After the desecration of a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, the Trump Administration was finally prodded to make a public statement about rising anti-Semitism. Last month, they said next to nothing about a mosque shooting in Canada that killed six people. And this week, while the whole clown brigade has been talking about Sweden for who-knows-what fucking reason, they’ve barely said a thing about the shooting of two Indian-born engineers in Kansas, which has rattled one of our strongest allies. Trump, and a lot of the people he’s surrounded himself with, have taken the white ‘Christian’ persecution complex to a new level, to where it’s difficult for them even to acknowledge that other groups can be victims as well. This isn’t a white-supremacy worldview as much as an extreme white-victimhood one.
And while it’s not as if those two worldviews are separated by a wide gap, the distinction did play out at CPAC, where unabashed white supremacist Richard Spencer was shown the door while Wayne LaPierre ranted about ‘violent liberals‘ and attendees scooped up books warning of the dire threats of Islam and immigration. This is Trump conservatism, a belief that whites are under siege at home by an oppressive multiculturalism, while America is getting ripped off by a world that has swindled us into a myriad of unfair alliances and obligations. It’s a self-serving fantasyland that requires constant bullshit to fertilize the faithful.
One of those faithful, finding himself on the front lines of this dangerous war while watching basketball at a Kansas bar, shot and killed an Indian-born engineer and wounded his friend and another guy who tried to intervene. Somehow, this man with 51 years of life experiences behind him believed the men were ‘Middle Eastern’ and therefore acceptable to kill. He then drove about an hour or so into rural southwest Missouri and confessed to a bartender. We still don’t know whether this ignoramus just sobered up enough on the drive to confess his heinous act or if he thought the bartender would give him a fucking medal. The bartender called the police.
The widow of the killed engineer spoke about whether or not Indian-Americans belong here. As someone who’s worked in high-tech jobs for nearly 25 years alongside dozens of brilliant, wonderful Indian-born professionals, I’m paralyzed with frustration to hear this. It’s impossible to imagine an immigration bloc less threatening and more beneficial than the pipeline of talented people who come here from top Indian universities to help build so much of the technology we use every day. Even back before the election, I spoke with state Rep Roger Goodman, who represents large numbers of Indian-Americans in the 45th district. He was already hearing some of this wariness as he knocked on doors last summer and fall. And this was when most people didn’t even think Trump would win. This question becomes much harder to answer when you have a President who isn’t even moved to speak out about a tragedy unless it fits within the narrative of white Americans being under siege.
What remains to be seen is how this mentality of the Trump administration will fully play out on the world stage. So much of diplomacy is about being able to convince your counterparts that you and they can find common ground and interests. This becomes impossible to do if it’s on full display that you’re convinced that the rest of the world is taking advantage of you and that you’re owed something for it. This is how you delude yourself into thinking that Mexico will not only accept a border wall, but also pay for it. After all, Mexico should recognize how much they’ve been taking advantage of the poor downtrodden USA, right? Outside of America’s right-wing media bubble and their fringe European fellow travellers, portraying America and western culture as the world’s most aggrieved victim is a remarkable absurdity and there’s no path forward for the Trump Administration to act on any of it without it blowing up in our faces.
