Nice and Deplorable

It doesn’t matter how lovely your family, how honorable your work or service, how devout your faith — if you place ideological adherence or economic self interest above the moral imperative to condemn and denounce a demagogue, then you are deplorable. 

Charles Blow NY Times

**When Ebola was going around, when AIDS was rampant, when Polio struck so many people – we didn’t blame the people who got those diseases. We felt sorry for them, tried to help in some way, or just ignored it if it wasn’t in our circle of family or friends. The problem with a significant number of DT supporters is that they’ve caught racism and won’t acknowledge it. Not that it would do them any good: racism is an extremely subtle but publicly deplorable thing in this country. So most people don’t want to be identified as racists. They hide behind other acceptable postures, like "the economy" (even though it's better), gun confiscation (though it hasn't happened), big government (Republicans control the Congress creating gridlock to progress), moral failures (though the Obama administration has been remarkably free compared to previous  administrations), excessive political correctness (another word for protecting minorities from disrespect and oppression), and a whole host of other dogwhistles that allow them to believe what they can't actually say. 

Since DT entered the race I’ve been insisting he’s only a symptom. When his supporters say he “speaks his mind” and “tells it like it is” what they really mean is that he speaks THEIR mind. Their deplorable minds. It's been several years since open racism has been acceptable so a lot of people have felt compelled to disguise it in many ways, to suppress it in their public utterances and behavior and even to delude themselves that they aren't racist. But underneath there has been the same rage that an “inferior” set of people was allowed center stage, to the point of electing, twice, a black president. This watershed moment exposed a cultural rift between what most Boomers grew up with and the new Millennial age. Older people rarely like change, but gut-level reactions to this fundamental change had to be squelched for a long time, which built up a pressure of resentment and justification for revenge.

It pains me, then, that I have to acknowledge this about most of my family – "lovely," "honorable" and "devout"– as they are. I”m not sure how many of them are in the “deplorable” basket that Hillary spoke of, but none of them is in the basket of poor, unemployed white people. I don't see any evidence of a third basket of people who support DT but don't belong in the aforementioned two. I'd like to see some cogent arguments about the existence of this third basket..

If there are only two baskets, they belong in the deplorable one. How did this happen I ask? They were all brought up as Christians, are active–more or less–with church outreach, etc. Does the threat of such a fundamental change occurring again, this time with a woman, rock their world? The fact that they identify with a xenophobe, a racist, a sexist, a lout in so many ways, suggests that this is the nature of their inner convictions, though some may not wish to proclaim it as such, or even realize it. Maybe they just “caught” it, like victims of an epidemic. Nice people all of them, not the Duck Dynasty uglies that parade in front of the media gaze, but their loyalties are obvious – and it’s not with the only choice that will carry on the Obama progressivism. Everything is reversed in their psyches. Back to Jim Crow is forward, women in the home exclusively is progressive, a theocracy where the Christian tradition and institutions are allowed to run public life – these are the gut level issues that motivate them. And of course, the sense that they, as white people, are slowly sinking from their majority status.

I don’t doubt that most of them would deny being in the deplorable basket. It’s not a pretty persona. And yet I wonder how many of them think that 

• President Obama is a Muslin, 
• he was not born in America, 
• Mexicans are rapists, 
• blacks are more violent than whites
• blacks are more lazy than whites
• blacks are less intelligent than whites
• Kim Davis was correct in not issuing marriage licenses to gay couples
• Muslims should be banned from entering the country
• a database of Muslims should be created
• mosques should be shut down
• illegal aliens should be deported (all 11 million of them)
• a physical wall will actually protect America
• the South should have won the Civil War
• homosexuals should be barred from entering the country
• America was founded as a Christian nation

 – and a host of other deplorable ideas as uncovered in this South Carolina poll, among others.  

Clinton also spoke of the other basket, though the media didn’t find it as sexy as the first: 

“But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from.” 

I don't see much nuance between the two baskets. How one can be white, well-off, not a racist/misogynist/bigot and still support DT? How is this not a contradiction, and an indictment? I'm not in either basket. I'd never vote for DT. And yet I’m one of those who feels government has let me down. It matters where change comes from, and where it is resisted. Republican obstructionism has limited the extent of the progressivism that might have developed over the past eight years. But I don’t feel that an ignorant, narcissistic, misogynistic, race-baiting buffoon would fix what’s wrong with government. In fact, to the extent that the Deplorables slither out of their basket and start poisoning public life, things could get worse quickly. I’m pretty old, so a lot of deplorable change wouldn’t affect me much But I’d be heartbroken if my children and grandchildren and much of the rest of my family didn’t stop this last desperate swing toward a dictatorship. 

I was an early Bernie supporter and yet once he was out of the race there was no viable choice in this election other than Clinton. Why so many people don’t see this is a mystery to me. (And a vote for Gary Johnson isn't nuance. It's an abdication of responsibility, an impotent gesture). DT stands for the worst in the American psyche, the deplorable condition of being afflicted with a disease they don’t recognize as such. Even nice, lovely people can unknowingly suffer from it.