Trump: A nation is defined by blood and culture, not a document

There is a nativist whale under the surface of American politics.   

The whale is huge.  Donald Trump is talking to it.

Donald Trump's campaign began with his assertion that Barack Obama was not a real American, because there was something "wrong" about him.  Maybe foreign born, maybe actually a Muslim, something foreign and mongrelized.    Obama was "other".   It struck a chord with voters.

Then his campaign came out of the starting blocks saying that Mexico "doesn't send its best."   Immigrants are not the tired, poor Ellis Island people eager to work hard and make something wonderful for their children.   No, immigrants were criminals and rapists, although maybe a few good ones.

Trump is aiding ISIS by attacking Muslims

HIs campaign talked about the straightjacket of PC, the unwillingness of polite official America in government, media, academia to acknowledge and put value judgements on cultural, religious, and racial differences.

Donald Trump appears to be campaigning by confident gut instinct, and it is an instinct in sync with a significant body of Americans who are uncomfortable with the social and demographic changes of post civil rights America.   He has an understanding of America as a common culture, common English language, common demographic of native born whites and people thoroughly assimilated into that culture.   He may not think of himself as a "nativist", but he appeals to nativist thinking.   There have been waves of this sentiment in American history, especially during times of significant immigration that hasn't been well assimilated.   It isn't just America, either.   It is happening in Europe, too. 

There is another version of America, one built around a common bond of documents and ideology.  It is America built around the founding douments--the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address' rededication to the proposition that all men are created equal.   This is the version that is accepted as the official, legitimate one by America's elites.   It is the one that the federal government adopts, that the media and academia accept.  The Supreme Court defends that version.  It is the one that is PC.   It is the one that some people resent because it says multiculturalism and diversity are good.  

It is the one Hillary Clinton represents.  Here is Hillary describing her reaction to the bombings in New York and New Jersey.  Hillary says profiling of Muslims helps ISIS

Iran state English Language website

So that is the whale and the water.   The official American glue is an ideology of equality and that is the still water that creates the legal environment of the country.   Under the surface is the whale, that great body of people who feel a country is defined by something much greater than a bloodless idea and document, that it is formed by flesh and blood Americans who feel the emotion of loyalty to the American team.   It is "we" versus "them".  "We" know who we are--a people and culture and tradition and language.  

The domestic terror events in New York and New Jersey--and the events in Orlando and San Bernardino--display Trump's appeal to the whale.   Trump calls for much more aggressive profiling of "suspicious people."    But he needs to say it carefully, because he needs to address the whale without openly condemning the water in which the whale swims, the country as ideology rather than blood and culture.  He needs to discriminate and profile without acknowledging discrimination and identity profiling.

The election is fighting over the two understandings of America, a fight that is carried out in code.  

Trump was challenged by Bill O'Reilly over his statement that he wanted to ban Muslims from entering the US.   "I never said the term 'Muslim', Trump said.  "I'm saying we're going to profile people that maybe look suspicious, I didn't say they were Muslims or not."  Trump (echoed by Fox News) calls our failure to profile and target certain populations as PC suicide.  "I'm not using the word Muslim!  I'm saying we're going to have to start profiling.  And I don't know it's that bad, but certainly it's not a wonderful thing.  But we have a country to keep safe.  And you know, and I know, it's going to get worse."

Trump: Profile "bad guys",  not "Muslims"

Here is both the video and a transcript of the interview between O'Reilly and Trump.  Watch and read: Trump on Profiling  

Trump attempts to thread the needle, saying that we need to profile Middle Eastern Muslims while simultaneously denying that he is profiling them because they are Middle Eastern Muslims.   He is acknowledges the whale.  America is a people and culture, and those foreigners are not part of it.

Hillary Clinton has to thread the needle the opposite way, because she knows and acknowledges that the nativist whale is real, but must insist that it not be given legitimacy.  Her own argument is that there is white resentment and xenophobia under the surface in America, the "deplorables."   That's why her coalition needs special help.  Hillary says the whale doesn't represent the "real" America.    Hillary says America is a country founded on equality, and condemns ethnic and religious discrimination.   The country doesn't just include native born whites.  It includes women, blacks, Hispanics, Asians and immigrants from the Middle East who are Muslim.  Indeed, she says they are the first line of defense against domestic terror.   Muslims are part of the "we."  

She says that the real America is the public one, the water, not the nativist whale under the surface.  But the whale is huge.  She knows it and Trump knows it.


Try out the podcast version of this blog by clicking on the link below.  Thad Guyer, an attorney now living in, of all places, Saigon Vietnam comments on polls and the state of the campaign.  I look at things from as close up as I can get.   Together we have some observations to share.  Check it out.

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