Nazis openly advocating violence and Black Lives Matter, openly advocating non-violence. Many whites see any confrontation by blacks to authority as a threat. They do not see the absence of justice in the calls for law and order. White supremacists split this important difference, ignoring the ends of justice to proscribe the means of law and order. Trump’s open sympathy for white supremacists and Nazis carrying shields and clubs, dressed in flak jackets and helmets as “fine people” who were under attack doesn’t square with the long “history” Trump says counter protests — and the “media” — are “trying to take away.” That “history” by white supremacists is genocide, hate, violence, lawlessness — a history of terror.
Greed, power and ideology drive Trump. He tried to redistribute healthcare as a tax cut; the natural wonders of federal lands are not “beautiful” if business can make a buck. The white supremacist code he repeats, “history and heritage,” echoes the Nazi formula, “blood and soil.” With a tweet, he violated democratic process: denying civil liberty to a class of American military personnel because they didn’t fit his balance sheet — despite transgender medical costs being one tenth of the military costs of ED treatments. He calls his discrimination and open loathing “a favor.” As women face abortion bans, Trump bans selected medical services for transgender military personnel.
Trump builds no bridges; he wants America hostage to a wall. He is a busy victim: by his count, attacked by the intelligence community, the media, Democrats, Congressional leaders, the courts, foreign leaders, he whines and rants, as a columnist noted, his wounded ego more important than the raw wounds of his country whose hurt he magnifies. His business and arts advisory committees resigned en masse. One resignation letter contained the acrostic, I-M-P-E-A-C-H. But in his largess, Trump finds time to do “favors” for hate.

Greed, power and ideology don’t permit progress; their common platform is destruction. These forces take profits and resources to benefit the few; extend authority by fiats and tweets, and rule by division and diversion. Instead of equal protection, Trump sees the law as granting special protections; he is widening the breach in the system as his Justice Department abandons voters, revokes discrimination remedies, denies civil liberties and consumer protections — to return to legal discrimination based on race, religion, gender and sexual orientation. Trump constantly seeks dimensions of his power that put his authority above the law, whether in owning properties or in pardoning convicted former public officials who are repeated violators of the constitution’s requirements of due process.
Trump is using power to extend authority into a destruction of civil liberties and civil rights in every corner of society: he expelled and blocked transgender military personnel with a single unvetted tweet! The keeper of the nation’s security, the Pentagon was caught off guard by his blitz attack, which was outside process and channels. No government founded as a democracy can permit its elected head to exercise power with such extreme prejudice. Tweets have replaced democratic process. Its 140 characters is now as devastating as the nuclear option.
