The election of Trump was in large part a rear guard action of old white men (and the wives who think their fate is wrapped up in white supremacy and patriarchy) against an American that has been changing far too slowly for many of us, but far too fast for them–that is changing at all.
Trump’s explicit racism and sexism appeared because the we were slowly undermining racist and sexist practices and the usual mechanisms by which they were reproduced from generation to generation. Those practices were reproduced even as explicit racist and sexist speech was becoming less common in polite company. The power of structural racism and patriarchy makes it possible for them to continue even when people don’t explicitly embrace them. But it becomes necessary to advance to advance racism and sexism explicitly when you are afraid that they are being threatened. Trump’s explicit embrace of racism and sexism appealed to those who were afraid and angry about the evident changes in our political community and who wanted to be free of the obligation to stifle their racist and sexist sentiments in public.
But, ironically, Trump’s success led to an explosion of racist and sexist behavior on the part of individuals and widespread racist and sexist terrorism, unofficlal and official. And that explosion–and the social media documentation of it–has shaken the moderates. They didn’t quite share the anxiety of the right about losing the past but were concerned about moving too fast into the future, and they defended their caution by saying racism and sexism were not so bad as progressive said was.
Now, because Trump has encouraged the ugly underside of America to express and act on their dark thoughts those moderates can see that thing really are that bad. And they are sickened by what they see. That’s why public support for Black Lives Matter protests has risen so far and why support for Trump is gradually declining.
With a little luck, we will see the Trump movement as an ironic moment– the last gasp of a dying America that reveals what America has been and still to much is, and thus helps us realize what it can and should be.