The unbearable whiteness of being
I am going to touch on several things today. I begin with Dinesh D'Souza being shocked, SHOCKED, that there's gambling racism in the conservative bowel movement. The same D'Souza who used the same exact racist rhetoric against targets on the left. But, of course, that was just "principled conservatism." When it's aimed at him, it's "vile degradation."
Dinesh D'Douche made the critical mistake all tokens make: He thought he was one of the "good ones." He thought his servility to the dominant race would win him accolades and a place at the table. And for a while, it did. Conservatives needed to present a multicultural face to the world to counter accusations of racism, which, for a long time after the Civil Rights Revolution, was frowned upon in polite company. He thought that saying "Yes, sahib," was his path to a comfortable sinecure.
What he didn't rely on was the boiling of white resentment. What he didn't rely on was that whitelash was building, and simply looking for a locus, for someone to come along and allow it to erupt in a way which mirrored the worst of Bull Connor. And he came, down an escalator, in all his gaudy, orange wretchedness. Once Donald Trump graduated from trolling—and failing—President Barack Obama to being a political figure himself, this moment for D'Souza was an inevitability. White conservatives/fascists no longer needed to pretend to like non-whites. They no longer had to mind their p's and q's. They no longer had to say, "Well, I have a Black friend." No. Trump jettisoned all that. He gave them license to act out every evil impulse they had. He gave them the freedom to be disgusting that they always craved for. No longer did they have to bite their tongues, unless they were among friends, or on a 4chan channel. Now, suddenly, they had found their Messiah, their Mahdi, their Savior. Trump smashed the last chains holding them back from being their authentic selves. They could be as hateful in the real world as they were in their pestilential, calcified hearts. Dinesh, as the English say, is now surplus to needs. They don't need him as a brown face to front hatred and vitriol. The "vile degradation" he happily dished out for his sahibs is now his recompense.
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White people as a demographic are going through some things. In the West they still rule. In the US, the white electorate still comprises the largest slice of the whole electoral pie. But they don't want the largest slice. They want the entire pie. And woe betide you if you say that perhaps sharing and expanding are the more equitable strategies. They see that as an affront to their God-given right to rule. They see any diminution of their power as an existential catastrophe. It's a zero-sum game. Centuries of dominance have inured them to any other possibilities. They see threats to their positions around every corner, under every bed. And they will burn it down before they willingly surrender even an iota of their privilege.
It is with this that we must see what Donald Trump is doing to the White House. He is destroying the East Wing in its entirety to erect a monstrosity to his ego. And he is doing so because a Black man dared defile the Executive Mansion's hallowed precincts. Or, they were hallowed; after Pres. Obama's tenure, the building may as well be razed to the ground, due to the pollution he brought to it. Erasing the East Wing is a necessary cleansing of a defiled space. And he will erect his own monument to whiteness in its place.
People blame Pres. Obama for his open mockery of Trump's birtherism at that famous White House Press Association dinner on the night he had ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden as the catalyst for all of our woes since then. Yes, of course, it's always the Black man's fault. And, this is usually, if not always, a declaration of white people. Pres. Obama hadn't even taken the oath of office and the knives were already out. It was obvious he was going to be no one's "boy"; he was going to take tuition from the great, the good, and the white. He was a community organizer, a Constitutional scholar, a senator; he was not some nonentity who could be bent to the power structure's will. And that enraged the DC white establishment. Who did this [racial epithet] think he was? It's no coincidence that the worst, most unaccomplished people decided to run for president after Pres. Obama was elected. "If that [racial epithet] can get elected, so can I!" This is how we got Trump. This is how Bernie Sanders went from a backbencher of no achievements to his name to a power in Democratic politics; his ascent was as deleterious to the Republic as Trump's. Like Trump, he cultivated a cult of devotees who denigrated anyone who supported anyone as as "cultists". What Trump is for the right—a force of white vengeance—Sanders is for the left. That unbelievable whiteness of being is not just on the right. Sanders likewise allowed white leftists to eschew any tenuous threads of solidarity to people of color they may have thought were necessary to maintain for credible praxis.
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And now we come to the Sturm und Drang which that same Bernie Sanders has engendered.
I don't need to go over the details for readers of this blog of his anointed candidate to go up against Susan Collins in Maine for the senatorial election in 2026, Graham Platner. At the very least, he's been outed as possessing no discernment. But for me, if you have a Nazi death head tattoo, and you refer to it openly as "my Totenkopf," thus providing evidence that you knew its significance, you are, full stop, a Nazi. This is of a piece with the authoritarianism which is embraced by both white leftists and their fellows on the right.
What is, again, telling, are the contortions his supporters are going through to excuse his asshattery. "He was a young Marine! They all do that!" Or, "It's just the Jolly Roger!" Anything to avoid the fact that Platner is highly problematic like all Sanders acolytes.
But this goes to a deeper pathology. White people are never to be held to account for their transgressions. They are always to be coddled and cosseted. They must always be protected from the worst ramifications of their actions. I actually saw a comment on Bluesky which said, "He's young." Platner is 41. Trayvon Martin was assassinated for being a "Black thug" when he was 17. "He was no angel." But Platner is to be pitied for "not knowing better." The deference which white people receive when compared to non-whites is staggering, but unsurprising in a racist society.
The one thing you can bank on the Bernie left being is oppositional. It doesn't care about results. It cares about purity. It doesn't care that Platner has a history of racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks. All that matters is that he speaks to the "angry white male," and that's who they are after, wanting to bring back that pre-1964 Democratic Party, where Dixiecrats ruled and minorities "knew their place." The white left is as racist as its right-wing counterparts, but they cloak it in terms of "bringing power to the people." As long as they're the ones wielding that power, exclusively.
As a Latino who has been on the receiving end of white condescension, I simply cannot trust white people as a demographic. Individual white people, like you wonderful lot on this blog? Yes. But in the aggregate? Not if I want to have a decent life.
It didn't have to be like this. But until people act right instead of white, we will continue on this infernal merry-go-round.
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Postscript
Don't worry, friends. We'll pick up The Genealogies next Thursday. This was something I had to address.