Hurting The Wrong People? Trumpsters Don't Want To Be Collateral Damage

A percentage (not all) of Trump supporters seem to like him because his
presidency his hurting (nonwhite) people they don't like
and that makes these supports happy.

A quote from a New York Times article last week from a woman who has been affected by the government shutdown has hit a lot of nerves, including my own.

The Florida Panhandle is pretty conservative. Trump territory. The Times interviewed a woman named Crystal Minton, a secretary at a local federal prison.

She's not happy about the pain caused by the government shutdown, as she is going without a paycheck for the duration. 

This is what she told the Times, regarding Trump: "I voted for him and he's the one who's doing this....I thought he was going to do good things. He's not hurting the people he needs to be hurting."

Got that?

I can't paint all Trump voters with the same brush. Not all are racist. Not all are hurtful. But this quote sums up why I'm disgusted by a fair number of Trump supporters.

A lot of them think the whole point of his presidency is to hurt people. Trump's not good at many things, but he's good at hurting people, or at least trying to. Notice how Minton regards hurting people as "good things."

Of course, the people Minton thinks Trump ought to be hurting are not white people like her. Nope,

Or as Vox puts it:

"Making America great again, in her mind, involves inflicting pain....This is what makes Trumpism work. This is the dark heart of our political movement. Even people who are tremendously vulnerable themselves, like Crystal Minton, support Trump because of his capacity to inflict pain on others they detest."

Perhaps Adam Serwer, writing in The Atlantic, put it even more succinctly, describing Trumpsters' belief that their and America's birthright is straight, white Christian men:

"(Trumps) only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those would steal their birthright. The president's ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he  makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them."

Trump is a grifter, and he'll never hesitate to hurt anyone if it's expedient to him. Still, I have a feeling that Minton, the woman who said Trump is hurting "the wrong people" will ultimately stick by the president.

For now at least, the white, straight, cruel folks feel emboldened. Rep. Steven King of Iowa touts white supremacy and pretty much gets away with it, even with a backlash against him.

YouTube is now full of videos showing people being unabashedly racist toward blacks who have the gall to walk into their own apartment building, have a barbecue, go swimming at the neighborhood pool, park their car, or show up for work.

True. there's a backlash against the racist idiots in these videos, but still, they persist.

It's unclear whether the hate wing of the Trump crowd will go away, or get worse, or just be the unfortunately background noise of American life and politics.

I do believe this old cliche is true: "Hate destroys the vessel that carries it."

Those who embrace the hateful aspects of Trump do so at their own peril. There will be karma.  Maybe that karma has already started.