The Trump social media post depicting a former president and his wife as apes has, at long last, inspired even some of his supporters to object that he has gone too far. The post was reportedly removed after 12 hours because of the push-back; some Trump supporters are going so far as to express disgust and to apologize for having supported him. Apparently, they couldn’t see through his golden sheen from the start.

But indignation at this last action alone is not enough. We must now all acknowledge that virulent racism buttresses the core of Donald Trump’s character, and this fact happens also to be foundational to his political success. That is to say, the disease of latent racism continues to hibernate deep in the blood of the American body politic; and it is actually integral to the American character. Anyone who would wish this to be not so must learn and embrace the history of American racism before a different national character can be manifested. Some diseases can be cured only after being accurately diagnosed and accepted so that intentional correctional actions can be undertaken to attain a lasting health.

I argue here that the social media post reveals not only the ugliness of American racism, but it also reveals the class warfare that depends on it. Donald Trump has always been racist, and the American people selected him two out of his three electoral attempts knowing who he is. To be fair, aspects of his appeal landed on receptive ears for reasons I speculate about below.

White Supremacy
Racism, and its political ideological expression known as White Supremacy, has been the utility tool of the ruling elite to attain and maintain power since the early days of the British occupation of North America. Disseminating and maintaining a construct of hatred between Whites and Blacks has foreclosed the possibility that economic interest-based unification of these populations would advocate for an economy that benefits everyone. This division enables oppressive class warfare, which has been waged in the shadows within our country since before its inception.

The anti-progressive income tax policies of the last four decades have produced a population that currently is economically stressed to the point that 40% of the populace would be unable to meet a $400 emergency. People are right to feel that the system is rigged against them, and Donald Trump’s promise to un-rig the system thrilled the voters who believed that it was his intention to keep such a promise. People also latched onto his promise to reveal the Epstein Files because the Epstein phenomenon so starkly illustrates the two-tiered system that we have accepted and have begun to reject. Expose those files and punish the overlords who have been fixing the system against us so that we can “return” to a culture of fairness. The income ratio between the highest- and lowest-paid within a company during the 1950s was about 40:1 compared with 10-100 times that ratio now. However, tellingly, this calculation demonstrating a relatively egalitarian 1950s society excluded the African-American population that is today much more universally accepted within the definition of “American.” Trump’s numerous efforts to erase the history of African Americans is a concerted action to undo this inconvenient reality in service of the larger project of reestablishing the socially divisive conditions that supported minority rule. White Supremacy has come to the surface at this moment in history because the income/wealth disparity has become exposed at the same time that the definition of who qualifies as a deserving American has expanded to include more multi-cultural identities than ever before.

Know Our History
Labor that was essential to the agricultural economy of the Caribbean and American South in the early days of colonization came from three sources. The first was the indigenous population that Columbus tried and failed to utilize. The cruelty inherent in plantation operations was intolerable to the natives, and they couldn’t physically survive it at the same time that their biologies struggled to fend off the diseases newly introduced from Europe. The second population was the indentured servitude of poor populations primarily coming from the borderlands between northern England and Scotland. These White folks, who suffered for centuries at the intersection of clashes between English and Scottish aristocracies, offered themselves for a fixed period of near-absolute servitude in exchange for transportation to the New World and a chance of building a new life after their seven-or-so stipulated years of service. At the conclusion of this prescribed period of service, these White people, released to their own devices with literally nothing but their own wits, generally moved westward from the coast to become their own masters on farmland wrested from the wilderness and stolen from the native populations (who nevertheless continued to live in the area until President Jackson enforced the Indian Removal Act of 1830 through the Trail of Tears walk from Georgia to present-day Oklahoma). The need to replenish a portion of the plantation work force every year constituted a continuous labor cost over and above the room-and-board maintenance of the labor population.

Many problems, costs, and inconveniences of the first two labor populations of the agricultural American South were resolved by the introduction of the third source of labor as early as 1619. The African population, having experienced a shared biological exposure with Europeans, was generally healthier and hardier than the native populations under the cruel conditions of servitude employed by the plantation owners. (Note the through-line of cruelty towards the dehumanized population that persists as a feature of the immigration policies of Trump.) Their life-long service saved the cost of replenishing the labor supply every year, and the enslavement of their progeny assured a low-cost supplementation of the work force as cultivation of more lands necessitated a growing work force. And, best of all for the elites, the distinctive physical appearance of Africans amidst the White population reduced the difficulty of dehumanizing individuals and of identifying escapees. This system allowed the plantation owners to enjoy magnificent life-styles of opulence that (by some contemporary accounts) exceeded that of European royalty.

The poor White populations could at least feel secure that they were not N*****s. Even after Emancipation, their participation in enforcing—through the public spectacle of lynchings, if necessary—the social imperative to keep the underclass Blacks in their “proper” place lifted their sense of social standing at the same time that they struggled economically. And, critically, White Supremacist ideology maintained their support for the ruling elites despite the policies that operated against their own economic interests.

Egalitarian Sentiments in a Healthy Culture
Sixty-some years have passed since the Civil Rights Movement, and new generations of Americans have come into existence without this strong and warped sense of duty to enforce a divisive social order. This presents the real possibility of a unified opposition, based on economic interest, against those who have been waging class warfare against the rest of us. Free and fair elections conducted in a social environment absent deep divisions of hatred will inevitably lead to a political environment where oligarchy cannot exist. That is why it is so important to the elite to re-establish the dominance of the White Supremacy ideology liberated from any recognition of the contributions of Black Americans and, simultaneously, to eliminate the institutions of free and fair elections.

Achieving a lasting health in the American body politic means more fully realizing the multi-cultural, egalitarian democracy that we have been staggering towards throughout the last quarter millennium.

In order to succeed in achieving this health, we must do more than resist Trump’s malignant vandalism to “just get through” until Democrats can win back the White House and set things back as they were pre-Trump. He exposed that system as corrupt and we as a society are recoiling from it; we cannot return to it. Even as Trump continues to push the corruption as far as he can—to squeeze that last bit of toothpaste out of the tube—we must actively propose a vision of America that re-imagines the American Experiment with a new social contract; a vision that provides a new American identity that features transparent governance that pays more than lip service to the idea of equality and actually operates for the benefit of all. This vision must include a place for an elite class—we need superstars to inspire us, and those who are gifted at generating wealth should be rewarded for doing so, but it is not socially beneficial if they alone reap the harvests at the expense of everybody else. Today’s elites surely understand that even they cannot long live a secure life under authoritarianism.

In regard to the age of dictatorial fascists, it is said—both—that FDR saved capitalism from the capitalists, and that FDR was America’s dictator for the time (more than twelve years in office and until his death). He successfully led us through the last transition to set the American agenda for the cycle of history that has just come to a close. We must now guide ourselves through the current transition to set the American agenda for the coming cycle. Many were drawn to the strong-man allure of Donald Trump to be the leader for the time. But it should now be clear that he is only fools-gold.

What will the new agenda be? and who will we choose to lead us to it?