Remember when Black folks were accused of being in a constant state of being aggrieved? I do. Whenever I wrote or spoke about a case of injustice being done to poor and minority people I would be accused of being a professional complainer, one who drank at the trough of the woe is me industry. “There goes field Negro again playing the victim card.”
Now, amazingly, it is the White male in America who has taken up the mantle of the aggrieved. It is the White male who is crying woe is me from the rooftops and complaining to the world that the world is just “not fair”. Imagine that.
Of course nothing could be further from the truth. We all know where real power in this country lies, and who controls it. But thanks to Mr. trump and the new trump party (formerly the republican party) it’s all about playing the victim-card to fire up an already insecure and nervous base. Why are they nervous? Well, as fate would have it, they are about to lose the country that they love and grew up in, and they do not recognize America as it stands today. It is too brown; too secular; too open; and too global. And, as a result, they feel like they are being left behind. These are the people who make up trump’s base. These are the angry fired up people you see at his rallies who cheer after every racist and xenophobic word. They feed off his bitterness and anger, and they hate together like the Klan of old.
It’s a strategy that worked in the case of Brett Kavanaugh. Just listen when trump declares that Kavanaugh was the victim, and that he and is family has been put through hell. Forgetting, of course, that the real victim is Dr. Ford. A woman who was assaulted and who has to live with the trauma of that incident every day for the rest of her life. But in the world of White male victimhood it’s Brett Kavanaugh we should feel sorry for. You know, because life has not been good enough to him already. *sarcasm off*
Anyway, I can see how this strategy works for some poor White guy in Kentucky, because in his mind it cannot be his fault that he is uneducated and broke. It must be the world and the new America coming down on the white man and making his life miserable. Honestly, I am still a little surprised why this all works with White women. Many of them have totally bought into the White male grievance industry. Chauncey Devega nailed the phenomenon in an article I posted yesterday:
“White male rage is also a powerful cultural force in America because, while it may be sourced and rooted in entitled White masculinity, many White women are partners in it as well. They reproduce, legitimate, nurture and literally benefit from it. “
It will be interesting to see how White women vote in these upcoming mid-terms and what type of turn out we will see from them. Some of them are angry, because the Brett Kavanugh fiasco was personal. But sadly, many of them fall right into the category that Chauncey described above. They too feel aggrieved, because their partners have convinced them that that the reason they are not living the American dream is because of those other people.
I will give trump credit for one thing, he knew that these types of individuals made up a large chunk of America all along. And, like a true con man, he played his aggrieved card just right.
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