chapter sixbeyond evil, stupid, and crazy: systems of privilege and oppression
“Just when you think you've seen and heard it all from Donald Trump, he sinks to a new low that leaves you speechless and wondering: Is he crazy, is he evil, is he maniacally committed to unwinding every good thing Barack Obama did, or is he just plain stupid?”
—Thomas Friedman
No doubt, many of the readers of this book would like nothing better than to relegate Donald Trump to the “dustbin of history.” So would the two of us, but Trump, or at least the system that produced him, is still very much with us. We do not need to understand Trump the man, but we do need to grapple with Trump the phenomenon.
Many of us have struggled with a series of basically unanswerable Trump‐related questions since before he was elected: How on earth can people continue to support this corrupt, incompetent, racist, misogynist, homophobic narcissist? How has he managed to dominate so much of our national and international dialogue and consciousness? What can his supporters be thinking (especially in view of his chaotic and lethal response to COVID‐19 and his efforts to overthrow American democracy)?
To get our hands around the Trump phenomenon and by extension around the hold that White racism continues to have, we have to move beyond the easy answers (the “crazy, stupid, and evil” ones) and look at the nature of the systems that gave rise to Trump and perpetuate racism.
Many of these questions, or at least the underlying ...
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