Hate has many places here

MAGA is many legitimate things, but it’s also permission to fly your hate flag

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As I waited to board my flight to Phoenix Monday morning at John Glenn International  Airport in Columbus OH, I noted the following story in my morning feed:

NYT: Shouting Racial Slurs, Neo-Nazi Marchers Shock Ohio’s Capital – The group’s actions in Columbus on Saturday, part of a recent pattern of white supremacist incidents in the country, were condemned by officials around the state.

Only a dozen or so demonstrators, who showed just enough deference to wider society by covering their faces, but still … why now and why here?

The now is easy enough: “real America” won the election over “demon America,” or that “occupied land” as Trump put it. “Good” triumphed over “evil,” as it was announced on pulpits all across this land.

The here? Can we chalk it up to the Springfield OH nonsense from the Trump-Harris debate? Sure.

But frankly, the here is everywhere.

The Anti-Defamation League said that the Columbus event fit a recent pattern of white supremacist incidents, hundreds of which have taken place across the country over the past 18 months.

The marches tend to be small, unannounced to avoid counterprotesters and tailor-made for social media, said Oren Segal, vice president for the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism.

“At the end of day, they want to create fear and anxiety in communities and get a photo op,” Mr. Segal said in an interview on Sunday.

Axios reports that the “secret” Trump voters are now more emboldened to surface in otherwise Blue communities:

They're donning MAGA hats in cafes, celebrating on social media and flying Trump flags: Supporters of President-elect Trump in deep blue cities and states are no longer keeping it to themselves.

This “coming out” phenomenon, like all coming out dynamics, expresses a sense of self-validation and relief: I can finally be myself (per Netflix’s Emelia Perez).

Many Trump voters in those cities saw his victory as validation, and are acting accordingly. Some residents of liberal enclaves tell Axios they've seen more Trump yard signs go up after the election than before it.

As my fifth child (African immigrant) put it to me yesterday, “Now, it’s going to be harder to be Black. People are going to treat us badly because they can now.”

My reply?

This is going to hurt you a whole lot more than it’s going to hurt me.

Why pretend otherwise?

The cause-and-effect here has been researched quite extensively.

SCIENCE DIRECT: Did Donald Trump’s presidency reshape Americans’ prejudices?

The answer is yes:

Converging evidence from recent experimental and longitudinal studies suggests that Trump’s political rise led his supporters to increase their reported prejudice toward traditionally minoritized racial and religious groups in the USA.

If the president can talk and act like that, then why can’t the rest of us? This example is being picked up and followed by school kids — especially boys — across this land, have no doubt.

I hear about it daily.

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GUARDIAN: The boys in our liberal school are different now that Trump has won

While these are just observations within our own high school, we believe that this is happening across the country. Young, well-off white boys from liberal families are being tempted by conservatism simply to protect an archaic idea of masculinity that guarantees them inherent power. It is not as if they are against abortion, or care much about the economy or immigration, or even feel remotely attracted to the rest of conservative dogma. But clearly, a shift back toward traditional gender roles is resonating with them now as progression toward female empowerment threatens their already delicate self esteem.

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The broader framing:

We are currently witnessing a historic rise in populist, right-wing leaders around the globe. The political rhetoric of many of these leaders – particularly towards minoritized racial, religious, and cultural groups – has often been notably counternormative, defying modern conventions regarding acceptable political discourse and frequently being labeled as bigoted.

The independent variable introduced:

Americans have become less likely to express blatant prejudice toward racial and religious minoritized groups over the last several decades. Although evidence of prejudice and discrimination is still plentiful, scholars have increasingly focused on how prejudice might exist (and potentially affect outcomes) in more subtle and indirect forms: for example, implicit bias and prejudiced sentiments disguised as principled conservatism. However, recent events such as Trump’s election and the rise of similar populist and far-right extremists around the globe raise the question of whether blatant prejudice is making a comeback, and what this portends for the safety and wellbeing of groups that have been minoritized and marginalized in the USA and around the world.

So, my immigrant children of color are in … let’s say, wide company.

The verdict?

These trends have led commentators to ask whether Trump’s presidency has changed how Americans feel about minoritized racial and religious groups. Did Trump’s controversial rhetoric unleash prejudice among the American people? Several broad areas of research shed light on this question. These findings suggest that discrimination (particularly hate crimes) increased following Trump’s election, and that Trump’s rhetoric emboldened people to express prejudices they previously kept hidden, and may even have shifted their privately held attitudes. Together, these lines of work demonstrate that Trump’s election reshaped the topography of prejudice in the USA.

Did such hatred lighten during the Biden interregnum? Let’s say it all became more diffuse – as in, All liberals are Demon-crats!

Beyond that, the Brandons of this world can now breathe a sigh of relief.

So too, I guess,can the MAGA Karens.

These messages are easy to spot throughout rural Ohio, as I imagine they are pretty much anywhere outside of Blue dots.

So, what was the Trumpian hate premium?

About 20 percent above average in terms of hate-crime frequency.

That’s not so bad, is it?

For those who held their noses when voting for Trump this third time around, that must be viewed as an acceptable cost of doing … I dunno … God’s business? Not the Jesus I grew up with, but many things in America today are similarly … different.

I do the moral calculation in my head:

• It’s all about feeling safe in this world and it’s a zero-sum game – as in, for A to feel safe, B-through-Z need to feel a bit less safe.

• If feeling safe as a White person means you have to put up with a certain amount of neo-Nazis, then you make that deal. I mean, they are neo-Nazis, aren’t they? So, just sort-of bad. More like re-enactors when you think of it.

• And if that deal includes making … say, transgenders feel that much more insecure, well, I guess I can stomach that too, being a White guy who’s long enjoyed, in this nation, a sense of safety that’s on par with … nobody really, which is where the privilege is found, if I am being totally honest.

• So, I chose to live in a country where it’s safer to be a neo-Nazi than a transgender.

Not all that unreasonable, am I right?

Said the liberal intellectual Herr Doctor Barnett, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray atop a table in a Berlin coffee house in 1933.

I mean, how bad can it get?

Let me be the first to say that I find the concept of changing genders to be a stunner – as in, beyond my imagination to understand why anyone would put themselves through such a process … unless they feared that process less than living their lives, as-is – similarly beyond my comprehension but not beyond my willingness to grant them per their pursuit of that happiness.

On a side note: watch that Netflix movie Emelia Perez and see if you can spot the subtext concerning the utility of a troubled society (in this case, Mexico) moving from male violence to female empathy.

So, I guess I’m saying that, if I had to choose, I would choose an America in which transgenders feel safe and it’s neo-Nazis who don’t – simple as that.

I don’t think it’s a tough call, and I don’t have to ask myself what would Jesus do? Because I know exactly what Jesus would do. He’d chose love.

Still, it’s ludicrous to make Trump the fall guy for all this expressive, performative hatred. Trump’s sin isn’t that he hates others so much as he loves himself too much.

For the broader framing, we turn to The Leadership Conference Education Fund:

An unmistakable pattern during each of the last four presidential campaign cycles: Reported hate crimes increase during elections.

Trump didn’t start this; he just rode the building wave, egging it on with a wink of plausible deniability.

Tragically, since 2015, reported hate crimes have nearly doubled. The Trump candidacy empowered white nationalists and provided them with a platform — one they had been seeking with renewed intensity since the historic election of America’s first Black president in 2008. Since 2015, communities across the country have experienced some of the most violent and deadliest years for hate in modern history.

Modern history.

Let that soak in.

Movements grounded in attempts to whitewash history and deny the rights of the LGBTQ+ community have turned hate into campaign platforms.

As a parent to two non-straight kids, I’m beginning to see a pattern across my family, reminding me of the old SNL joke delivered by Chevy Chase in his Weekend Update skit, when he reported on the UN General Assembly passing a resolution equating Zionism to racism, a development commented upon by Sammy Davis Jr, who stated, “Great! Now I can hate myself!”

How to behave as the father of a family with Blacks, an Asian, immigrants of color, and LGTBQ+ members?

To be honest, mostly I just feel scared.

I worry about people deciding they can do very bad things to my loved ones, confident in their knowledge that they’re acting righteously.

That does feel like a world turned upside-down.

I also feel a bit of an alien myself for having gone down these paths, made these choices, and embraced such radical acceptance.

As such, I don’t feel all that American right now – as presently and widely (majority?) celebrated.

And that bugs me a great deal, knowing myself to be a great believer in the American faith.

I feel like I’m navigating that part of the movie in which the bullies rule and everybody else needs to watch their backs. I find myself anxiously awaiting the Act 3 where the good guys prevail.

I find myself swinging my fists at dreamt-of villains, grateful, upon waking up, that I haven’t actually connected with any furniture in my bedroom.

I also find myself clenching up with this intense desire to magically swoop in at the moment of maximum danger to deliver that blow for real – to beat the shit outta somebody before they lay a finger on mine.

I feel myself haunted by phantoms, and it’s humbling as a 62-year-old White guy unused to such thoughts.

But I am glad to suffer them.

I am glad to be on our side.

I do worry about writing about all of this – honestly and openly here – costing me business or career opportunities.

But I guess I fear more what would happen to my soul if I let such fears silence me.

Funny what the photo of a few swastikas an hour away from home can elicit.

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