Donald Trump's reign of error is finally over!
He was definitely the worst person to become US president in my lifetime.
But if anything good came out of it, it woke me up from the naive optimism about progress, especially when it comes to race relations.
Being that I was born in 1980, the idea of segregated water fountains was always ancient history to me.
I grew up in integrated neighborhoods and had friends of different ancestries.
Yes, I did face some stereotyping growing up in Hawaii with Latin-American ancestry, as I noted in this classic article I wrote after Rod Tam said the "wetback" slur at a city council meeting back in 2008. http://archives.starbulletin.com/2008/06/10/editorial/commentary2.html
(note: Rod Tam lost 2 elections since then. He passed away in 2019)
But still, I grew up in a mostly integrated environment with friends of various ancestries.
So I assumed that from here on forward, no person in my lifetime could be elected president by yelling out racist stereotypes.
Yes, I grew up knowing that there was still the KKK and the neo-Nazis in existence in the continental US. I grew up watching the 1992 LA Riots go on, and rappers yelling "F--- the Police" due to the abusive, racist behavior of some cops.
But even though 2pac said "America is not ready for a black president" (and it didn't happen in his lifetime), I already assumed it was going to happen in my lifetime before I even heard the name Barack Obama. Though I thought the first black president would be someone with military experience, someone like Collin Powell.
In 2000, my optimism was expanded when then-presidential candidate George W Bush expressed support for a more lenient immigration policy while anti-immigration fanatic Pat Buchanan left the Republican Party. I thought that from that point on, the Republicans have finally ditched the anti-immigration rhetoric that angered Latino voters, especially in California.
When I was at the University of Hawaii in the early 2000's, I wrote an opinion article for the campus newspaper (Ka Leo O Hawaii) expressing that America despite its flaws, didn't fit the gloom & doom narrative of the Radical Left.
http://www.manoanow.org/u-s-not-best-but-better/article_6d472f49-b449-5e1a-b358-2c71a45553f2.html
My writings were partly inspired by Larry Elder (aka the Sage of South Central). However, that article of mine was met by fierce resistance by a person from Atlanta (probably the richest black-majority city on Earth) who dared me to visit his hometown's housing projects, nevermind that I too was from a public housing project where I was a minority.
http://www.manoanow.org/letters-to-the-editor-11-05-01/article_7a0c9675-6b90-5f65-b70d-d694fcc92c02.html
I felt vindicated when Hawaii-born Barack Obama was elected to be the USA's first black president in 2008.
Yes, I knew that he had to be protected by the Secret Service earlier than most presidential candidates due to threats from white supremacists. But he won the election, not them. That means he was more popular than they were.
Despite everyone's fear (including mine), Obama survived his entire 2 terms without an assassination attempt.
So when Donald Trump opened his campaign with statements about Mexican immigrants being "rapists", "bringing crime & drugs", yes I was offended, not only because I have Mexican ancestry, but also any racial stereotype is offensive. But even then, I thought he wasn't really going to win. I mean, why would a country that recently elected an African-American president all of a sudden, vote for a racist white president?
I can't be the only one with such naive optimism. Hillary Clinton's campaign just expected everyone to vote for her just because she's not Trump. Her campaign didn't even put much of an effort in several swing states that have been voting Democrat since her husband's 1st campaign in 1992.
Trump almost lost momentum in the final month of the campaign when it was revealed that he bragged about grabbing women by their vaginas. That should've offended any decent person. However, rapists and their sympathizers vote too!
What the 2016 campaign taught me was that you just can't rely on people being offended by racism or misogyny. Much of Trump's support came from either racists, sexists, or people who may not be racist/sexist but didn't have an instant gag reflex towards racist or sexist remarks. Apparently, even people of non-European ancestries don't always have an instant gag reflex towards racist remarks about themselves. As rapper 50 Cent said, he didn't care if Trump doesn't like black people, he'll support him as long as he lowers his taxes.
Trump's victory in 2016 basically blasted my optimism about America into pieces. It was the final straw that finally made me declare that Hawaii should be independent from the USA.
(my blog posts declaring my support for an independent Hawaii)
https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2016/11/its-time-for-hawaii-to-declare.html
https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-petition-to-make-hawaii-independent.html
https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2016/12/my-letter-to-newspaper-hawaii.html
And here's a 2018 blog post titled
"personal evolution on my thoughts on US foreign policy, patriotism, imperialism and Hawaii independence"
https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2018/05/personal-evolution-on-my-thoughts-on-us.html
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Trump wasn't kidding around when he openly appealed to white supremacists in his campaign. He gave them what they wanted when he banned migration from several Muslim majority countries, as well as forced family separation among detained undocumented immigrants from Latin America.
That should've been enough to offend all decent people.
But the sad thing about all that is that Trump continued to grow his legion of followers into the largest cult of personality in American history.
In 2020, the Democrats still weren't even that organized, still put up a lackluster campaign, and weren't able to respond effectively to Trump's scare-mongering propaganda about the riots that occurred after the police murder of George Floyd. Trump was also able to scare Cuban & Venezuelan refugees (and their descendants) in Florida about the Democrats being "socialists".
But the Democrats got lucky that Trump totally mismanaged the coronavirus crisis and got "The Rona" himself in the final month of the campaign. That was what ended Trump's momentum. And to be fair, Stacey Abrams had an effective strategy to increase African-Americans voter turnout in Georgia, turning a longtime Republican state into the Democrat column.
Now that Joe Biden is president, I do have some optimism about America going in the right direction. He is already working on a more lenient immigration policy. He is taking the coronavirus crisis seriously. And more importantly, despite Biden's goofy moments, he is obviously a more mature leader than Trump.
But with the experience of 2016-2020, my optimism is now less naive.
There is always the possibility of a Trump-like politician winning again, especially if the Democrats take the 2020 victory for granted.
The Trump voters are still around, still waiting for the next politician who makes them feel comfortable about their racism & sexism. And even some people with non-European ancestries are so willing to "own da libs" that they're willing to side with those who are racist towards them.
I still believe Hawaii can benefit from being independent from the USA. Why should we be so dependent on the mercy of swing voters who live thousands of miles away?
But even if Hawaii traditionally vote Democrat, there's still a group of Trump supporters here. They as a group have gotten quieter when it was revealed a silent majority voted against their cult leader. But those people are still a problem as they have shown to not have a gag-reflex towards racism or misogyny. Some are even non-Europeans who happen to be racist towards other non-Europeans (for example, some Polynesians & Asians are racists towards Micronesians). Hawaii has to deal with its own xenophobic deplorables and we can't just only blame the continental US for their existence here.
I don't want to dabble too much into pessimism, but we can't let naive optimism make us too lazy in working for a less prejudiced society.
