Oh, the caucacity!

Four kinds of racism from the Trump administration

In my “Racisms” column for the July edition of The Bollard I lay out the four kinds of racism in which Trump and his sycophants are currently drowning us.

It’s not just those inside his administration, either. Bigots across the country continue to follow in lockstep—even here in Maine.

Here’s the column and please let me know what you think!

Ugh. Paul LePage.

Barack Obama won the presidency two times, and each of those times he lost the white vote. Even so, white liberals were inspired to shout from their gentrified rooftops that racism was over! We had finally become a post- racial society! Maybe this is why liberal media let Trump in front of every available camera to whimper his bullshit about Obama’s birth certificate. What harm could it do?

Enabling racism didn’t just have national effects. For example, here in Maine back in 2010, a man like Paul LePage felt perfectly comfortable running for governor. Once in office, it was all Obama “hates white people” and the NAACP can “kiss my butt” and “Black people come up the highway and they kill Mainers.” Many were surprised.

White liberals continued to countenance racism from their right-wing counterparts and in 2016 we got President Trump. Who would be the liberal antidote in 2020? A man not only known for his own racism, but for making everyone around him wonder whether he was cruel or just stupid; a man who’d lost almost every genuinely competitive political contest he ever entered: Joe Biden!

As it turned out that terrible year, even the Democrats’ biggest loser could defeat the country’s once-in-a-lifetime degenerate.

Biden also lost the white vote, but liberal whites once again believed the problems had been solved! Post-post-racial society level unlocked! Then Biden spent the next four years fucking everything up so badly that Trump became the country’s twice-in-a-lifetime degenerate.

Two-and-a-half years in, we’re seeing every kind of racism Trump can muster. There’s his personal racism, like that video he reposted of the Obamas as apes. And there’s the surface-level national racism, like when he demolished Washington, D.C.’s BLM Plaza. Or when he returned a Confederate monument to Arlington National Cemetery. Or when he removed the portrait of Gen. Daniel “Chappie” James, the U.S. military’s first Black four-star general, from the Air Force Art Gallery. Or his removal of references to Jackie Robinson and Colin Powell from government websites.

Then there’s the progress-halting systemic racism, like the banning of DEI. And the Department of Justice indicting the Southern Poverty Law Center on specious fraud and money-laundering charges. And banning the Air Force from teaching about pioneering Black military pilots the Tuskegee Airmen. And the gutting of the office that investigates discrimination in schools. And the gutting of the Minority Business Development Agency.

Then there’s the progress-reversing systemic racism, like dropping 180 religions from military personnel records. And pressuring the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to focus on racial discrimination against white men. And the fact that of the 6,069 refugees resettled in the U.S. between last October and this past April, all but three were white people from South Africa.

I’ve left so much out, and some of these actions have been temporary halted or rejected by judges, but the momentum continues, like ICE’s ongoing, escalating onslaught against immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

Some state leaders are emboldened, too. Louisiana’s governor just signed a bill making it illegal to sleep outside, a crime punishable with jail time in a state known for forced prison labor — or, as we used to call it, slavery.

Everyday dipshits are feeling empowered, as well. Like the white doctor in Colorado currently suing the creator of an online directory called “Find A Black Doctor,” accusing them of unlawfully excluding non-Black doctors.

Maine racists are also feeling their caucacity. I don’t know if you were paying attention during last month’s primaries, but can you guess who just won the uncontested Republican nomination to represent most of Maine’s territory in the U.S. House of Representatives? That’s right! It’s the return of Vacationland’s most infamous embarrassment, Paul LePage! And he’s not alone!

After spending months sniveling and whining about the supposed unfairness of Maine’s ranked-choice voting system, Bobby Charles won the majority of votes to be the Republicans’ candidate for governor, but only after voters’ second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth choices were tabulated. If you’re unfamiliar, Charles has been making a name for himself by doing things like accusing Somali-American state lawmaker Deqa Dhalac of representing Somalia over Maine in Augusta.

In a video posted on social media last July, Charles rants about “illegal aliens” in Maine and how “we need to be putting them in our own version of Alligator Alcatraz until they can be properly deported.” The actual Alligator Alcatraz — which turned out to be so expensive, inhumane and environmentally destructive as to be unsustainable — closed late last month, but I doubt that affects Charles’ vision for Maine’s future.

James Baldwin once said, “We will live here together or we’ll die here together. And it’s not I am telling you, time is telling you. You will listen or you will perish.”

I think about this quote a lot, and I’m starting to wonder how much time there is left to listen.