Trump’s popularity with his base isn’t the result of economic anxiety, as many claimed in 2016. It’s about race and demographics.

TO UNDERSTAND THE rise of Donald Trump, you don’t need to go to a diner in the Midwest or read “Hillbilly Elegy,” J.D. Vance’s memoir.

You just need to know these basic facts:

In 1980, white people accounted for about 80 percent of the U.S. population.

In 2024, white people account for about 58 percent of the U.S. population.

Trump appeals to white people gripped by demographic hysteria. Especially older white people who grew up when white people represented a much larger share of the population. They fear becoming a minority.

  • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    102·
    4 months ago

    John Brown didn’t get to kill enough slavers, that’s why we’re all here. We gave the racists a little rope, and now they’re trying to hang us with it. Been that way ever since Reconstruction ended.

    Opposition to racism must be enduring. It must be absolute. It can brook no compromise, because compromise is tacit agreement to the validity (however small or marginal) of the opposition’s point, and racism is based on an absurdity. And when a society starts validating absurdities… well, look at Trump.

    • breadsmasher@lemmy.worldEnglish
      55·
      4 months ago

      and the fact the confederacy was allowed to “live in on” in memory as heritage, and allowed statues honouring traitors to the United States

      If you allow confederate statues to honour enemies of the country, why are there no statues honouring the british red coats from the war of independence? Where are the statues honouring soviet spies executed for espionage?

      • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        44·
        4 months ago

        Constructed largely after the cowards were all dead, in the civil rights era. And yet some people still insist that it’s ‘history’ to leave them standing instead of a blatant attempt to cement the United States as a ‘White Man’s’ polity.

        Fuck them.

        If you allow confederate statues to honour enemies of the country, why are there no statues honouring the british red coats from the war of independence? Where are the statues honouring soviet spies executed for espionage?

        Let’s make some 9/11 memorials to commemorate those brave hijackers too.

        It’s fucking absurd, and while I know HOW it got started, I don’t know how it got started. You know what I mean? Like, I understand the conditions that led to the rise of Lost Causer nonsense, but I just can’t wrap my fucking head around the idea that everyone just fucking normalized it. Like, even if you are a racist (as most 19th century Americans were to at least some degree), what the fuck kind of lunatic country commemorates the ‘heroism’ of literal traitors and secessionists who killed hundreds of thousands of our countrymen?

        Sherman didn’t burn enough.

      • girlfreddy@lemmy.caOP
        7·
        4 months ago

        I mean there should at least be a statue commemorating when we future Canadians had most of DC burning, including the White House and Capitol.

        :p