A lot of writers, myself included have attacked the cowardly reactions to various terrorist attacks here and abroad. The easiest front on which to attack these fears is based on what we do to ourselves with the same guns used by those terrorists. No matter how staggering our own death toll, and it is significant, we don’t appear ready to do anything about stemming the flow of guns that result thousands of murders by our own citizens each year.
But it would be incorrect to ascribe the xenophobic reactions of a significant segment of the population to this unreal fear. Yes, some part of it is that, but there is a much more troubling factor that drives our citizens to listen to and applaud bigots like Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, to name only a few, that preach against certain religions and ethnic groups.
Trump’s Hitler like rages against almost anyone who isn’t him, are right out of Mein Kamp. Those who follow and applaud this despicable approach to leadership aren’t doing it out of fear alone. There is a huge xenophobic influence here. This country, a nation that always prided itself on mass acceptance of those coming to build a better life, contains a growing nationalistic segment that if allowed to continue to expand will undermine the whole American character or lead to massive violence.
Where did these people come from? Well, they’ve always been here, but until now, in much smaller numbers. They are bred, for the most part, by failure, which always breeds discontent. The core of this group is the result of educational and informational and mostly economic failure.
The poor and under represented in this country, have until now, always come from minorities. That demographic is changing now, along with most of the world around us.
When I was a child, a long time ago, the emerging ethnic minorities were Italian and Irish. They rose quickly from their lowly immigrant status to send their kids to school and to become the leaders of today. This has happened to every immigrant population that has come to our shores except one. Only the black community has lagged behind and that has mostly to do with why and how they arrived here.
In most immigrant groups it is the smartest, the most skilled and the most entrepreneurial that have come from their countries of origin, seeking a better life here. Those who stayed behind were sometimes less intelligent, always less entrepreneurial, mostly less aggressive and to some extent better off than those who fled their countries to come here to start a new life. The black slaves that came here didn’t have that advantage. No slaver cared about intellect or entrepreneurial spirit in the men and women he captured and transported. These men sought only physical characteristics that would bring a good price.
But that was long ago. Now we have developed an entire subset of leaders in the black community, emerging with the qualities recognized as necessary for success, using those qualities in competition with the rest of the community.
Sure, not all those of any group have succeeded but that’s natural. Not everyone in any group has the wherewithal to be successful, but with this crowding toward the top we find a new group that is being pushed down.
Because they were white, a certain segment of the working class survived without much in the way of survival instincts. They took refuge in union protected jobs, they settled for an area of factory work where they could feed their families and lead a life that approached the American dream without ever attaining it completely. Still they were happy. But the world changed, the rules changed and their ability to survive in the new world has been seriously threatened.
These changes came about slowly, starting with the transition from a manufacturing to a service economy, and continuing forward to a point where the Bush administration eliminated regulation and allowed all the shadowy forces in the financial and manufacturing sectors to destroy our economy. When the country crashed in 2007, the first jobs lost were in industry and the group most affected was the white middle class that held these jobs. Obama saved some of them when he saved the auto industry but it just wasn’t enough.
Obama’s rescue of the economy wasn’t based on saving the kinds of jobs that were lost. The industries that survived the crash and flourished, required workers with different skill sets. The old blue-collar worker no longer has a place to work. The politicians that workers voted into office, often for reasons that had nothing to do with their ability to create a functioning economy, more often for reasons of personal bigotry or religiosity have failed them. So now they want to replace them too, but the nosiest ship on the visible seas is a bloviating bigot, who has no real plans to create a new economy. Yes, he knows how to scream “MANAGEMENT” in answer to every question, but like all bullies, he is a man who shows strength in a crowd of weaklings. In case you haven’t noticed we are faced here with exactly the same set of circumstances that existed in pre-WWII Germany only in this case, we are substituting Muslims for Jews.
Trump and not a few of his competitors are playing on the bigotry and hatred of a segment of our society that has lost or is losing everything that they had built their lives on. He and his talk-a-likes are providing their coterie of losers with a target for their anger and hatred. That target is everybody who isn’t them. And these people, like the Nazi brown shirts of 1930’s Berlin, are not quite bright enough to cut through the bullshit. They are buying it and swallowing it whole. They know what’s causing them to lose. It’s “them,” those others, those newcomers – whoever “them” might be. It’s those others because it could never be “us”. Losers can never be responsible for their own failures because then they would be forced to see themselves as the losers that they are. It’s like the whole history of demagoguery is being played out in front of us with road signs and instructions and no one wants to pay attention.
Trump now commands about one third of the GOP primary voters, which represents about 7% of the total possible voters. It isn’t enough to get anything done, but it is just significant enough to bear watching. It doesn’t take long for 7% to become 14% and then 28%. Look what happened in Germany in 1939 and look what it led to.
The danger in this country right now isn’t Muslim immigrants; it’s 7% of our population that has already lost the life they were leading and now has nothing else to lose. If we don’t solve their problems right now they will act like a stone around the neck of the entire nation. But there is a solution and it’s to be found in the replacement and repair of our infrastructure. The kind of jobs that this group is most suited to. All we have to do is display the intelligence to understand how one project can solve two problems and forge ahead. Of course, displaying that kind of intelligence isn’t always our strong suit.