© Reuters/Joe PenneyProtesters in New York City, 2017
Ever since 2016, US conservatives have been subjected not only to the biased news reporting of an activist media, but to the jeremiads of liberals who are forced, as cruel fate would have it, to share breathing space with those knuckle-dragging troglodytes known as 'Trump supporters.'
Heart-wrenching tales of familial shame and betrayal lurk just below headlines that leave little to the imagination. Gems of journalism such as "'Wives of the Deplorables' Discuss Life with Husbands Who Support Trump" ("What's the a-hole-in-chief saying today?"), and "The Very Real Pain of Having Trump Supporters as Parents" ("...if my parents supported a racist, misogynistic human as president of the United States, I must have some of that within me too"). Not to be outdone in the scramble to the unfathomable depths of dementia, Time magazine recently published a full-length feature titled "It Makes Me Sick With Grief: Trump's Presidency Divided Families. What Happens to Them Now?" ("Soren... is mystified as to why [his Trump-loving parents] couldn't see the same homophobic and racist behavior and instincts that he saw").
You get the idea.
Sifting through this hate-filled collection of 'Trump-supporters-are-vile-humans' exposés, I stumbled on a piece of commentary with the promising title, "I'm A First-Generation Indian American Woman. I Married Into A Family Of Trump Supporters." At last, I fantasized, an upbeat story about that 75-million-strong political demographic known as 'Trump supporters' that has never, as far as I know, got a single drop of non-toxic ink by the leftist media. Naturally, I was to be disappointed, and beyond my wildest dreams. In fact, this story far outpaced the pack for propagating the most vicious stereotypes about conservatives I have read since at least last week. In one of the cute anecdotes, the reader is treated to a fly-on-the-wall view of a Christmas scene where a member of her husband's family received a football jersey with the name 'Kaepernick' on the back.
"They laughed with derision as they passed the jersey around and heckled the Black football player who had dared to peacefully protest police brutality and racism," Shrestha Singh wrote.
What the writer failed to mention, however, is that Kaepernick, the pro football player turned activist, began the gesture of 'taking a knee' during the singing of the National Anthem before football games as a means of protesting police brutality. While most Americans would eagerly support a campaign to end police abuse and racism, many believe disrespecting the American flag was not the best way to get the job done. That Americans from all creeds and colors disagreed with Mr. Kaepernick's campaign was evident, with football ticket sales taking a major hit as his ill-conceived campaign dragged on. The lesson that the media would not admit is that a person needn't be a racist to find disfavor with Mr. Kaepernick.
But here is where I almost fell out of my chair. After discussing the reaction of the Trump voters to a black player's football jersey, Singh segued violently into a scene straight out of the film Mississippi Burning.
Here, the author went on to describe a grisly photograph from 1930 that had been presented during one of her creative writing college classes, which showed, "two young Black men, their clothes torn, their bodies bloodied and broken, hung by their necks from a tree. The faces in the crowd are luminescent in the night." Do you see the connection? Don't feel bad, neither did I.
Although Singh admits several paragraphs later that "tossing a jersey around was not the same as a lynching," that did not prevent her from making that regrettable connection anyway. Like so many other writers before her, she made a conscious decision to project a heinous crime from the past onto the present in an effort to effectively accuse innocent Trump supporters - even her own erstwhile family - of being cold-blooded racists. That is an attribute the overwhelming majority of people find repulsive and unforgivable - indeed, as it is.
Having read this piece, and so many others like it, I understand that my country is being led by the leash to a very dangerous place. And I say "led" because many Americans are now being deceived into believing that theirs is a nation rampant with racists and xenophobes - to the point where, in the current political climate, it is now acceptable to speak about even the possibility of future lynchings.
Of course, people are entitled to their views, as set down by the First Amendment, but that is precisely the problem. Only those individuals who tout the anti-Trump mythology that says his supporters are racist white supremacists are awarded a platform - both in traditional media and on social media. All others need not apply. Yet if we are going to outright condemn 75 million-plus Americans as xenophobes it would behoove our media overlords and political leaders to at least allow some open debate on the issue. Yet the establishment has already decided on the matter for us, thank you very much.
From Trump's campaign pledge to close the border with Mexico to the high-profile murder of George Floyd by a white police officer, the media has a ready-made explanation: America and its Trump supporters suffer from "systemic racism." Period. From that point, it was off to the races, as Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM) took to the streets in many uninterrupted weeks of "mostly peaceful protests."
Even when a blocks-long section of Seattle was turned into a cop-free "autonomous zone," the media gazed on the madness in silent approval, if not outright pride. Compare that kid-glove reporting of BLM to the savage treatment the media dished out to those Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol building. This politically tainted reporting, where journalists are performing the dirty work of activists, is to blame for placing many innocent people, not least of all Senator Rand Paul, into extremely dangerous situations.
At the same time, 'inconvenient truths' about the Trump years are casually ignored or explained away with Orwellian doublespeak. For example, when the media is forced to explain why a huge number of Blacks and Hispanics joined the Republican Party under Donald Trump, the explanation is that these people suffer from - wait for it - "multiracial whiteness."
Cristina Beltrán in the Washington Post, asked:.
"What are we to make of ... Latino voters inspired by Trump. And what are we to make of unmistakably White mob violence that also includes non-White participants? I call this phenomenon multiracial whiteness - the promise that they, too, can lay claim to the politics of aggression, exclusion, and domination."Well, there you have it. The phenomenon of minorities throwing their support behind the premier racist Donald Trump, enjoying some of their best economic gains in many decades, is because they, too, want to ride the wave of white supremacy with all of the apparent advantages of membership. Some people must lay awake very late at night dreaming up these ideas.
Whatever the case may be, the primary focus of the US establishment should be less about curbing the vastly overblown problem of racism, and more about coming to terms with the media industrial complex's glaring lack of balance and impartiality when it comes to covering the two predominant political forces in the country. It's time to accept the fact that, media fake narratives notwithstanding, Trump supporters will be a political force for a long time. Before these millions-strong voters reach the end of their patience with fake news, it'd be best to treat them with an equal amount of journalistic integrity.
About the Author:
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of 'Midnight in the American Empire,' How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream. @Robert_Bridge
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