+Text updated. Sources added at end. First published Aug. 9, 10:05 pm
I have always thought that 9/11 changed the soul of America, I still more believe that than not, from the pursuit of happiness, optimistic and extroverted to, I don't know, America First, fearful and defensive. But 9/11 was always contra to Barack Obama's election and reelection and seemed to me too attenuated to explain the reactionary forces of Trump. So, I have been thinking about what could be the beginning of Trump since the Catastrophe of 11/8/2016.
This afternoon, I remembered a couple of things that make me now think that 2008 was the beginning of Trump. That year contained what I now see as the proximate causes.
One of those remembered things was Trump's astonishing crowds in 2015 and 2016. I wrote several posts those years titled identically, "The Amazing Mr. Trump." They took everyone by surprise, me included. It wasn't just celebrity, hell, how many celebrity-politicians have we had? Some go all the way (Reagan, Schwarzenegger), some flicker and die (Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Shirley Temple Black, Fred Thompson). Trump's crowds were reverential, they seemed to see him as their savior.
Savior from what? That was the second thing I remembered, and only vaguely. I remembered that there was some projection that the white-only population of the U.S. would dip below 50% for the first time in, I thought, 2035. I couldn't recall if I read about that during President Obama's first or second term, so I looked that up. It was a census report and the white-out date was 2042. I remembered just a feeling from reading that the first time. I felt a little bad. "Geez, the country is really changing fast". It was a racial feeling, I'm not proud of it, it was my knee-jerk reaction, it didn't stick around, and I didn't pay the report any further mind. I have a vague recollection of others alarmist commentary on it in the press but I didn't pay much attention.
The initial census projection was in 2008 (August 14). Whites would lose their majority-minority status in 2042, not 2035 as I had misremembered. I identify that as the second of the two proximate causes for Trump.
The first proximate cause of Trump were birther emails that some rogue Hillary Clinton supporters sent out in the spring of 2008 on Obama.
The census projection caused white fright. Obama's foreign-sounding name and black skin, and the census, were the oxygen that Trump needed, and to which he took a match. He became by far the best-known champion of the birther smear and his racist anti-immigration platform--his biggest message when he rode down the golden escalator--landed him in the White House.
Those two events in 2008 explain (to my satisfaction) Trump where 9/11 did not. The 2008 projection was too new to really sink in and came too late to affect that year's election. I think the 2014 confirmatory projection got more attention (because of Obama and because of the media repetition of the original report for 6 years.)). However that may be, of far more importance is that no candidate in 2008 and 2012 fed that oxygen to the white population--who were gasping for it. That is, no candidate was speaking the language of fright to white voters. No candidate made Obama's birth an issue until the rogue HRC email and of course she said it was a non-issue. John McCain had an evanescent birth issue himself (He was born in the Canal Zone), but both HRC and Obama vouched for him at the beginning of the campaign season, and McCain vouched for Obama in one of his own campaign events (which I also remember). A woman said she was "afraid" because Obama was an "Arab" and McCain took the mic back and said no, he's not Arab and "you don't have to be afraid of him as president."
Romney flat out said that Obama "was born in the United States. Period." So neither general election opponent of Obama mentioned the birther libel except to dismiss it as nonsense, and neither made racial appeals to whites to keep Barack Hussein Obama out of the White House. Neither McCain nor Romney played into the racist, anti-immigration sentiments that were bubbling (and which have always bubbled) just beneath the surface in the American electorate.
Trump however spoke that language directly and repetitively, hoo doggie!, and whites flocked to him literally to save them and the country from "Arabs", Muslims, and Africans. There was fear. There was also racial pride. I remember my-brother-the-Klansman emailing me that 2016 would be the last election that a white man could win and he was going to vote for the fellow Klansman. But in 2008 and 2012 no declared candidate and neither GOP nominee spoke to those fears.
Trump though never let up on the birther libel* and hammered, hammered, hammered racist, anti-immigration. "The Great Replacement Theory" was birthed with them.
Anyway, that's my new explanation and I'm sticking to it. Whether brainstorm or brain fart, this came to me out of nowhere# at about 2 pm today and I spent the next several hours looking into it. Some sources used (including those cited above):
"Declining Influence of White Christianity" USNews 2016
Multiculturism Rattles Residents" McPaper 2014
"More Ethnic Babies Than White" Time 2012
"Whites to Lose Majority" WSJ 2008
"Growing Diversity" Annals AAPSS 2018
"Perceived Status Threat From the Racial Demographic Shift Affects White Americans'
Political Ideology" Association for Psychological Science 2013
"New Face of America" NYT 2013
"More Whites Dying Than Being Born" WSJ 2013
"Minorities May Be Majority in Generation" NYT 2008
"Obama and Minority Majority" IPS 2008
*In 2012 he tweeted, external that he had an "extremely credible source" who told him the birth certificate was a fraud.
In 2013 he raised, external suspicion about the death of a Hawaiian health official who verified copies of Mr Obama's "birth certificate".
In 2014 he asked, external hackers to access Mr Obama's college records and check his "place of birth".
As recently as this month [September, 2016], Mr Trump did not back away from his past support of the "birther" cause.
#Actually, I remember one prompt. I am re-reading William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which I first read in 2005. A post I wrote then was, "The Beginning of Hitler". Hence the title of this post.
