Return of Kool-Aid Drinkers

Not since Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple have we witnessed such a mass consumption of Kool-Aid. The red, the blue, the right, the left, the old, the young, the first-timers and the old-timers — all voted for Donald Trump.

They obviously believed every word he uttered, every promise he made. This time Trump didn’t have to make any cryptic phone calls to a Secretary of State to solicit any  “missing” votes. This time his victory was decisive.

Many of us were way off base. We saw that Vice President Kamala Harris supporters crossed ethnic, age, sex and political persuasion lines. We thought, at the very least, Harris would win the presidential election by the skin of her teeth. That was not to be.

It’s not unusual for voters to publicly support one candidate, then vote for the other guy once they get inside the voting booth. While we were wondering who would break ranks and vote for Harris, we should have been wondering just the opposite. A great number of citizens who used to support Democrats, have effortlessly sent Trump back to the White House.

We can only hope that Trump will do all the things for those voters, that they were so certain Harris would not do.

One thing the Trump win did was make racism and overt racist behavior acceptable. That’s why it was difficult to understand why so many blacks and browns  — especially black and brown men — discounted Maya Angelou’s observation: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

In celebration of Trump’s win, Auburn University students rolled the trees at Toomer’s corner, a practice that follows Auburn athletic victories and since at least 1988 for Republican and Democratic presidents elect, according to the  Associated Press.

Maybe, as someone suggested, Auburn students were celebrating the prospect of lower prices, but not those of us who still remember Auburn’s Old South Parade.

Meanwhile on campuses across the country black students received messages advising them of when and where they could meet their transportation to the fields where they were to pick cotton, or to the houses where they could cook, clean and take care of the children. There was no mention, that I heard about, of the women tending to “Massa’s” requests.

Yes, a vote for Trump was, in fact, a vote for white supremacy.

White nationalist hate groups in this country increased 55 percent throughout the Trump era, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)  reported and a “surging” racist movement continues to be driven by “a deep fear of demographic change.”

“Nationally, there were 155 such groups counted last year, and they were present in most states,” SPLC reported. “These groups were counted separately from Ku Klux Klan groups, racist skinheads, Christian identity groups, and neo-Confederate groups, all of which also express some version of white supremacist beliefs.”

When Donald Trump’s administration left office in 2020, two-thirds of surveyed Americans agreed that Trump had increased racial tensions in the United States,” the American Civil Liberties Union reported. “The backdrop for that widespread sentiment was the Trump administration’s sustained assault on political, civic and legal efforts to promote racial justice; Trump’s consistent use of inflammatory racist rhetoric; and his transparent pursuit of a white supremacist agenda rooted in racial grievance.”

The ACLU said it would resist a second Trump administration’s retreat from civil rights enforcement and attacks on efforts to promote racial justice with litigation and legislative and policy advocacy in progressive states and localities. 

“A second Trump administration would undoubtedly pose sobering and multifaceted legal threats to efforts to promote racial equality,” the ACLU reported. However, many components of Trump’s radical “anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)” agenda, rooted in racial grievance rather than fact, cannot be achieved without violating the Constitution and federal laws. As was the case in the prior Trump administration, litigation and regulatory advocacy will be indispensable for both stymying these threats and advancing an affirmative vision of racial justice. …

“…Even though most of the country supports efforts to address racial inequality, Trump promises to eradicate many of those efforts and thereby worsen racial disparities. To understand the threat posed by a second Trump administration — and plan our response — we examined three strategies Trump will continue to deploy as president to upend and reverse course on racial equality:

1. Censoring academic discussions of ace and sex-based discrimination
2. Abandoning civil rights enforcement on behalf of historically marginalized groups
3. Marshalling federal power to ramp up right-wing attacks on equal opportunity initiatives.”

The ACLU also said it outlined strategies and tactics to fight against such policies and mitigate their harm.