On Sunday, The New York Times ran an op-ed by their opinion columnist Charles Blow titled “White Extinction Anxiety,” in which he posited that President Trump suffered from that spurious charge and spends his time “unapologetically defending whiteness from anything that threatens it.”
Blow began by citing an appearance from former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan on Fox’s “The Laura Ingraham Show” in which Buchanan discussed what Blow called, “the humanitarian crisis Donald Trump has created at the border by ripping children away from their parents.” Blow quoted Buchanan saying:
This is the great issue of our time. And, the real question is whether Europe has the will and the capacity, and America has the capacity to halt the invasion of the countries until they change the character — political, social, racial, ethnic — character of the country entirely. You cannot stop these sentiments of people who want to live together with their own and they want their borders protected.
Blow commented, “Make no mistake here, Buchanan is talking about protecting white dominance, white culture, white majorities and white power.”
Blow cited other quotes of Buchanan’s but there was no reference to skin color in them. That didn’t matter; Buchanan may have been speaking of a difference in values, but Blow was sure Buchanan was speaking of race. He bloviated, “Strip all the other rationales away from this draconian immigration policy. This is at the core: White extinction anxiety, white displacement anxiety, white minority anxiety. This is the fear and anxiety Trump is playing to. Politico Magazine dubbed Trump ‘Pat Buchanan With Better Timing.’”
Using Politico as an arbiter of who President Trump is may be a little chancy after the puerile piece they posted about Trump advisor Steven Miller last week.
Blow cited a Census Bureau study showing the continuing and accelerating decline of whites as a majority in America and another report issued last week that buttressed that conclusion. Then he got downright nasty in his conclusion:
All manner of current policy grows out of this panic over loss of privilege and power: immigration policy, voter suppression, Trump economic isolationist impulses, his contempt for people from Haiti and Africa, the Muslim ban, his rage over Black Lives Matter and social justice protests. Everything.
Trump is president and is beloved by his base in part because he is unapologetically defending whiteness from anything that threatens it, or at least that’s the image he wants to project. It is no more complicated than that. These immigrant children crying out for their mothers and fathers are collateral damage, pawns in a political battle to wring strict legislation out of Congress — medieval torture displays meant to serve as deterrents.