To be honest, I don’t have the energy to summarize 2024. It was supposed to be the year we forever banished Donald Trump to the Old Farts’ Home for Billionaire Rapists. Mexico elected its first female president and we elected our first felon. So much for those White Guys for Harris Zoom calls and all those angry cat ladies. Instead of strengthening democracy, America decided to write the screenplay for the prequel to Idiocracy.
Writing about the hovering threat of fascism from the yam-faced con artist took up most of the space on this blog, as personal matters took a backseat to thinking a well-crafted analysis of Trump’s fragile masculinity could save the country. But I’m social scientist and political Bon Vivant, so I had to jump into the scrum and will continue to do so as long as Elon Musk allows it. The excitement of the Harris candidacy (yeah, for us 1964 babies!) and the belief that competency would triumph over buffoonery kept me moving forward. Now, it’s being a voice for the resistance.
The year started off great with Trump being ordered to pay E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million after a jury found him responsible for her sexual assault and ended on a sad note with the passing of my former political science professor, President Jimmy Carter. Between that was a whole bunch of shit, from Boeings losing doors midair to P. Diddy being arrested for the most heinous sexual exploitation. Oh, and a couple of Republicans tried to kill Trump. In shapes of things to come, North Carolina got obliterated by a hurricane (not a tornado), and America got all giddy because a hot guy killed a health insurance CEO.
It was another year of slow personal growth that often felt like two steps forward, and two steps backward. Andi and I are still separated and I have no idea what 2025 has in store, but I focus on building trust and supporting her journey. I tried a bit of dating but I really wanted to focus my energy on Cozy, our daughter. Cultivating our common love of all things Taylor Swift was without a doubt the absolute best part of 2024, which culminated with seeing one of the final shows on the Eras Tour in Canada earlier this month. It was a wonderful moment we will both talk about forever. Swift got plenty of space in this blog in 2024, and my piece from February, “What Taylor Swift Tells Us About the Fragility of Men: Welcome to the Backlash,” was the most read post of the year. Caring for my sick brother Ron was both moving and heartbreaking. Cozy and I told him about our trip to see Taylor on December 8 and he passed away two days later while I was in Washington DC. Cancer had the final word.
My other great joy of 2024 was seeing our federally funded violence prevention project bear fruit. Cure-PNW held trainings for non-profits, sponsored civility discussions in churches, and hosted conversations between police and activists that helped de-escalate political tensions in the Pacific Northwest. Portland didn’t erupt into mass chaos after election as predicted and that might have been affected by the spreading of credible messengers into the local community. The project also helped me de-escalate after the election as I wasn’t feeling too civil.
Yeah, 2025 is going to be a major shit show for America (and the world). Trump will take America to some very dark places. You thought the lunacy of “They’re eating cats” was bad, just wait until MAGA thugs are dragging brown people out of their homes. But I will continue to write about it for whoever will read. Maybe the opposition will get off social media and hit the streets, making the second half of the 2020s a new era of social activism and engagement. I expect an explosion of good music that won’t come from a Spotify algorithm. This is not the time to be timid. It is time to rock.
As a latchkey kid who grew up on the 4 O’Clock movie (with a father often away on sales trips), most of my young models of masculinity came through the family color TV. Those films offered me the standard trinity of white manhood: John Wayne, Elvis Presley, and James Bond. All three were good with their fists and spared few words for the ladies. John Wayne was the iconic “strong silent” man who solved problems with a gun. In the 2000s, I taught a summer class at Portland State University called, “Hollywood Elvis and Post-War Masculinity” that used Presley films to explore changes in parameters of male roles. But it was Bond that I most wrestled with as a feminist man. Was he a patriarchal archetype or a subversion of it?
After the 1996 film Swingers brought back lounge culture, I found myself fantasizing about the Sinatra swagger and the Bond confidence. I’d sit at the roulette wheel in casinos in Old Las Vegas, on Fremont Street, dressed in a vintage suit, surrounded by frat boys in khaki shorts and backwards baseball hats. Was I an agent of the backlash or mocking gender, the same way drag queens deconstruct femininity? And now, what is the relevance of Bond’s manly schtick in MAGA America, where sex offenders are running the show?
So I decided I need a winter binge to address the question. The James Bond Project is intended review every Bond film, from 1962 to the present, to glean insight into the gendered appeal of 007, genital warts and all. And here’s the matrix for our evaluation:
Driver of Action – Team player or rugged individual?
The first Bond film is based on the sixth novel in Ian Fleming’s famous series on the British spy and is set against the backdrop of Kennedy’s Space Race. Producers cast Sean Connery, 31, after Carey Grant said he wasn’t interested in playing Bond more than once. Dr. No, released October 5, 1962 (less that two weeks before the Cuban Missile Crisis), introduces all the series staples; “Bond, James Bond,” “Shaken, not stirred,” a license to kill, SPECTRE and the underground lair, creative ways to kill the heroes, and Bond hitting on Miss Moneypenny.
My first thought watching it was that it was nice to see so many black people in a movie from 1962. I’m used to any film made before 1968 being made by, for, and about white people. Dr. No is set in Jamaica, so the cast diversity makes sense. The Caribbean was a common Bond locale (and where I saw my first big screen inter-racial kiss – more on that later). Jamaica was granted its independence in 1962, but in the film it still feels like a British colony. No reggae yet, just limp calypso and CIA officers hanging around airports. But it gave the world its introduction to 007 James Bond, the suave spy with a license to kill.
Driver of Action – There is no doubt that Bond is his own man. His boss, M, tries to replace his Beretta handgun with a new model, which James (unsuccessfully) tries to sneak out of the office. Other than that and a scene where Bond and Honey Ryder (played by Bond “Girl” #1 Ursula Andress) pass out after drinking Dr. No’s drugged coffee, there is never a moment where Sean Connery’s Bond isn’t in complete control. There are car chases, jungle chases, and scenes where Bond outsmarts would-be assassins (including smashing a tarantula to an epic musical score). Even though, for part of the film, he has a black sidekick named Quarrel and female accomplice (Honey Ryder), Bond drives the story and camera lens.
Role of Violence – 007 takes out a handful of baddies, including a corrupt geology professor and some blokes who go over a cliff in a fiery crash. “I think they were on their way to a funeral,” he quips. Compared to the massive body count of your average John Wick movie, there is surprisingly little violence in Dr. No. I found myself wishing 007 had watched a few of my favorite Kung Fu self defense reels on Instagram to better defend himself from henchmen and CIA operatives. Dr. No doesn’t even try to kill Bond, although he does strap Honey Ryder down to be drowned by a rising tide. Spoiler alert: Bond kills Dr. No in a radioactive pool.
Vulnerability – There is no moment when James shows any weakness or gives us any backstory. Was there (ever) a Mrs. Bond? Does he have a panic attack if his martini is stirred? Does he ever suffer from erectile dysfunction when bedding double agents? This may be the feature that resonates with men so much. Bond is a cartoon character of a man with no internal monologue, just commanding action.
Sexual Potency – This isn’t a Doris Day movie. Bond gets plenty of play. At the start of the film he beds a woman he meets playing baccarat in a casino. Her name is Sylvia Trench, and we’re off to the races for how women are named in Bond films. Then he spends a night between the sheets with MI-6 secretary Miss Taro, who is (of course known to James) working for the bad guys. Surprising to no-one, he ends the film in the arms of blonde bombshell Ursula Andress, bobbing in a dingy in the Caribbean. In the scene with Miss Taro, unprompted, he grabs her and kisses her, reminding me of Trump’s comments in the Access Hollywood tape. “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful… I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”
Connection – Bond has passing connections with Quarrel (played by John Kitzmiller) and American CIA agent Felix Leiter (played by Hawaii Five-O’s Jack Lord), but they’re just vehicles for Bond to complete his mission. Bond even seems briefly sad when Quarrel is burned alive by the bad guys. But James Bond is the model of the autonomous male. He is a self-contained unit who doesn’t “need” anyone. Sex is transactional, not romantic. Even the end scene with Honey Ryder is not a “and they lived happily ever after” moment. You get the feeling that Ryder, in her iconic white bikini, will be dropped off at the next beach as 007 jets off on his next mission.
Toxic Masculinity Scale: 5/10
Summary – Watching a young Sean Connery chew up every frame he’s in is infinitely entertaining. Yeah, Ursula Andres on the beach (knife in hand) is a classic male gaze moment where even Bond says, “I’m just looking,” but the gaze is all on 007. There’s even a scene where a female concierge in a Kingston hotel stares at Bond’s ass. James Bond is the spectacle. All eyes are on him. It’s man’s world. Dr. No is 55 years before Patty Jenkins ground-breaking Wonder Woman movie. Action is man’s work, with bikini-clad damsels in distress.
Fortunately, there is no homophobia or overt misogyny in Dr. No. Women are beautiful and disposable but also strong, with agency. No bimbos in Bondland and toxicity is toned down in the Kennedy era. The film establishes the archetype of the autonomous “love ‘em, and leave ‘em” hero franchise to be mimicked by countless others, from Matt Helm to Austin Powers. At his core, Bond is always cool and always in control. Men want to be him and women want to be with him. But we all want to know, its that all there is?
Like millions of Americans, the re-election of Donald Trump came as a complete shock to me. I was comfortable in my echo chamber where Taylor Swift endorsements, White Dudes for Harris Zooms, and the Democratic Party’s massive war chest and obviously brilliant ground game had this thing sewn up. Vice President Harris was explaining how she was going to help Americans buy their first homes while Trump buffoonishly danced to “Ave Maria.” There was no way this convicted felon and adjudicated sex offender was going to get anywhere near the White House.
Boy, when you are wrong, you’re wrong.
The part of me that is a professional academic should have immediately gone into the post-game analysis. What macro-level trends were missed? What values were better communicated by one side and not the other? Instead, I just wanted to rage against the machine that allowed this calamity to happen. My emotions grabbed the wheel and I had nothing but vitriol for the fellow citizens of my nation. Wednesday morning, I sat in my bed and wrote one big “fuck you” to America.
It was ironic, because the work that I do with the Cure-PNW project is all designed to de-escalate political violence and here I was wondering out loud if I should buy a gun to protect my family (including a certain immigrant) from Matt Gaetz’s goon squads. Well, two and half weeks later, Gaetz is gone (for now), and we’re still here, moving forward in a nation where Trump won the popular vote. I de-escalated, but it took longer than it should have. My immediate reaction Election Night should have been, OK, now we have some real work to do, but instead what came out was my desire to just (metaphorically) blow up the whole idea of “America.”
When those swing states swung red, I thought about all the people, including friends, students, colleagues, and some family who will be greatly harmed if Trump follows through on his fascist plans. I thought of transgender friends who may lose access to health care. I thought of my DACA students facing very real plans of mass deportation. I thought of my daughter becoming a young woman in a nation that lifts up rapists and sexual abusers because they promise to lower the price of eggs. Andi wondered, as the results came in that night, if she should self-deport before Trump’s vigilantes started grabbing “illegals” off the street. (She’s not, but she was.) I thought about how this great nation may be unrecognizable in four years as the newly empowered bullies have a “permission structure” to attack the vulnerable.
My rage was for those who were hurting. In defense of them.
I want to use my straight white cis-male able-bodied privilege to both give voice to their fears and to stand as a barricade for what’s coming. But neither of those needs is achieved by attacking the people who voted for Trump. Much has been written about why people vote against their interests and much will be written about why average Americans, including a lot of women and Latinos, voted for the pro-billionaire Trump-Musk ticket. That’s academic. What’s not academic is how we heal this massive gash that divides us from each other.
The day after Election Day I posted a blog that was contrary to all the important work I do to heal that divide. As a human being (and a Pisces), I am prone to having emotions and I emoted a shit ton of anger that morning. Then I unplugged and started working on my mindfulness practice and found my way out. But that I posted that blog publicly meant that rage went out into the world. I wanted to give voice to all the anger that was out there, but the post-script about “give me some time to process this” was lost in the headline that probably sounded like, “Blazak wants women to rip Trump limb from limb.”
So, for the first time, I deleted a post. “America, I Quit” no longer exists. It was the product of my lizard brain and my need to lash out at this undeniable fascist and those who would enable him to harm to women, girls, queer folk, black, brown, and indigenous people, Muslims and other religious minorities, disabled people, and all the folks, including me, who do work for the federal government. But the tone of the blog post undermined the important work we do at Cure-PNW. It was more about burning bridges than building them. As I stated in the follow-up blog, I let hate win.
The truth is I have family members, dear friends, students, and (very likely) colleagues who voted for Trump and, while I think they made a disastrous choice on November 5th, I have great respect for all of them on so many levels. I hold them close and fight for their basic rights, as well.
I will continue to write about the fascist threat of Donald Trump and his weird circle of sycophants. I can’t not. I love this country and its people too much. But there is a way to do that that brings in his supporters instead of further alienating them, that doesn’t lean on violent language to make the point. As I have said in this blog, we’re all in this together. I have to offer grace to those that voted for him and to myself for having a very human reaction to this insane moment in human history. Onward.
“Sometimes the fight takes a while. That doesn’t mean we won’t win.” – Kamala Harris, November 6, 2024
I went down a pretty deep rage hole after Trump the Rapist won Tuesday’s election. The list of things that made him unfit to be our president was as long as an Alaskan winter night, including being found liable for a sexual assault by a jury of his peers, which the judge described as rape. Remember when Mitt Romney was disqualified from the Presidency because he left the family dog on top of his car? That Trump the Rapist won the popular vote defied comprehension . I found myself quoting the line from Marilyn Manson’s “Irresponsible Hate Anthem,” that screams, “I wasn’t born with enough middle fingers.”
So I unplugged for a few days. I didn’t want to see the gloating MAGA memes or sit through MSNBC’s Monday morning quarterbacking. We know what happened. The Putin-Musk disinformation campaign pushed millions of gullible Americans into Trump’s cult of personality, while the Democratic Party sat around and got high on the smell of their own farts, clueless to the reality on the ground. The White House, the Senate, and probably the House, now the playthings of a sociopath and his self-enriching oligarchs.
We know it’s going to get bad. It already has. The day after the election, African-Americans of all ages started receiving texts stating that they would be enslaved to pick cotton. Many texts mentioned Trump, saying things like, “Our Executive Slaves will come get you … be prepared to be searched down once you’ve enter the plantation.” In the last few days, Trump’s misogyny has unleashed an army of male trolls who have been harassing women (and girls in school) with the chant, “Your body, my choice.” And this thing is less than a week old.
After a few days of screaming at the sky (and one night of poker and much whiskey), it may be time to lick my wounds and figure out how to prepare for what’s to come. And how to fight it. Step one is to let go of the hate. That’s their game. There was a news story today that Iran was working on a plot to assassinate Trump to avenge the death of Qassem Soleimani, but the FBI caught the three plotters. My immediate thought was, “I guess Iran didn’t have a Plan B.” But that doesn’t cure America of the sickness that is Trumpism. It would only elevate the calls for more blood.
Resisting the lizard brain mandate to blindly fight my supposed enemies is part of this. Who are these enemies? I can generalize them as “MAGA morons,” too dumb to see through Trump’s con act. But these “morons” are people I know. Some of them are my students and family members. They see us as “evil” and we see them as cognitively impaired. Neither is the reality. (Well, Trump is most certainly cognitively impaired, and if he makes it to January 2029, we’ll see the 82 year-old sitting with a drool bucket, staring at the sun, on Inauguration Day.) But falling into the us vs. them binary just turns a needed conversation into a mindless war and, again, that’s not our thing.
It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be ready to fight. I’m already geared up for the 2026 midterms. Cozy and I will make pink pussy hats for the coming marches. I’m dusting off my civil disobedience skills and will be a 60-something monkey-wrench in Trump’s march to authoritarianism. Don’t think I’m making the case for resting on my white male privilege.
But I think we can do it without the vitriol. Yeah, millions of women voted for Trump the Rapist. Are they just bimbos and battered women suffering from Stockholm Syndrome? Or are they complex human beings with multiple motivations that, with love instead of hostility, can be cleaved away from the misogynistic cult of Trump the Rapist? And the men who love them may follow.
I had a publication in 2004 titled, “Getting It: Women and Desistance from Hate Groups.” It was based on my research on former racist skinheads. Their exit stories followed a similar path; a woman in their life, a girlfriend, a teacher, a step-mother, gave them the gift of empathy. They said, “Listen to what I have to endure as a female. That’s what you are doing to people of color.” Lightbulbs went off and the skinheads walked away from hate. There is no greater hate group than MAGA, so why wouldn’t that same strategy work again?
So it’s time to unclench the fist and open the hand and start rescuing people from this death cult. I didn’t know how to truly put women first until I became a father of girl. I wonder how many MAGA bros would vote for Trump the Rapist if Trump raped a women they loved. (Well, besides Ted Cruz.)
So here is my Three Point Strategy to get us out this nightmare. 1) Let go of the hate and the us vs. them narrative. It stops meaningful action in its tracks. 2) Circle the wagons. We need to let know those most vulnerable know that we have their backs. This includes members of immigrant and trans communities. Their fear-level is off the charts. (We’re locking down Andi’s citizenship before the Inauguration so we don’t have to worry about her being disappeared by the “Day 1” plan for mass deportations.) And 3) Reach out with soft hands to those that voted for Trump the Rapist, especially the women. Let’s be Pied Pipers of love. The alternative is a war of all against all and we’ve done that. We don’t want MAGA civil war re-enactors 150 years from now in red hats, screaming, “Your body, my choice!” at Gettysburg.
Deep breaths, America. And let’s get in there where we are needed.
“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.” – JD Vance, 2022
October 29, 2024
There’s an old adage called Godwin’s Law that states that when an argument reaches the point where somebody is compared to Hitler, that argument is officially over.
But what about somebody that compares himself to Hitler?
The fall of 2024 will forever be known as the moment in American history when a leading candidate for the presidency was outed by his former Chief of Staff for praising Adolf Hitler and not losing a single point in the polls. America, what have we become?
After not one but two of “his generals” confirmed Trump’s praise for the German fascist, Trump headed to off to Madison Square Garden for a fascist rally of his own. Yes, MSG is the site of a thousand historic concerts (Maybe Trump even knew about Elvis’s famous 1972 show there). The Garden was also the site of a hate filled Nazi rally in 1939, organized by an American pro-Hitler group. And 70 years ago, Madison Square Garden hosted a rally for Joseph McCarthy that highlighted anti-Semitic, racist, and anti-communist speakers. Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” and boy was the world’s most famous arena rhyming Sunday night.
The coverage of the MAGA hate rally revealed just what you would expect of a celebration of America’s wannabe Fuhrer – The triumph of the shill. “Comedians” and “celebrities” degraded Puerto Ricans, Latinos, black people, women, and called Vice President Harris a prostitute. There was Putin fan boy Tucker Carlson mocking Harris’ ethnicity and other Putin fan boy Trump vowing to round up all undocumented immigrants on “Day 1” of his administration. (How, he, nor his loyal generals, have yet to tell us.)
Those of us who are scholars of fascism have been screaming from the mountain tops, like Julie Andrews, that Trump’s authoritarian fantasies present an existential threat to the very existence of the United States. I first wrote about it on August 24, 2015 (while working in Mexico). Here’s just a sample of the many pieces I’ve written about Trump and fascism.
So we know that Trump has all the hallmarks of a fascist. (4-star General John Kelly, Trump’s longest serving Chief of Staff, has enumerated the qualifications.) We know that Trump’s MAGA base qualifies as a fascist moment, with its fervent religiously justified nationalism and racist xenophobia. We know all this and the perpetual question remains; Why is this still so close?
In this final week, Trump could say he plans on throwing undocumented immigrants in ovens and not lose a single supporter (not even Speaker of the House Mike Johnson). Trump could say he plans to nuke Gaza and give Ukraine to Putin and not lose a single cheerleader (not even Senator Lindsey Graham). Trump could eat a baby on live TV and not loose a single MAGA minion (not even Kid Rock). His base is locked in and it’s ride or die with the billionaire from Queens. How do we explain this fanatical obsession with a man who can barely speak in complete sentences?
I’ve studied fascism for 40 years, both its historical cases and its real time manifestations (including over five years embedded inside white supremacist groups). I could write a dissertation on MAGA. The first attempt to psychoanalyze fascist movements was Wilhelm Reich’s 1933 classic, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, that argued that the emerging German Nazi movement was made up repressed homosexuals. While that might go a ways to explain MAGA’s obsession with drag queens and transgender athletes, sexual repression ain’t what it was in the Weimar Republic.
Put most simply, MAGA is a cult of personality. They could care less about Trump’s foibles or failed policies. His poorly educated base couldn’t define “fascism” if Elon Musk paid them. They just love Trump. He’s rich but, like them, he don’t speak right. His puffed-up faux masculinity gives them an imagined fighter, with a new mail-order-bride on his arm. They see themselves in him and they will follow him into the gates of hell, wrapped in American flag, made in China. His racism, rape charges, and his hyper-nostalgia for a mythical American past just serve to inflate his “fuck the world” strong man con act. MAGA knows their emperor has no clothes, but, as my mother used to tell me, if you stop believing in Santa, he will stop bringing you presents.
So we’ll head into Election Day with half of voters fully aware they are the grip of a madman, finding an intoxicating comfort in feeling like the oppressor instead of the supposed oppressed. And like many of those arrested at the January 6th attack, when it all goes sideways, they may way up from their fever dream, as did Hitler’s willing executioners. But the damage will be done.
I was 18 or 19 when I first heard the line, “Real men don’t eat quiche.” I remember being so confused because I loved quiche! Eggs, pie, it’s the perfect meal! Was I not a real man? What if I ate quiche with one hand and bashed someone over the head with lead pipe with the other? Where was this guidebook for what was and wasn’t the permitted behavior for real men, so we wouldn’t become fake men?
Judith Butler, the philosopher who wrote Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), took issue with any attempt to define “real men” or what makes a “natural woman.” These are human inventions, invented by humans who have no actual authority over such designations. Sociologists know that gender is fluid and changes across time and space. What was masculine in 1954 is quite different from what is masculine in 2024. My own research on racist skinheads found them largely motivated by this changing nature of masculinity, as their manly factory jobs were offshored and “their women” declared their independence and began bringing home bigger paychecks. For Butler, gender was a performance and, boy, did the skinheads perform.
So it’s with great amusement that I watch the buffoonish performance of masculinity by former President Trump. This child of privilege, who has never lifted anything heavier than a golf club, has routinely pretended to be a strongman. On his first run for president, he regularly told his supporters to “knock the hell out of” protestors. When, as president, he contracted COVID, he defiantly ripped his mask off on the White House balcony (and was then whisked off to be treated by the nation’s top doctors). When an assassins bullet barely grazed his ear, he raised his fist and chanted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” His endless admiration of dictators like Orban and Putin is all part of the act. Former Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly had to beg Trump not to praise Adolf Hitler in public. Admiring Kim Jong Un is one thing, but Hitler, well, that might be a PR problem.
One of the themes of this election has been the 18 point gender gap between Trump and Harris supporters. And it’s not just uneducated white men that are breaking for Trump. It’s also a lot of uneducated brown and black men. Even Obama has been enlisted to try to convince black men to vote for the black woman. Is Kamala Harris this year’s quiche?
Patriarchy is the oldest power dynamic on earth. Older than capitalism. Older than racism. It doesn’t go all the way back, but as long as we’ve been defining God as “He,” men have enjoyed the privilege of being the king of the hill. Over the last 100 years, men have been slowly pushed off their throne, but they are not giving up without a fight. More women are fully employed than men. More women are graduating from college than men. And now a woman is favored to be Commander in Chief. What’s a fragile boy to do? Trump’s appeal to these broken men is as He-Man, the Master of the Universe. Ah, those were the days.
So it’s not surprising that men from every generation who still buy into 1950s myths of masculinity have glommed onto the the fake bravado of the Richie Rich from Queens (who wears a girdle). They want their UFC, their trad wives, and their unrestricted access to women’s bodies and paychecks. Trump is the incel icon. His conviction for sexual assault only endears him to the lost boys of the twenty-first century. He claims he will restore the moral authority to the days when manly men (like him?) ruled the roost. Masculinity in Harris’ America is under assault from DEI, illegal immigrants, and drag queens, according to Fox News/MAGA doctrine. Trump even referred to radio host Howard Stern as a “woke beta male” after Stern interviewed Harris this week.
Trump’s dive into the cesspool of the manosphere, doing interviews on bro podcasts and bumping chests with misogynists like Logan Paul, may be intended to stiffen his limp poll numbers, but they’re likely to have the opposite effect. Trump should have taken note of the response to his Mini-Me, JD Vance, who tried to define what was and wasn’t a “real woman.” (Spoiler alert: It wasn’t childless cat owners.) The quip rallied women from across the political spectrum who collectively said, “You don’t know me, Couch Boy!” Trump’s pathetic performance of toxic masculinity may endear him to a small number of women who have Stockholm syndrome after years of abuse, but female voters are the proverbial sleeping giant. Just look at the turnout anytime abortion restrictions have been on the ballot.
The vast the majority of these self-declared “alpha males” (pffft!) have women in their lives who have caught glimpses of life outside of patriarchy. It’s a world where they have control over their lives and are safe(r) from sexual harassment and violence. They don’t want to go back to being Mrs. John Doe. A lot of the “alphas” are materially supported by women, even if it’s just living in their mother’s basement. And these women who have their alpha ears are telling them that real men support women’s autonomy and that, if not respected, they could easily take their love to a man who sees women as human beings. My guess is that those men who are still falling for Trump’s macho con don’t have women available for honest conversations. Like Logan Paul, they are flailing in a world that sees alpha men as vestiges of the bad old days.
That’s why Harris running mate Governor Tim Walz is so refreshing. Like me and Kamala, Tim is Generation X (all three of us were born in 1964), and grew up in an era when women gained immense economic and social power. We saw our moms move from housewives to career havers. Walz has all the manly credentials (veteran, football coach, fried food eater). He’s also a girl-dad (of a Swiftie, just like me!) and a defender of queer kids and women’s reproductive rights. The sad incels can try to define him as “soft” (“Tampon Tim”), but Walz’s version of masculinity is something painfully out of reach to them. His 30-year-marriage, compared to Trump’s serial philandering, stands as a model of how men should be in the world. (If you think any of Trump’s marriages were happy, I’ve got some stocks in Trump Steaks I’d like to sell you.) If Alpha Boy thinks he’s going to have a 30-year marriage with a trad wife, he hasn’t spoken to an actual female off the internet.
The conventional wisdom is that it will be female voters that save us from the strongman authoritarian trip of Trump and his Handmaid’s Tale Project 2025 vision of making America 1954 again. Many of those women will be telling their men they are voting for Trump and in the privacy of the voting booth pulling the lever for Harris. But I think a bunch of those alpha males will be voting for Harris, too. Because their girlfriends, wives, mothers, sisters, daughters told them that real men vote for women.
A hundred years ago there was an organization in Weimar Republic Germany called Verband nationaldeutscher Juden, the Association of German National Jews (VnJ). They were fascist German Jews who opposed immigration (including by Eastern European Jews). They also fought against German communism and believed they were part of the racially superior German race. Their newspaper, Der Nationaldeutsche Jude, The National German Jew, had a circulation of 6,000 in 1927 and supported Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.
The VnJ saw Hitler’s platform as good for the German economy. His fierce nationalism would serve to make Germany great again, restoring their might that had been destroyed by humiliating defeat in the first world war. The group saw Hitler’s emphatic anti-Semitism as merely a rhetorical tool to “stir up the masses.” Mainstream Nazis initially saw them as the “good Jews,” praised by Reich leaders with the refrain, “If only all Jews were like you.” After Hitler’s appointment to the position of Reich Chancellor in January 1933, critics of the VnJ joked that their motto was, “Down with us!” In 1935, Hitler outlawed the organization and the vast majority of the members and their families died in the Holocaust.
I always think of the VnJ when I see that “Blacks for Trump” guy.
Trump’s Long History of Racism
It’s increasingly difficult for Trump supporters to defend his over-the-top racist appeals. White guys will say, “But he’s got a black friend! I heard he gave a donation to Jesse Jackson! He CAN’T be racist!” But we’ve got the receipts and they go way back. They include the 1973 federal lawsuit brought against Trump for racial discrimination at his New York housing developments, the full page ad he took out in 1989 calling for the execution of the Central Park 5, his campaign to prove that President Obama was not a U.S. citizen, and the 2015 launch of his presidential campaign, where he said, and I quote, “Mexicans are murderers and rapists.” And there is so much more.
In 2019, after President Trump’s incessant blathering about an immigrant “invasion” at the Southern border, one of his supporters drove to El Paso, Texas to turn Trump’s words into action. There, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius walked into a Walmart and opened fire. He killed 23 Hispanic shoppers and injured 22 others. Crusius pre-attack manifesto, posted on 8chan, was full of anti-immigrant diatribes, lifted from the rhetoric of Trump and conservative television personality Tucker Carlson. The slaughter of innocents didn’t quell Trump’s xenophobia and in 2024 it has only increased.
The scapegoating of immigrants has a long history in the U.S.. “Dirty” immigrants were blamed for the “Spanish Flu” in 1918. (It started in Kansas.) The second era of the Klan, beginning in 1915, was fueled by anti-immigrant hysteria with the anti-black racism. The waves of Catholic and Jewish immigrants upset the dominance of Protestant culture. In 1924, the 6 million member-strong Klan successfully supported the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act, that severely limited immigration from non-WASP nations, including those that Donald Trump would later call “shit-hole countries.” Trump’s own reference to COVID-19 as the “Wuhan Flu” echoed the pandemic xenophobia a hundred years-prior. It’s not surprising that hate crimes targeting Asian-Americans exploded following Trump’s scapegoating.
The latest version of this has been Trump, and his Mini Me, JD Vance, and their retelling of the lie that Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio. It’s been proven that both Trump and Vance knew that the story, initially spread by a neo-Nazi group, was untrue. But it fed their anti-immigrant, anti-black mantra that (white) Americans are threatened by outsiders who have been “dropped in” (Vance’s term) to Small Town, USA by Democrats. The reality is that Springfield’s crime rate was higher when Trump was president and that the cat that was originally believed to be stolen by immigrants, Miss Sassy, was found safe it her owner’s basement. The impact of the lies of Trump and Vance have been devastating. There have been dozens of bomb threats, repeating Trump’s lie. Schools have been shut down and cultural festivals have been cancelled. The Proud Boys have marched in Springfield and the KKK have handed out flyers. Immigrants are being harassed and the city fears an El Paso-style mass shooting.
That Trump chose Springfield to trot out this old tired trope that immigrants are invading your town (and here they are legal immigrants, which is neither here nor there from Trump’s racist base). Springfield is Anytown, USA. There are 34 states with a Springfield (including here in Oregon, site of another mass shooting in 1998). Springfield was the fictional town on the TV sitcom Father Knows Best (1954 – 1960). There were no immigrants on Father Knows Best, Haitian or otherwise, to “infect the blood” (Trump’s words) of the country. There were no people color at all. No queer people. No disabled people. And women’s job was solely to support their men. It’s the “Great” Trump refers to on his red caps. Make America Springfield Again. And to do that, there needs to be “mass deportations” of anyone who doesn’t look like the mythical Anderson family.
And Trump has been very vocal that his mass deportation plan will be molded on President Eisenhower’s 1954 program, “Operation Wetback.” Those sweeps rounded up nearly two million Mexican immigrants, many of them U.S. citizens and legal residents, and dumped many in the desert, across the border, leading to scores of death from heat. In July 1955, 88 deportees died in 112 degree heat, left without food or water. This is Trump’s immigration policy model.
Trump’s racism is also evident to his complete unwillingness to acknowledge that the casualties of his abortion bans have mostly been women of color. White women with resources can travel to safe states, but lower income women are stuck in Gilead. If Ivanka Trump wants to terminate a pregnancy, for whatever reason, she can hop a plane to California, but not so for less fortunate women, like 28-year-old Georgian Amber Thurman, who is dead and won’t be voting this fall. Maybe that was Trump’s intent. We’ve watched Kamala Harris, who is a human being, shed tears over these preventible deaths. Trump refuses to acknowledge them, even when Harris forced him to hear the details at the Presidential debate. They’re just black women.
Blame the Jews
Of course behind all this, just like with another sociopath who came to power 91 years ago, is anti-Semitism. Speaking to Jewish groups in Washington DC on Thursday, Trump said that if he didn’t win in November, the Jews would be to blame. And if blaming Jews wasn’t enough (Where have we seen that before?), he told his audience that if Harris was elected, “Israel would cease to exist in less than two years,” which a) is completely insane, and b) uses the same old anti-Semitic trope that Jews only care about Israel and no other issue. Jews are not a monolith. It should also be pointed out that Trump’s evangelical base loves Israel, but not because they love Jewish people. The see Jews as keeping the “promise land” warm for the return of their messiah, and then they will be dispensable. Trump did get a warm round of applause in DC, and some likely chanted, “Down with us!” (At these events, Trump also stated he would re-instate his Muslim ban to prevent people from coming to America from “infected” countries. An anti-Semitic/Islamophobic two-fer!)
Trump’s flirtation with neo-Nazism is also not new. He used anti-Semitic imagery to claim that secret sources of money was behind rival Hillary Clinton in 2016. He referred to the murderous Nazis who marched in Charlottesville in 2017 as “very fine people.” Trump hosted Nick Fuentes, a notorious neo-Nazi, at Mar-a-Lago in 2022 and could not seem to get enough of famous Hitler fan Kanye West. “But he can’t be an anti-Semite! He has a Jewish son-in-law!” If you like Trump, he likes you. And neo-Nazis REALLY like him.
Trump’s Black Nazi
This brings us to North Carolina and the black man Trump described as “twice as good as Martin Luther King.” North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, an ideological basket case, has cast doubt on the occurrence of the Holocaust, praised slavery, and said he would prefer if women did not have the right to vote. Trump, endorsing Robinson for governor of the state, called him “MLK on steroids.” (Apparently, all Trump knows about King is that he was a black man who gave speeches.) This week it was revealed that Robinson, who has an established history of eating pizza in porn shops, had been claiming to be a “Black Nazi” on an adult website called Nude Africa, where he posted that he preferred Hitler to Obama. Robinson fits the profile of fellow black Republican Byron Donalds of Florida, who Trump said, “is one of the smart ones.” As long as Black Nazi praises Trump, he has the orange seal of approval.
Let’s be 100 percent honest. The core of Trump’s base are old white men who see their Father Knows Best America fading from view. They desperately want to make America 1954 again. They are thrilled that Trump is weaponizing a segment of the population’s fears about the rapid pace of demographic change. The good news is that the old white man vote is shrinking fast. Like Trump himself, that demographic is increasingly incoherent, shaking their fists at clouds. But those mean old white men can do a lot of harm to others on their way out the door, including training a new generation of white men, like JD Vance, to continue their politics of hate and exclusion. A massive rejection of Trump’s racist views of America is the only way we can move forward.
I don’t want to pull rank, but I’ve been actively studying the fascist movements since the first Reagan administration. I spent a large chunk of my life from late 1988 to early 1995 imbedded in extremist right-wing groups while working on my Masters Degree and doctorate on the subject. I’ve published widely on the topic including a chapter in the new book, Conspiracy Theories and Extremism in New Times(Lexington Books). So I feel pretty qualified in identifying what is “fascist,” and, conversely, what is not “communist.”
Donald Trump and his MAGA movement have the core elements of fascism and they are weeks away from upending the two and a half centuries of American democracy.
Trump’s insane assertion that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are gobbling up local pets for dinner has unleashed a wave of terror in the small town as MAGA-loyalists phone in repeated bomb threats to the city. But that’s just one factor in the many-sided fascist tactical campaign by the former president and current felon. I’m just going to run through some of the well-agreed upon tenants of fascism that have Trump’s tiny fingers all over them.
Opposition to Marxism
Historians will tell you the first target of Hitler in 1930s Germany was not the Jews, but German communists. Trump has suddenly become fond of calling all his political opposition “communists,” including “Comrade Kamala,” and his followers have fallen suit. My guess is that Donald and the MAGA rank-and-file couldn’t define communism, or be able to tell Karl Marx from Richard Marx, if you paid them. Harris is far from a Marxist, and her proposed $50,000 tax break for small businesses marks her as pretty damn pro-capitalist. Over 200 Bush, McCain, and Romney former staffers (and Dick Cheney) have endorsed her. It’s hard to imagine these legions of Republicans going to bat for a Marxist. Goldman-Sachs, not exactly a communist institution, has publicly declared that a Harris election would be better for the U.S. economy than a Trump victory.
But Trump throwing out terms like “communist” and “Marxist” to his poorly educated base is sure to motivate those who think Harris is a threat to freedom. A similar trend emerged in the the late 1940s, when the America First Committee, rooted in some of the most vile anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, birthed Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, entering the country into a dark period of political witch hunts. Trump has promised much of the same for his return to power.
Opposition to Parliamentary Democracy
There was never a greater threat to our parliamentary democracy than the mob Trump sicced on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Their goal was to prevent the constitutional transfer of power and they almost succeeded. Their bloodlust to hang VP Mike Pence and “find” Speaker Pelosi had been ginned up by Trump in the preceding weeks, who repeatedly told them that “his” victory had been stolen. He continues to push this lie, stating that Democrats are trying to steal the 2024 election “again.”
Added to this has been Trump’s pledge to arrest and try his political opponents, including Pelosi, if elected. He’s posted memes, on his Truth Social, of Obama, Fauci, and others being subject to military tribunals. This weekend he threatened election workers with retribution if he reclaims the White House. “Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country,” he wrote. We saw how in 2020 Georgia election workers faced death threats from Trump supporters and election officials have stated that threats against poll workers have only escalated in 2024.
Threats to the voting process and threatening to transform courts and federal departments into agents of his transactional whims completely destabilizes the balance of power and crashes the very fabric of a democratic system based on the rule of law. Due process, congressional oversight, and the influence of voters are all erased for will of one man. That Trump cited Hungarian dictator Vicktor Orban as his character witness in this week’s debate is evidence that he sees dismantling democratic structures as a sign of “strength.”
Opposition to Political and Cultural Liberalism
Like Orbán, Trump sees himself at war with the “cultural left,” made up of various movements for social equity. This includes his obsession with transgender athletes who, somewhere, are beating up women in the boxing ring. Trump sees all things “DEI” (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) as upsetting the natural order of straight white cis-gender men (i.e., him). Feminists, like Taylor Swift, Gay Pride, Black Lives Matter, critical race theory, or anything that attempts to shine light on the history of oppression and methods to make “all men are created equal” an actual reality are framed as “destroying America.” There’s no room in MAGA for queer folks, women who are, you know, people, and racial minorities who aren’t willing to prop up the basic tenants of white supremacy.
Anyone to the left of Trump are considered “communists.” This includes traditional Republicans who are labeled, “RINOs” (Republicans In Name Only). If Ronald Reagan were to be reanimated in 2024, Trump and his cult would brand him a “commie” for his (now) relatively liberal policy positions. Trump’s world is divided in to “us” (all who love Trump) and “them” (libtards).
Totalitarian Ambitions
Other than weaponizing the federal government to jail his political enemies, Trump has joked about wanting to be a dictator on “Day 1” and the end of elections after he’s voted in to power. He admiration for Obán, Putin, Kim Jong Un, and other dictators is even starker in contrast to his complete lack of admiration of leaders of democratic movements and nations. (Although, he occasionally compares himself to MLK.)
Trump is transactional, devoid of any shared values. He cares about what serves him. Witness his recent ping pong positions on abortion. History as shown that today’s Trump allies are likely to be tomorrow’s Trump enemies. He surrounds himself with the “best people” until they no longer serve his interests and then they are deemed to be turncoats. If the former first lady is to be believed, the one book Trump has kept close by is not The Bible, but Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and it shows.
Conservative Economic Programs
As someone who has waded through the 887 pages of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, authored by some of Trump’s more notorious staffers, it’s clear what Trump’s second term will deliver; price raising tariffs, cutting Obamacare, education, environmental regulations and civil rights protections, and giving handouts to billionaires and big business. It reads like Reaganomics on methamphetamine. We saw the impact on the economy during Trump 1.0. Trump 2.0 will turn the wealth gap in America into something we see in third world, where a small group of wealthy oligarchs rule the peasant masses. Say goodby to the middle class as unions are busted and worker protections are rolled back.
Corporatism
The hallmark of fascism in Italy and Germany was corporatism, where private industry joined with authoritarian regimes to bring union labor unions under government control and reconfigure private/public entities to maximize profits. In Trump 1.0, we saw him leverage is status as a “billionaire” (we still haven’t seen his tax returns) to the massive benefit of corporations under his 2017 tax law. When Trump invited right-wing corporatist Elon Musk to play a role in Trump 2.0., anti-fascist scholars saw a giant red flag (and not the kind you see on May Day). Musk, who has been busy re-platforming neo-Nazi (I’m sorry, I mean “free speech”) activists on X/Twitter, has bragged about firing striking workers, to which Trump has shown great admiration. Installing Musk as a federal “auditor” would be a page right out of Mussolini’s playbook. Any federal regulations on economic protection, worker rights and safety, civil rights, and protections for the free market would be struck down as “government waste.”
Hyper-masculinity and Violence
I’ve written countless words in this blog since 2015 about how the pear-shaped billionaire, who never got his hands dirty in the real world of labor, presents himself as a macho fighter for the “little guy,” playing into the fragile anxieties of men in a rapidly changing society. In right-wing memes, he’s barrel chested, with Rambo muscles, carrying an AR-15, standing on a tank. (I doubt if the plump country club lizard has ever fired a gun.) Trump’s public persona routinely advocates for violence. Last weekend, he said of undocumented immigrants who recross the border after being deported, “If you come back you will be executed. You will be killed immediately. It’s not going to be easy, but we’ll do it.” Strong men don’t abide by weak ideas, like due process.
The result of Trump’s macho man talk was on full display on January 6, when Trump told his well armed crowd, “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Then he sent them to the Capitol, telling them, “ I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down.” Of course, he then went back to watch the carnage from the safety of the White House. Since then he has routinely referred to the well over 12,000 Americans arrested as “patriots” and promised to “free them” when elected.
In 2024, the violent rhetoric of an anti-government insurgency has been turned up to eleven in support of Trump. In the federally funded anti-political violence project I work on, Cure-PNW, I monitor rightwing social media sites, like Gab, Rumble, and Trump’s Truth Social. The calls for violence, especially if Trump loses, are clarion and specific. Trump supporters are urged to arm up, stockpile ammo, and invest in trauma aid kits for when the “globalists” (i.e. the Jews) fire back. A popular meme states, “There will come a time when none of them will be able to walk down the street.” Fantasies of cvil war include executing anyone left of Trump, including “RINOs.”
Racism and Xenophobia
Most Americans, when asked to describe to Hitler’s reign of terror, would comment on the Holocaust and the anti-Semitism that fueled it. It certainly was a guiding principle of the Third Reich, and their “final solution.” That plan of mass extermination swept in many other groups, including Poles, Romani (“gypsies”), homosexuals, and children with disabilities. My 2022 trip to Auschwitz brought me to my knees when I saw the meticulous scope of the Nazi’s genocidal operations.
Trump, who is sweet on right-wing nutjob Laura Loomer, has leaned heavily on racist conspiracies made popular my modern Nazis, including the lies that Venezuelan gangs have taken over “entire sections” of Colorado and that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are stealing pets and eating them. Now, not surprisingly, immigrants in these states have become the target of threats of violence from Trump supporters stupid enough to believe these claims to be true. President Trump’s Muslim ban and reference to African nations as “shit hole countries” wasn’t a surprise given his (and his father’s) long history of racism before he entered public office. Now, on the campaign trail, he’s ramped up the fear mongering of “migrant crime” to full volume. The fact that violent crime has dropped dramatically since he left office, and is significantly lower among immigrant communities (especially if they are undocumented), is completely erased by a rumor that a black Haitian ate somebody’s cat.
What to Do
This analysis could easily be as long as Project 2025. When we add Christian Nationalism to the mix, 2024 is a doppelganger of 1934. Obviously, the first line of defense is a resounding rebuke of Trump at the polls in November. Harris has to win by a clear margin. But even if pulled a landslide, like Reagan did in 1984, Trump and his droogs will still claim the election was stolen by “them” and call for violent retribution. The defeat of Hitler in 1945 didn’t end Nazism in Germany (as Rachel Maddow’s excellent podcast, Ultra, details). What ended it was a collective revulsion over how fascism only serves the self-appointed strong man and sycophantic club of corporatists.
The way through this is to pull back the curtain of the Wizard of Mar-a-Lago. Behind it is a very small, self-serving man and the potential destruction of a great nation.
It seems like there is a widespread consensus that the highlight of this week’s Democratic National Convention was the reaction of Minnesota governor Tim Walz’s son to his nomination to the vice president slot under Kamala Harris. We’ve all see the clip of 17-year-old Gus Walz overcome with emotions, in tears, shouting, “That’s my dad!” I burst into tears watching it as did millions of fellow dads, moms, sons, and other normal human beings. Gus immediately became a meme, celebrating joy, pride, and a love of a child for their parent.
That was among normal people.
As is my habit, I flipped over to check on the dark side. Fox News commenters said the young Walz was faking it, overly feminine, and “retarded.” Some said this is the kind of “sissy boys” that liberal men raise and another made an image of Tim Walz breastfeeding his teenage son. Seriously damaged commentator Ann Coulter decried that the teenager’s display of emotion was “weird.” And it just got worse from there. “We need to raise men who can defend their country, not blubber like babies. This proves that communism destroys masculinity,” one poster wrote. Others pointed to the teenager as proof that “liberals have turned boys into girls and girls into boys.”
This is par for the course for the right. They’ve tried to emasculate Democratic men for supporting a female presidential candidate. (Numerous memes assert that liberal men are all gay.) That includes National Guard veteran and former high school football coach Tim Walz (who, I’m quite sure, is a better gun shot than any of them). MAGA men want “trad wives,” not “boss ladies.” And while they feminize Democratic men, they turn Trump into a hyper-masculine Rambo, giving the elderly obese junk food fan a six-pack and bulging muscles, dodging bullets and taking down communists. It’s perfectly homo-erotic.
This is the tried and true tactic of the schoolyard bully. I co-authored a book with Wayne Wooden in 2001, in the wake of the rash of school shootings that peaked with Columbine in 1999. It was called Renegades Kids, Suburban Outlaws and in it I examined a wide range of school shooting cases, often digging into court transcripts. The common denominator was that the shooters were typically bullied with feminizing language, like “fag” and “pussy.” The bullies tried to take these young men’s masculinity away. The bullies also helped define masculinity as the opposite of femininity, after all, “opposite sexes.” Anything coded as feminine, including showing emotion and not supporting violence, was “unmasculine” and “weak,” threatening the masculine/feminine boundary, deserving of punishment.
I dealt with this in 10th grade when I quit the football team and became a punk rocker. The attacks were relentless. I can still hear Ted, the bully of Martin Road. “Hey Gayzak, you like that fag music!” One afternoon he stopped me after school and said, “Hey Gayzak, you’re a pussy!” And I replied, “Well Ted, I guess you are what you eat, you dick.” He punched me in the face.
For the school shooters in my book, when bullied, they attempted to reclaim their masculinity in the only way they knew how, with murderous gun violence. They took the old macho adage “die on your feet or live on your knees” literally. They went out like “men.”
Fortunately there’s a new version of masculinity in town and it’s not the John Wayne, strong, silent, and violent model that gets men and boys killed. It’s not defined by dominating women, girls, and all things feminine. It’s strong, free with emotions, and embraces women and girls as equals, not bodies to be dominated. We’ve traded in John Wayne for Tim Walz and, boy, are the fragile “alpha” men of MAGA triggered. If Trump men don’t have domain over women and their bodies, what do they have?
We’ve been here before. Right-wing men called Barack Obama a “pussy” and his wife a “man.” But it’s not 2008 anymore. The majority of the workforce is now female and women are not going back. The looming reality of a female president has fragile MAGA men apoplectic. If the president is female, what is left of their “God-given” authority?
But there is a way out of this quicksand of toxic masculinity. Those men can talk to the women in their lives and, by “talk,” I mean listen. Ask those women what they really want to see in the world and I guessing what they will hear is that the women and girls they love want men to enable them, not disable them. Or they can just ask, what would Coach Walz do? #WWCWD
The first epic film was D.W. Griffith’s 1915 opus, The Birth of the Nation. The 193 minute-long silent black & white classic is based on the novel, The Clansman, which glorified the birth of the Ku Klux Klan after the defeat of the South in the Civil War. A central character is Silas Lynch, a mulatto who Reconstructionists elect lieutenant governor of South Carolina. Lynch, who lusts for a white congressman’s daughter, attempts to reign in the KKK, who ride to a violent victory in the end of the movie.
The word “mulatto” has fallen out of favor but has become relevant again with Donald Trump’s inability to define Kamala Harris’s racial identity,
The term mulatto was originated by Spanish and Portuguese slave traders to identify the children of African slaves who had been raped by Europeans and served to blur the color line between white and black. American slave states popularized terms like “quadroon” and “octoroon” to identify slaves that had a white grandparent or great grandparent. In 1910, Tennessee adopted the “One Drop” rule that dictated that if an individual was 1/32 black, they were legally a “negro.” The original 1859 Oregon constitution contained references to mulattos, including an 1849 exclusion clause that stated, “Be it enacted by the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Oregon that it shall not be lawful for any negro or mulatto to enter into, or reside within the limits of this Territory.”
So what’s the problem with mulattos?
Yesterday’s mulatto is today’s bi-racial person, which includes a massive percentage of the human race, including my daughter. But in the slave days this designation was essential as all non-European people were defined as less-than human after Pope Nicholas V signed the Dum Divervas in 1452. The decree paved the way for four centuries of chattel slavery. The dehumanization of non-whites also meant the offspring of white and non-white unions were not fully human, even if they looked white. And by looking white, these half-human beasts could sneak into white civilization. So the need to maintain the white/not white color line became the prime directive of white supremacy. They believed then, as they do now, that miscegenation (“race mixing!”) would destroy the white race and, therefore, their God-given domain over non-white subhumans.
This is why Silas Lynch is the villain of The Birth of a Nation. His whiteness gets him access to the halls of power and his blackness brands him a “savage” with his sights set on planting his seed in white women and oppressing white men. Once the color-line is destroyed, white supremacists no longer can tell who is on their side and who is the enemy. Much of this narrative was revised when bi-racial Barack Obama first ran for president in 2008. Racists argued his whiteness would get him elected and then he would unleash blackness on white America. “He’s firing white people from their jobs,” a racist skinhead told me shortly after the election. “He hasn’t even been sworn in yet and we’re in a massive recession. Everybody is getting fired!” I told him.
Next to the fear of non-whites “passing” as white is the need to maintain a simple us vs. them color line. Race is a human invention so it’s always been challenging to maintain racial boundaries. One hundred years ago, the Irish were not considered “white,” and Irish immigrants were the target of the 1920s KKK. Most people who call themselves “white” are multiracial mutts. I’m Slavic on my father’s side and Anglo-Saxon on my mothers side (and, according to 23 and Me, 0.2 Middle Eastern!). We’re all “mulatto.” Among those who identify as African-American, 18 percent have identifiable white ancestors and a whole bunch of white supremacists of have black branches in their family tree. But the myth of racial purity continues to fuel racist ideologies over who is more “human.”
But there’s a certain brain type that can’t handle the complexity of our racial identities. They need people people to fit into one box or the other. They ask people of color, “What are you?” The many shades of gray explode their brains. “Are you Asian or Mexican?” “Um, I’m Filipino.” Their world is divided into good vs. evil, right vs. left, and white vs. black. “Context” is a liberal concept and non-duality is some foreign Buddhist mumbo jumbo. “You’re either my version of Christian or you are an agent of Satan.”
This is where Donald Trump’s buffoonery comes in. While speaking to a convention of black journalists last week, in one of his more unhinged word salads, Trump mused on when Kamala Harris “turned black.” “So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” he said. Trump’s binary brain can’t understand that she is both, Indian and Black. “You can’t be both! That’s not allowed!” Tell that to anyone who defines themselves as Scotch-Irish. Unlike millions of Americans, Trump’s never had to choose which box to check on a form when more than one apply. And he’s never had anyone stare at his face and ask, “What are you?”
Trump’s limited cognitive ability is reflected in his knuckle-dragging MAGA base, who immediately went to work attacking Harris’ racial identity. One Trumpie on my social media feed posted, “She’s not African-American, her father is Jamaican!” I had to give him a brief lesson on the African diaspora. He agreed that Bob Marley was black, so I took it as a win. The MAGA narrative that Harris is a “ho” and a “DEI hire,” is in line with their core values of racism and misogyny and their need fit human beings into handy categories. The 33.8 million Americans who identified as multiracial in the 2020 census have heard the “What are you?” question too many times and are just about done with trying to fit in a box for the comfort of white people. Their box routine allows them to define you. Shattering the box allows you to define yourself and that’s exactly what Kamala Harris is doing.
Kamala Harris is a successful woman, who is the daughter of immigrants. She has a complex racial identity and has a husband who actually loves her. And she loves America. You can see why that confuses Donald Trump and his base.
Watching the Wheels 