We're In American Idiocracy Thanks to White Rage

America can't have nice things, including a normal "Memorial Day" greeting, because of the country's inability to confront and uproot white rage and grievance that has turned us into an Idiocracy.

Normal human Presidents of the United States of America welcome Memorial Day by acknowledging the sacrifice and courage of our troops who died defending our country. However, corrupt, white supremacist vulgarians like Donald Trump can’t even slither over that low bar.

This is the “King,” “Daddy,” and greatest President of all time to about a third of Americans who feel America is great again as planes are dropping from the sky, measles are skyrocketing, the stock market is fluctuating, prices of groceries are rising, and our allies are abandoning us.

White supremacy needs a delusional reality because uncomfortable facts and science deprive them of their narrative of perpetual victimhood and a romanticized nostalgia for a past that never existed. This is why Republicans are eliminating DEI programs, attacking universities, banning books, kidnapping students, and investing millions in “alternative facts” spouted by their right-wing propaganda outlets.

Instead of confronting America’s brutal history of racism and greed, our twin sins, a small majority in this country decided to elect a bullshit artist who sold them comforting lies and gave them manufactured enemies. In 2024, the pre-eminent villain was transgender people, and in the past, and even now, it has been Muslims, Japanese Americans, and Mexicans.

But America’s perpetual bogeyman remains the Black man, the embodiment of all this country’s sick and sordid, racialized fears, paranoia, lusts, and loathing. Trump was only able to rise to power due to the election of Barack Hussein Obama, who had to be near perfect and always modulate his temper, while Trump continues to be rewarded for being a boorish slob and “keeping it real.” It was Trump who championed the racist, Islamophobic, and humiliating birther conspiracy that forced President Obama to produce his birth certificate. It was “cultural anxiety,” not economic anxiety, that remains the most consistent bellwether for voters who switched from Obama to Trump. These people feel they were being “replaced” and left behind due to America temporarily flirting with equity and fairness.

The whitelash returned in the past five years following the murder of George Floyd, who was choked for nine minutes by Officer Derek Chauvin. The horrific video of the murder went viral, inspiring the largest mass protests in U.S. history. American corporations performatively committed to implementing DEI measures and uplifting women and people of color. Democrats finally embraced their base instead of relegating them to the sidelines. They even mentioned racism and white supremacy ahead of the 2020 Presidential elections. This, in part, helped galvanize a major victory for Dems in 2020, until, of course, the inevitable whitelash came back and tried to chokehold this country back to the 19th century.

Fast forward five years, Donald Trump is once again President, corporations are willingly ditching DEI initiatives, billionaires and the elite are normalizing and profiting off of fascism, media institutions are sanewashing MAGA’s racism and hate, and Democrats are now attacking “woke” and “troubling words” and spending millions of dollars trying to find the “liberal” Joe Rogan and learning how to speak to men.

As far as George Floyd is concerned, he is actively being criminalized and dehumanized in death by Laura Loomer, Trump’s advisor, and other MAGA foot soldiers, such as The Daily Wire, that are advocating for Officer Chauvin’s pardon. This should shock but not surprise, considering The Daily Wire just helped Shiloh Hendrix raise over $750K for calling a 5-year-old Black kid the N-word. Last week, Trump repeated the racist “white genocide” lie in a meeting with South African President Ramaphosa to justify welcoming 59 white, South African “refugees” as his Administration continued to kidnap and deport brown people. Meanwhile, Republicans in the House have just passed the largest wealth transfer, or theft, in modern history and have voted to give the richest people tax cuts at the expense of their own voters’ Medicaid, health care, and food supplements.

White supremacy has always been dumb and self-destructive, but then again, this is America. The question remains: will it change? Will people finally wake up and fight back? Will Democrats evolve or adapt, or continue hemorrhaging voters to MAGA and Trump’s hypocritical, yet effective, messaging campaign that is fueled by cruelty and grievance?

Don’t hold your breath.

In this Memorial Day episode of Democracy-ish, two children of immigrants who don’t take breaks unpack these issues and connect the dots. Give us a listen.