Trump: White Christians are Under Attack.

Donald Trump calls for Samantha Bee to be Fired.

Trump is very good at stoking the culture wars.  He urges his base to resent liberal hypocrisy. There is nothing wrong with you, he tells his base. The problem is those hypocrites.

Roseanne Barr crossed a line. She said a black woman was the child of an ape. She got fired.

Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a "feckless c**t." That crossed a line. It handed her political opposition a weapon. 

This is perfect for Trump, Fox News, talk radio, and the political forces that got Donald Trump elected. Trump isn't defending the ideal of respectful talk of women. Trump is calling out liberal hypocrisy, rubbing the noses of Democrats and liberals in their one-sided outrage over racism, misogyny, xenophobia. It gives white Americans who resent demographic changes and the politics of inclusion and diversity another shining example of why they hate Democrats and liberals.  

Rosanne Barr gets fired. Samantha Bee doesn't.

Trump says, see how unfair the left is? 

The incident fits the Trump narrative perfectly. Trump says the minority of cultural and ethnic outsiders--the coastal elites, the immigrants, the people of color, the universities--disrespect us and shame us for being who we are. We are the oppressed majority of white Christian regular people in "flyover country."  The self righteous bullies act like there is something wrong with us and our values, and they scold us and shame us and take away "our" show, Roseanne.  Meanwhile they get to say and do what they want. The groups with privilege are those minority of people claiming to be the historic victims of oppression when in actuality we are the victims. Trump says it is not too late to use the power of the ballot box for the majority to take the country back.

Winning.

This is a sad day for Democrats. They gave Trump a winning point to hammer on.

Thad Guyer looks at American politics and culture from Vietnam, where he continues his law practice representing whistleblower employees. He wrote the Guest Post below, along with the comment that if the left doesn't force the firing of Samantha Bee over her remark he thought Democrats may not recover politically.

Guest Post by Thad Guyer

"Trump warns of Apartheid--Against America's White Majority"

Thad Guyer

Donald Trump is sounding a cultural battle cry:  Minorities, aided by the Democratic Party, corrupt media and pandering Hollywood narcissists, intend to take your stuff, replace your culture, displace your kids’ from the best colleges and jobs, and obliterate your religion. Trump warns that minorities are building an apartheid against America’s majority white population.  

Apartheid, unlike classic minority oppression, is an authoritarian political culture in which the minority actually represses the majority by stripping them of their legal rights and marginalizing their cultural and religious institutions.  The minority “Afrikaners” repressing the black majority in South Africa; the minority Sunni Ba'athists dominating the majority Shiites in Iraq; and now according to Trump, illegal immigrants and ethnic minorities trying to repress white Americans.

Trump surrogates proclaim that America’s surging ethnic and racial minorities are seeking to delegitimize free speech as a tool of “white privilege” and “hate speech”, and to operate social media lynch mobs to silence the only white political and cultural leaders who can beat back the ransacking of a nation.  Trump is calmly but passionately warning white voters that if the ethnic mob can topple a white president, fortified by corrupt media and deep state prosecutors, well then the 70% white population is surely at risk.  

Our culture wars rage 24/7, sensationalized tweets and video clips of racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia. It’s accusations, apologies, followed by even more egregious transgressions of civilized norms.  Trump watches with the acuity of a predator. Most people get better at things with experience.  Some get shockingly better. Trump pulls the strings of the presidency not so much in Congress as in our cultural battlefields. He never loses his temper.  He seamlessly conjoins culture with politics, media with social values, and Democrats with urban upheaval and uncontrolled borders. His most powerful initiatives aren’t governmental, they’re cultural. He creates the illusion that his goal is legislative immigration reform, when in fact it’s galvanizing white fear of foreign invasion.  He’s not really seeking legislation to protect religious freedom, he’s telling Christians they must fears Democrats as repressors of Judeo-Christian ideology. 

Trump’s message is reinforced by nonstop rage over racism and sexism, over the hypocrisy of who gets fired for “hate speech”.  Add to this whites being publicly confronted for “gentrifying” minority neighborhoods, tech workplaces being denounced as white male bastions, and “white privilege” insults being fashionable. Trump portrays whites as victims of alien cultures, soon to be victims of political apartheid.       He warns that Democrats in the November midterms will advance the apartheid.  He sees white anxiety bubbling just below the surface. His popularity grows as voters lie to pollsters, as Democrats plummet in the generic preference polling, as our culture wars get ever more vicious.  

Trump is getting very good at what he does. Daily video clips of cultural convulsions are fueling white anxiety far beyond his entrenched base.  But Trump isn’t just trying to hold on to that base.  He’s expanding it.  And so far Democrats are too splintered to put up a credible defense, and too consumed with progressive vs. establishment civil war to lead.