re: #51 KGxvi

The divide has always been there, I think. Some educated whites have always been sympathetic to uneducated whites; some have cynically used them for power.

Given how much things have changed in the last 20 years (in technology, in demographics, and in the culture wars), I’m not sure the divide wouldn’t have grown even without Trump. During the pre-Civil War era and then during Jim Crow, poor/uneducated white people could look at minorities and say “well, at least I’m better off than them.” It was changing slowly, but in the last 20 years or so, the change sped up. Trump has focused the rage and resentment, he’s distilled it in populism, but I do believe if it wasn’t him, it’d be someone else carrying the Pat Buchannan Honorary Tiki Torch of White Nationalism.

And to think, in 2000 Trump left the Reform party because of Bechannan and Duke…

I think without Trump, they’d be far more restrained, and the divisions would not be as deep. Trump appealed to every single part of their pathology - not just racism, sexism, anti-intellectualism and xenophobia, but boiling resentment at being called out on their racism, sexism, anti-intellectualism and xenophobia. He told them that all the racist, sexist, anti-intellectual and xenophobic things they thought were not only not BAD, but that they weren’t racist, sexist, anti-intellectual and xenophobic.

They love him because he encourages and justifies every single bad impulse they have, and he didn’t speak in coded language. No other Republican leader would have done that, so no other Republican leader would have empowered them like that.