I don't think the end is in sight. [I]The Atlantic[I] published an article titled
A Reformed White Nationalist Says the Worst Is Yet to Come. I read part of the article and I agree with what I read. The white nationalist movement has been growing stronger for many years, and it's not a problem just because of Trump.
I grew up in the South, where racism was always blatant and open. Even today there are clear signs of division along ethnic lines in Georgia. It's no accident that when the Democratic Party took up the cause of Civil Rights in the 1960s the racists jumped from that party to the Republican Party, which has become the party of white nationalism in all but name and slogan.
I know many Republicans. About half my friends are conservative voters and even Trump supporters. They don't see themselves as racists. They don't see themselves as supporting a racist system.
What galvanized a lot of this activity - in my opinion - was the election of Barack Obama. When conservatives try to articulate what they hate about Obama's administration it comes down to vague and ambiguous things like "Obamacare". The mandate did hurt a lot of small business owners. I get that they hated Obamacare for that. I hated the mandate but not the rest of the law. And it was such an unnecessary part of the package because the mandate only raised about 1% of the revenue needed for subsidies. The rest of it came right out of taxpayers' pockets. And yet when you listen to conservatives complain about Obamacare, they almost never (in MY experience) talk about the fact that the program was mostly paid for by taxes. It's a pretty cheap program compared to most big government spending plans.
When people complain about Obamacare costing nearly $2 trillion, they often cite a 10-year cost estimate as if that is the annual cost. See
this article for an unbiased breakdown of costs and revenues.
Obamacare is far from perfect but it's a better health plan than any Republican has ever proposed.
Meanwhile, many conservatives resent the fact that Trump is being blamed for creating programs that came into existence under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, like the "tent cities" used to house illegal immigrants near the borders and some strict anti-immigrant laws. But things were different under those administrations and they did not pervert the laws to be cruel tools of oppression and racism.
Obama's foreign policy was about as bad as Trump's. Neither man understands what the consequences of his decisions will be. Obama kept announcing we would draw down troops in Afghanistan and then hold out hope the Taliban would come to the negotiating table. The Taliban saw that as a victory for their own strategy. And now Trump is trying to negotiate a withdrawal with the Taliban and they again feel they hold the dominant position. But their foreign policy mistakes range all over the map and include both economic and military improvisations that are bad.
When white people complain about Obama, I feel they are complaining about "a black President". They are not complaining about someone whose policies essentially hurt them. If anything, Obama did everything necessary to rebuild the American economy after the Great Recession - but government intervention can only go so far. Trump claims his economy is better than Obama's and
now we know the Trump economy isn't doing any better than the Obama economy would have.
Maybe things WOULD be much better without Trump's trade wars and anti-science policies. He's trying to save the coal industry at the expense of the much larger alternative energy industries. His policies only hurt the people who support him, both in their jobs and their investments. And yet they stick to his flag with a fierce loyalty and deny the overt racism his government has instituted and fostered across the country.
I don't think there is any hope of America improving under another 4 years of Trump but electing anyone else won't necessarily change anything, either. One man did not do this to our country. Whole generations of closet racists did this in Washington and in state governments across the nation. Even many local communities have enacted racist policies.
This country lacks the political will to do something about the problem because so much of its divided political will is dedicated to making the problem worse.