Bài viết hôm nay chúng ta cùng điểm qua bài viết Opinion | When Trump Says ‘People,’ He Means ‘His People’ được đăng trên New York Times. Bài viết này đề cập đến cách Donald Trump định nghĩa từ “people” của mình, và quan điểm của tác giả về việc ông ấy chỉ quan tâm đến những người ủng hộ mình.
Toni Morrison, một nhà văn da đen nổi tiếng, từng chống lại việc bị định hình chỉ viết về người da đen, thay vào đó, bà coi tất cả mọi người đều là người da đen. Tác giả bài viết nhìn nhận rằng ý kiến của Trump về từ “people” cũng tương tự như vậy, ông chỉ quan tâm đến những người ủng hộ mình. Bài viết cũng nhấn mạnh rằng ông ta không muốn thống nhất đất nước, mà muốn xây dựng một tương lai độc quyền với ông là người có quyền hành cao nhất.
Trump luôn chọn cách chia rẽ và kích động nhóm người đã ủng hộ ông. Ông khẳng định rằng chỉ những người ủng hộ ông mới xứng đáng và là người dân đáng tin cậy. Ông muốn biến Mỹ thành quốc gia ông cai trị, luật pháp chỉ là công cụ ông sử dụng để trừng phạt những người khác, còn ông sẽ không bị trừng phạt. Trump không đơn giản chỉ muốn đẩy lùi đất nước mà ông muốn hòa hợp quá khứ đầy định kiến với tương lai độc đoán hơn nữa.
Tác giả cũng lưu ý rằng sự ủng hộ đối với Trump không chỉ giới hạn ở một số người trắng, mà còn có nhiều phụ nữ, người da màu và người LGBT. Ông ấy chinh phục được một số người bằng việc dọa dẫm phạm nhân có hành vi quấy rối và lạm dụng quyền lực của mình.
Cuối cùng, tác giả cho rằng người ủng hộ Trump không quan tâm đến những rắc rối pháp lý của ông, chỉ cần những lợi ích mà ông ta mang lại sẽ thuận lợi cho họ. Họ tin tưởng rằng mọi điều tốt đẹp trong tương lai sẽ đến với họ. Trump đã đánh lừa những người ủng hộ của mình bằng việc hứa hẹn một quyền lực được truyền từ trên xuống.
Trên thực tế, ủng hộ cho Trump ngày càng mạnh mẽ, đặc biệt là trong cuộc đua tranh cử của đảng Cộng hòa. Người ta nói rằng ông ấy đã xua đuổi và kích động cử tri đảng Cộng hòa, và người theo chủ nghĩa dân túy này đã trở thành người hùng cho cử tri đảng Cộng hòa. Người ta không lo lắng rằng nếu Trump được tái cử, ông ta sẽ đốt cháy đất nước, vì họ tin rằng những lợi ích từ những gì mà ông ta mang lại cuối cùng cũng sẽ thuận lợi cho họ.
Nguồn: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/27/opinion/trump-followers-support.html
Fifty years ago, reviewing Toni Morrison’s novel “Sula” in this newspaper, a critic wrote that Morrison was “far too talented to remain only a marvelous recorder of the Black side of provincial American life”; that to “maintain the large and serious audience she deserves” and transcend the “limiting classification ‘Black woman writer’” she had to “address a riskier contemporary reality.”
Morrison, who would go on to win Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes, bristled at reviews like that, which seemed to suggest that she needed to write about white people. She chafed at the notion that writing primarily about Black people was a limitation rather than a liberation. In a 1981 New Republic interview, Morrison put a point on it: “From my perspective, there are only Black people. When I say ‘people,’ that’s what I mean.”
This idea, that the parameters of the word “people” can be defined by a speaker or writer, came rushing back to me recently as I was reviewing the increasingly erratic posts and comments of Donald Trump.
Intellectually and creatively, Trump is the antithesis of Morrison, but if I come to understand that when Trump says “people,” it is confined to his people, then his inane utterances make more sense to me. In fact, the whole of the MAGA universe begins to make more sense to me.
On Sunday, Trump posted on Truth Social, claiming Comcast, MSNBC’s owner, and “others of the LameStream Media” will be “thoroughly scrutinized” because they are “THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE” who should pay “for what they have done to our once great Country.”
“The people” here means his people, the only worthy and legitimate people, the only ones worth defending because they are the only ones defending him. When he says “our once great country,” he means the country when it most benefited those most devoted to him, at a time when the racial hierarchy was more fixed, the patriarchy was more entrenched, immigrant communities were often whiter and gender identities were more rigid.
There’s a reason Trump never attempted to govern as a unifier and isn’t running for re-election as one. Instead, he’s deepening his attachment with loyalists. He wants to reshape America into a nation where his will rules, the law is his tool to punish others and he is exempt from punishment — where his throngs are rewarded for their adoration.
It isn’t as simple as saying that Trump wants to drag the country backward. He wants to do something far more destructive: He wants to marry the country’s more intolerant past to a more autocratic future. He wants to bend his brand of straight white male nationalism into a kind of totalitarianism. That his definition of “the people” is implicit, not overt, only helps him. The fact that there are women, people of color and L.G.B.T.Q. Americans who support him doesn’t alter the fundamental nature of his appeal.
And I believe that many of his most ardent followers understand this intuitively. They idolize Trump because his craven desire for power, and the protection from prosecution that he believes it will provide, would also offer them a ride on his coattails.
A Trump autocracy would redound to their credit and they would be rewarded for it.
So they overlook Trump’s manifold legal jeopardies, such as the ruling on Tuesday by a New York judge that Trump committed fraud for years by intentionally misvaluing his properties for personal financial benefit.
Trump lashed out at the ruling in a statement posted on Truth Social regurgitating many of his familiar attack lines: calling the judge “DERANGED,” undermining the credibility of the prosecutor and claiming that attempts to hold him accountable are all part of an election interference scheme to prevent him from retaking the presidency.
But part of his complaint, which has become a cliché at this point, was that his civil rights are being violated and “If they can do this to me, they can do this to YOU!”
He and his people, the true people, are the new civil rights victims, in need of a defensive mobilization to prevent continued injury. Trump defense becomes self-defense.
And this works. Trump enjoys a commanding lead among Republicans competing for their party’s presidential nomination. In part that’s because he has the advantage of having already held the presidency, creating an aura of incumbency around him, lifting him and legitimizing him.
But his Republican primary standing is also because he is making a political militia of the Republican Party itself, with its core voters activated to defend him no matter what. The person who gave voice to the party’s most base instincts is the hero of the Republican base. He didn’t try to restrict them; he unleashed them.
He spoke to and for “the people.” He tailored a particular form of populism, one aimed at xenophobes and subversives.
This is, I believe, why Trump maintains strong support even as his legal troubles grow: He has been unflinchingly loyal to one portion of the body politic, and his followers are simply reciprocating.
They don’t worry about Trump torching the country if he’s re-elected, because they believe that they will frolic in the ashes. They believe that whatever benefits Trump will eventually benefit them. Trump has deceived his people into believing in trickle-down tyranny.
