Waiting for Trump
William Barr isn't fooling anyone; he's right where he wants to be.
In recent news reports, Barr said he can't do his bad job with Trump's tweets. Remember that? It was a stupid statement from Barr who signed up for dirty work. Barr is the man who ran on the political field waving his memo. Barr all but begged Trump to put him in the political game. Now he says the tweets get in his way.
Many Trump supporters tell journalists the same—they don't like the tweets. Trump supporters have a “Hate the tweets, love the tweeter policy.” Tough talk about the tweets means nothing. Barr was waiting for Trump, and he wasn't in line alone.
Whites have been waiting for Trump, and nothing can break that bond now. The book Rising Out of Hatred about the former white supremacist Derek Black has insights:
“Don [Derek Black’s father] had been waiting four decades for a major political candidate to make what he called a ‘direct, edgy appeal to our [white] people,’ but he never imagined that message would come from Trump. Like Derek, Don had always dismissed Trump as a vapid celebrity who cared more about money and ego than he would about culture or race. But now in Trump’s speech, Don heard echoes of a strategy he and [David] Duke had pioneered together thirty-five years earlier when they tried to rehabilitate the Klan’s image by shifting its focus from cross burnings in the Deep South to rallies against illegal immigration on the California border.”
New York is Nazareth; the borough of his birth is Bethlehem, and from Queens came not a God-man but a man-baby who thinks he's a king. Trump is an unexpected messiah they desired; he fulfills perverse prophecies for whites who've been waiting.
McConnell for judges; Putin for a puppet; the media for clicks; wealthy whites for tax cuts; white evangelicals for a bully. The white world has been waiting for Trump.
This white waiting has a wide impact. It feels like entitlement. It goes hog wild. It's in approval numbers. It's Teflon. It's relished. A majority of whites will vote to reelect Trump in November 2020 because they've been waiting for this time.
Trump leads a white movement with no Hoover to oppose him because white movements never have Hoovers to oppose them. And yet, whites in hate groups have compared their white movement to the civil rights movement. Objectively, Trump's white movement and the civil rights movement have at least one thing in common: waiting. It's not an equivalency; it's a strategy.
At times, civil rights activists waited for test cases; they did the prep work so a movement could ignite and waited for a moment to move and a person to rally around. Trump is the test case that couldn't fail; Trump is the moment, and the person the white movement has rallied around.
This is a long-awaited moment for whites; tweets won't taint it for them. Those that waited for Trump now wait on Trump. MAGA is the Confederacy of today and tomorrow. Sure, “You come at the king, you best not miss,” but don't miss the foot soldiers in waiting. Trump may be the general, but the foot soldiers must be stopped and stomped. That can’t wait.
Looking at history, many elderly Black people felt fortunate to live long enough to see America elect its first Black president. And now, according to Ta-Nehisi Coates, Trump is the first white president. Today, many people hope to live long enough to see the Trump Era end. And that too is another form of waiting for Trump.