Viewed up close, Donald Trump’s crude, racist campaign seems out of place in 21st-century America 50 years after the triumphs of the civil rights movement.
But seen through a longer lens, it follows the eternal currents of our politics.
In demeaning, dehumanizing, and threatening non-white minorities, the Republican nominee echoes arguments underlying America’s original sin of slavery. In red states, he rouses the successors of those who built economic and social systems around the unchallenged dominance of white Christians who defied federal authority to impose changes.
The more diverse blue-state constituency of Vice President Kamala Harris, herself of mixed race, has long shown greater commitment to the nation’s egalitarian aspirations. The Civil War, the Great Depression, World War II, and the modernizing influences of globalization all failed to erase the fault line between competing political forces…..more
