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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"An insurrection of upper-middle class white people...ready to die for the cause of white privilege"
An insurrection of upper-middle class white people
They flew from their affluent suburbs to the U.S. Capitol, ready to die for the cause of white privilege
The stunning pro-President-Trump insurrection that occurred at the U.S. Capitol less than a week ago must have been a carnival for ones olfactory bulb, as the stinging aroma of tear gas blended with the pungent odors of the occasional joint, or maybe the piles of dung that some of the cruder mob members left in the hallways once graced by icons like Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and LBJ. The only thing that wasnt in the air on Wednesday was the smell of what so many have falsely tied to Trumps authoritarian movement any whiff of economic anxiety.
When fascism finally came to America in the form of an attempted coup to halt our presidential election, it came from lush-green suburbs all across this land, flying business class on Delta or United and staying in four-star hotels with three-martini lobby bars the better to keep warm after a long day of taking selfies with friendly cops or pummeling the unfriendly ones, chanting Hang Mike Pence! and generally standing athwart democracy yelling Halt!
...
Yes, many of the 74 million citizens who voted for the guy who then incited an attempted coup do fit the stereotype of struggling or laid-off blue-collar worker in a rusted-out rural community. But those folks arent the ones who can take a Wednesday off and fly hundreds of miles, let alone plunk down hundreds of dollars, to get to the nations hub. While the Capitol mob was bulked up with other Trumpists including an alarming number of off-duty police officers, as well as some neo-Nazi or KKK types whove been around forever it was the 401(k) crowd that formed the front line of Americas first real putsch.
If that surprises you, then you werent really paying attention. For the last four years, political scientists have been trying to wrap their brains around Trumps shocking 2016 victory in the Electoral College while trying to tell us that the 45th presidents true base is a lot of things but its not poor. In fact, polling guru Nate Silver noted during 2016?s primaries that the average Trump voter had a median household income of $72,000, which was both higher than the national average and also higher than the numbers that year for supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
...
The main reason that so many reasonably well-off folks tried to shut down American democracy wasnt because they feared losing their paycheck, but because they feared losing their white privilege. Donald Trump had promised that I alone can fix it that hed protect them from a society where Black and brown essential workers could expect help from their government during a pandemic or ask the police to stop killing them, a world that where just being white no longer guaranteed the status they were promised as kids. They truly believed that Biden, Kamala Harris, and the 82 million were going to end their white power, and they saw Jan. 6 as their last chance to save it. The Capitol still stands, but the rest of us are going to be spending decades cleaning up their mess.
https://www.inquirer.com/columnists/attytood/capitol-breach-trump-insurrection-impeachment-white-privilege-20210112.html
They flew from their affluent suburbs to the U.S. Capitol, ready to die for the cause of white privilege
The stunning pro-President-Trump insurrection that occurred at the U.S. Capitol less than a week ago must have been a carnival for ones olfactory bulb, as the stinging aroma of tear gas blended with the pungent odors of the occasional joint, or maybe the piles of dung that some of the cruder mob members left in the hallways once graced by icons like Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and LBJ. The only thing that wasnt in the air on Wednesday was the smell of what so many have falsely tied to Trumps authoritarian movement any whiff of economic anxiety.
When fascism finally came to America in the form of an attempted coup to halt our presidential election, it came from lush-green suburbs all across this land, flying business class on Delta or United and staying in four-star hotels with three-martini lobby bars the better to keep warm after a long day of taking selfies with friendly cops or pummeling the unfriendly ones, chanting Hang Mike Pence! and generally standing athwart democracy yelling Halt!
...
Yes, many of the 74 million citizens who voted for the guy who then incited an attempted coup do fit the stereotype of struggling or laid-off blue-collar worker in a rusted-out rural community. But those folks arent the ones who can take a Wednesday off and fly hundreds of miles, let alone plunk down hundreds of dollars, to get to the nations hub. While the Capitol mob was bulked up with other Trumpists including an alarming number of off-duty police officers, as well as some neo-Nazi or KKK types whove been around forever it was the 401(k) crowd that formed the front line of Americas first real putsch.
If that surprises you, then you werent really paying attention. For the last four years, political scientists have been trying to wrap their brains around Trumps shocking 2016 victory in the Electoral College while trying to tell us that the 45th presidents true base is a lot of things but its not poor. In fact, polling guru Nate Silver noted during 2016?s primaries that the average Trump voter had a median household income of $72,000, which was both higher than the national average and also higher than the numbers that year for supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
...
The main reason that so many reasonably well-off folks tried to shut down American democracy wasnt because they feared losing their paycheck, but because they feared losing their white privilege. Donald Trump had promised that I alone can fix it that hed protect them from a society where Black and brown essential workers could expect help from their government during a pandemic or ask the police to stop killing them, a world that where just being white no longer guaranteed the status they were promised as kids. They truly believed that Biden, Kamala Harris, and the 82 million were going to end their white power, and they saw Jan. 6 as their last chance to save it. The Capitol still stands, but the rest of us are going to be spending decades cleaning up their mess.
https://www.inquirer.com/columnists/attytood/capitol-breach-trump-insurrection-impeachment-white-privilege-20210112.html
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"An insurrection of upper-middle class white people...ready to die for the cause of white privilege" (Original Post)
StarfishSaver
Jan 2021
OP
Wounded Bear
(58,704 posts)1. The economy was doing pretty well when Trump was elected...
It was always about white supremacy protecting its privileges.
dalton99a
(81,570 posts)2. Kick
marmar
(77,090 posts)3. The elephant that's been in the room for 400 years.
comradebillyboy
(10,174 posts)4. So it wasn't economic anxiety that drew them to Trump?
Who could have guessed?
Irish_Dem
(47,370 posts)5. The bottom line is of course racism.
They really hated the BLM protests.
And they were not going to stand for it.