wire.

Nicolle Wallace. Screengrab MSNBC.

What do the MAGAs have to do to show their racism and antisemitism? Walk through a town and lynch every Black person they encounter, which was how it was done in the old days? Shoot up some more synagogues? How about those who marched shouting “Jews will not replace us”? Trump calls them good people.

The waving of the Confederate flag and calling Black guards niggers was not enough? Donald Trump’s dining with Nazi sympathizers and praising Hitler was not enough. Praising his generals who were so great they lost the war? Is the Tea Party’s depicting President Obama as a witch doctor not enough? Presenting a poster with Obama lying in a casket. Presenting President Obama as a pimp and Michelle as a whore. Trump telling audiences that the Vice President slept her way to the top, or that she is garbage and scum and that she’s dumb, not enough? That she has a low I.Q. Latinos are poisoning the blood of America and trying to replace white people, leading to a lone nut shooting Latinos at an El Paso Walmart. Do the media attribute racism and antisemitism as motivators of Maga? I don’t see any evidence of it.

Take October 23. For Nicole Wallace appearing on MSNBC, Trump voters were motivated by Anti-Elitism, the favorite excuse for MAGAs used by the New York Times columnists. I quoted their columnist Timothy Egan in Alta Magazine.

Timothy Egan, who is based in Seattle, weighed in last November: “I understand the tribalism, the urge to push back against condescending libs and the suffocating ubiquity of political correctness, the sense that only Trump can save a certain way of life.” Egan even blamed progressives for Trumpism. “The left shares the blame, with its cancel culture, groupthink stridency, and identity politics—tactics now picked up by the right.” Identity politics? The title of one of Egan’s books is The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero. Egan identifies as Irish!

It took Vance’s paling around with Tucker Carlson, who cites a Nazi apologist as a great historian, for Bret Stephens to decide to vote for the Vice President. Before that, he implied that Black Lives Matter was a threat to Jews, even though the ADL has condemned Trump regularly for his Anti-Semitism. After he endorsed Kamala, he wrote a speech for her to deliver to close her campaign.

Nicole Wallace went on to list anti-media sentiment, economic despair, anger, and rage at anyone in charge of anything as the reasons for MAGAs supporting Trump. Later that day, even Jen Psaki said that MAGAs were people who’d been left behind when Trump had middle-class support, as well as those who inhabit the upper classes. The insurrection included people with nice pensions, economic perks, and Social Security. Among them were policemen and firefighters. David French said that Trump’s supporters are those who are lonely.

Katy Tur asked Symone Sanders-Townsend why the race was close. Why is it neck and neck? Sanders-Townsend, one of the handful of media pundits who does her homework, said because they like Trump’s policies. Tur gave my favorite excuses for MAGAs, one of whom attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer, and another who fired shots into one of the Democrats’ campaign headquarters. She said that MAGAs are upset that they can’t tell the jokes they told ten years ago, and their patriotism is mistaken for racism. Pelosi charges that Tur supports Trump.

A right-wing panelist appearing on the same program said that the race is close because the nation is divided and noted that the Vice President needed to put more meat on the bones. Like Stephens, he was among the media white men who coached her and decided that she failed the CNN interview held on October 23. Anchor Chris Jansing said they were upset about the economy and immigration.

Few noted that Trump didn’t show up for the debate. So by ignoring the elephants in the room, racism and antisemitism, because the MAGAs buy their advertiser’s products, the pundits and public intellectuals help Trump by “sane washing” a mosquito-brained petulant 78-year-old infant. If he’s elected, it’s because millions of Americans are spoiled, which has been the theme of my 40-year project, The Terribles. Twos, Threes, and Fours. Terrible Fives is near completion. The Terribles lost my niche as one of the establishment’s favored tokens. After a couple of hatchet jobs by surrogates, New York publishers dropped The Terribles.

The late John O’Brien of the Dalkey Archive Press promised to publish my books regardless of sales. So did Robin Philpot, the Montreal publisher of Baraka Books,

who published The Terrible Fours and will publish The Terrible Fives. I’m lucky because they were done when New York publishers dropped Richard Wright and Chester Himes’s books. I also publish books. But having read thousands of manuscripts, I realize that talent is common and I’m better off than eighty percent of American writers, but I think that with The Terribles I’ve tapped the American Zeitgeist. Check this out. Seventy-seven percent of Americans, the most privileged group in history, say the country is headed in the wrong direction. I’m sure that thousands of mothers in Sudan who hold their children as they die of malnutrition would like that wrong direction. The child in Gaza who lost her legs and an arm in from bombing would like that wrong direction. She said, “What good is my life now?”

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