DONALD TRUMP AND AMERICAN SELF-HATE
NINE DAYS BEFORE the election, I was getting a manicure at a salon in Mt. Pleasant, SC. The Vietnamese manicurist asked what I do, and the agreeable conversation switched gears when I related that I’d been writing about politics. She was a Trump supporter.
I was curious about what could lead her there, and it turned out that she was angry about the border, the undocumented immigrants that were streaming in. This Vietnamese immigrant was very unhappy that other immigrants wanted to do what she’d done—establish themselves in the United States—and she complained that they got so many perks for illegally crossing the border. “My friend in California told me that every immigrant that goes to California gets $250,000,” she huffed.
“That is absolutely not true,” I responded. She scowled while going on to say that her daughter had graduated from college and was attending graduate school in Athens, GA. She was sick about her child living there because of all the murdering migrants that were in this country. “That is absolutely not true,”I said again. “And this is the problem with all the lies Trump tells. People believe him. You need to do your own research.” I did not have the feeling that she would follow my advice.
My manicurist was invested in fearing other immigrants as well as being jealous of them and angry at them. This was in South Carolina—a Red State—but that wasn’t all of it. To her, she deserved her U.S. citizenship, but they didn’t merit a better life here. It didn’t matter that undocumented immigrants work and pay billions of dollars of taxes to the U.S. government—they virtually put food on our tables—even though they don’t get the benefits of programs like Social Security.
At the time, I didn’t comprehend that about half the Vietnamese population in this country are Republicans, which sets them apart from most of the Asians here who lean Democratic. And this particular woman swallowed Trump’s lies which turned into her hate, and she was hanging on to it. Although I also suspected she may have acquired at least some of this hate from her American husband.
A day later, I was at a department store in Myrtle Beach, and this time it was a Lebanese woman who surprised me. She brought up the election by worrying-out-loud that she wasn’t sure how to vote. Of course, she was distressed because Israel was bombing Lebanon, and her family was there. She chanted that Trump had said he’d end the war. “But he won’t end it in your favor,” I said. “You think Trump is going to do anything for you? He hates you.”
She was an olive-skinned Muslim woman. Did I go too far?
HOW COULD EITHER of these women believe that Trump had their best interests at heart? For that matter, how could any woman at all believe anything he says? These two were not officially from Trump’s “shithole” countries, but they might as well have been. They were not white, misogynistic, racist, abusive males who were drawn to Trump’s message; they were immigrants. And at least one of the two was a hater of other immigrants like herself, which implies to me a considerable amount of jealousy as well as self-hatred.
Just like the young black men who voted for Trump, or the Latinos, or the women, or the gay men, and all the rest of the minorities as well as the MAGA base who unbelievably voted for him against their own best interests: One thing they seem to have in common is a measure of self-hate.
If you hate yourself first, then that loathing naturally expands to other individuals, genders, ethnicities, races, countries—anyone who might have something you want and don’t have—or anyone you imagine got something that you didn’t get. Like $250,000 for stepping into the state of California as an undocumented immigrant.
Now, on the face of this supposedly huge amount of free governmental cash, most of us would categorically know that that whole whopper was crazy. It made no sense. Yet millions of people believe/d Trump’s misinformation and lies. They wanted and needed to be convinced by him. He was the Wizard of Oz, while they were the Munchkins elevating him to a status he didn’t deserve. Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris were the Wicked Witches of the Elite East in Trump’s 2024 Newspeak. The irony is that Trump wanted to be a member of the Elite, and he couldn’t get in. He wasn’t “in” even when he was president, because he was such a buffoon.
And look at him now, putting together an administration of thugs, criminals, human jokes, and, as always, people who have little to no experience for the jobs they’ve been given but will milk them financially for all they’re worth—or as Robert Reich likes to say, the oligarchy.
The fact that Trump was basically able to stop the distribution and release of The Apprentice film until shortly before the election was just an example of what was to come—ABC happily paying Trump $15 million and bending the knee to him when they didn’t have to—and in this case, for his weak defamation suit. This is one example but with people like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Tim Cook going to Mar-a-Lago to suck up to Trump when they also had no obligation to kiss his ring is the true decline of our country. If they don’t hate themselves, they should. Trump has no allegiance to anyone but himself.
In The Apprentice, the story of how young Donald Trump was himself the apprentice that lawyer Roy Cohn trained to be as barbarous as he was, we witness Trump finally rejecting his mentor. When Cohn was dying of AIDS, Trump held a dinner for the man who gave him his current personae. Trump gifted Cohn fake diamond bejeweled cuff links and buttons, which evidently Trump was known for giving to his pals.
You can’t make this stuff up. And worse, we expect it from him.
But could we have expected that the people on his hit list—anyone who isn’t a white male oligarch—were desperate to be like him? White is the first and most important quality to be Trump- and MAGA-approved and then to have the power to be cruel to those who need compassion and to crush other people when you can. Of course, this is the MAGA GOP in general. They applaud Trump for all of the above and hate themselves enough to vote for everything they are not and never can be.
And what about the Vietnamese manicurist and Lebanese clerk I ran into before the election? They may be anecdotal evidence of this phenomenon of people voting against their own best interests, but to paraphrase what Cecile Richards once said about Ted Cruz, “A woman voting for Donald Trump is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders."
That's so interesting regarding your manicurist. The salon I used to go to in Pawleys always had the Newsmax channel on their televisions...
Good piece. Thank you for it. Do you remember a time when people seemed willing to read, listen to debates, and then decide who to vote for based on real information? It seems so improbable now. It was pre-cable TV, which I think is the transition most responsible for our current predicament. People who get their information from TV news are now doing it within a demographic box. In 2008 I got tired of my TV, and I've had no cable since. I read my news from a variety of sources. When I see Fox news or MSNBC or CNN, I'm struck by how one-note each one is, and by how much theatrics and posturing have replaced factual reporting. It's difficult to exist in a country with voters such as the Vietnamese manicurist you describe. Her beliefs are so over the top, I feel overwhelmed by the impossibility of countering all the misinformation we face. For now, I've taken a step back while continuing to believe we can do better. My hope is people will become dissatisfied with the Leon Musk administration purchased for $270K+, and vote differently at the midterms and beyond.