Originally Posted by
Mark III
Donald Trump's Race War
by MarkIII
President* Trump is stoking racial animosity over the wholly invented "national anthem" issue , as a strategy to motivate his base for the fall congressional and US senate elections.
We know with certainty that Trump is not above using race as a basis for his political popularity. Back at the turn of 2010-2011, Trump was considering a run for the presidency as a Republican in 2012. It was something he had been talking about for years and years, but by 2012 he would be 66 years old, and 70 in 2016, the upper limit of the age at which anyone had seriously run for president. So in 2011 Trump was looking for a way to "up his game" and create a base in the Republican party from which to launch a bid for the GOP nomination in 2012.
He landed on the idea of reviving the then fading concept of "birtherism" , the tea partyish claim that President Obama was not a real American, but rather a Kenyan, and even moreso, son of a Muslim, schooled in a Muslim country. Over the course of a few months Trump became the most prominent birther in the country, mainly due to his extensive contacts in the mainstream media. Birther nuts like Joe Arpaio and Orly Taitz couldnt get their convoluted conspiracies about Obama's birth certificate onto the network morning shows, but Donald Trump could. He went on the Today show and told Meredith Vierra that he was compiling incredible information that hinted that the birther claims were true. He said he was sending a team of private detectives to Hawaii to finally learn the truth. He demanded on national television to see President Obama's long form birth certificate.
For awhile Trump's efforts were paying off and he was gaining popularity among the nation's racists and xenophobes and the possibility of a strong run for the nomination in 2012 was developing. But then Obama threw Trump for a loop when he actually released his long form birth certificate. Suddenly Trump seemed misinformed and petty and a run for national office was out the window.
Trump was forced to bide his time and regroup his political ambitions down the road.
So we KNOW that Donald Trump was and is more than willing to cynically exploit racial animosity for personal political purposes.
The NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began to kneel during the playing of the national anthem before his games at the beginning of the 2016 season. Kaepernick told reporters that he was protesting police brutality against blacks , including of course the shooting of unarmed blacks by police officers in various locations around the country. It wasn't long before other players joined in and eventually a number of NFL teams had players who knelt during the anthem before at least one game.
In September of 2017, when the new NFL season began and some players were still kneeling , President* Trump referred to the players as "sonsofbitches" who were disrespecting the American flag. Over the course of time he would tweak and refine his message on the "issue" to claim that the players were disrespecting the US military and all those who had died defending the country. Recently Trump has said that those who won't stand up during the national anthem don't even belong in America and should leave.
Donald Trump used, and is using, race to divide America and to maintain his roster of "deplorables" , the conglomeration of so called "super-patriots", anti-government types, conscious and unconscious white nationalists, and assorted others who respond to "us" vs "them" appeals, in order to have a solid voting bloc for his interests in the upcoming 2018 congressional and senate elections. It has been reported in the past few days that Trump has told associates he will keep up his ranting about the national anthem through the rest of this year. If it works politically, we can assume it will continue past this year.
The NFL players have specifically said that the protests have not been about the flag, the military, or US war dead. There is absolutely no reason to believe that NFL players are any less patriotic than any other segment of Americans. But for Trump's purposes, there is a good reason to say they are un-American. Almost all of those who have knelt, and 70% of the league on the whole, are black. Trump is back in 2011 stoking up racial animosity just like he did when he said he had sent detectives to Hawaii to uncover the "truth" about the nation's first black president.
And it is working. I have seen on this forum a number of comments from right wingers that are disparaging remarks about "blacks" in relation to the national anthem.
Trump is using race to protect and advance his political interests. It is as plain and simple as that. He's done it before in an obvious and bold way, and he is doing it again.