To Trump, some people don't even exist
Stephen H. Provost
One of the many slogans NBA players can choose to wear on their jerseys reads “Say Her Name,” a reference to Breonna Taylor and other Black women targeted by racist violence and police brutality.
Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, died when police broke into her apartment and shot her at least eight times.
Donald Trump, the constitutionally elected president of the United States, refuses to say her name. He accepted the Republican nomination in the same week when police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot a Black man seven times. In the back.
That man’s name is Jacob Blake. Trump didn’t say his name for days either; even then, it was only as an afterthought.
This should come as no surprise.
When nations go to war, they dehumanize the enemy. It makes it easier to pretend you’re not killing another human being. As I point out in my book Political Psychosis, “dehumanize the enemy” is one of 12 strategies Trump has used to take America hostage. It’s easier to do that when the when the enemy doesn’t look like you, whether we’re talking about Vietnamese in the Mekong Delta during the ’60s or Black Americans on our own soil today.
Kamala Harris made this point Thursday, when she pointed out: “The reality is that the life of a Black person in America has never been treated as fully human.”
That’s as blunt a definition of American racism as I’ve ever heard. Yet its implications are left unsaid: that Black Americans aren’t treated as fully human because a significant number of white Americans view them as the enemy.
By refusing to say their name, Trump reinforces a narrative that 1) dehumanizes Black people and, in doing so, 2) depicts them as the enemy.
“I don’t think we care”
But it’s actually even worse than that.
Trump’s refusal to mention victims of police violence, let alone name them, is part of a pattern of behavior for Trump that’s beyond racist, beyond dehumanizing.
Commentators have long recognized that Trump plays almost exclusively to his base. Viewed from the opposite perspective, however, his approach is far more damning: He acts like those who oppose him — even those who are inconvenient to him — don’t even exist. Their slogan might as well be Black Lives Don’t Matter.
After NBA players boycotted games Wednesday to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short said, “If they want to protest, I don’t think we care.”
Trump didn’t attend the funeral of civil rights icon John Lewis because Lewis hadn’t attended his inauguration. Lewis had been dead to Trump long before his passing.
John Lewis
Trump doesn’t mention the people who’ve died of COVID-19 or their families, because they’re inconvenient to him. It’s better to pretend they don’t exist, either.
That’s why he forces employees to sign non-disclosure agreements: so that, if he mistreats them, he can pretend they don’t exist, either. They don’t fit into his preferred narrative or his ego-driven fake news picture of himself.
Backlash
When people are ignored, they tend to shout louder and act out more dramatically in order to be heard. Peaceful protests become loud displays, which can, in turn, become violent. This is precisely what Trump is counting on.
Trump is like a quack doctor who ignores the cause of a disease (racism) so he can treat the symptoms (violence) with painkillers (“law and order”) that are intended to mask the problem but only end up making it worse. Then, when the patient dies, the doctor says it’s because the patient didn’t take enough painkillers.
Trump has protesters in an impossible position. They don’t hold political power, so peaceful protests fall on deaf ears. Anyone who doubts this need only listen to Marc Short’s dismissive “I don’t think we care” comment. Or Trump’s remarks that he’s paid more attention to the NBA ratings than the protests.
On the other hand, violent protests — fueled by the fact that Trump’s team isn’t listening to the peaceful ones — are exactly what Trump wants: something that strikes fear into the hearts of his base. He can use them to paint protesters as “thugs” who are part of an imaginary “angry mob” poised to invade the suburbs.
The media support Trump’s twisted vision because they cover violence. There’s no money (ratings) in covering a peaceful street where nothing’s happening. So, what emerges is a distorted picture of an America where violence is the norm, even though it’s not.
No-win situation
So, protesters are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. After a while, even peaceful protests become tiresome to viewers eager to move on to “the next thing.” The situation hasn’t changed, but their patience for it has.
Protesters are losing patience, too, but they have to deal with the reality on the ground. Viewers insulated from their struggle watching cable news at home... don’t.
Time and again, Trump has relied on this group’s impatience and short collective memory, counting on them to forget events that don’t directly affect them. The Access Hollywood scandal. Russian election interference. COVID-19. Police brutality. Just as he runs out the clock on court cases by stalling and obstruction, he runs out the clock on everything.
People get tired of watching, tired of caring. Unless they’re the ones being beaten up by cops or getting sick from the virus.
To Trump, it’s not just that these people don’t matter, it’s as if they don’t exist. They don’t fit into his worldview, so they’re invisible to him, fictional, the product of his enemies’ devious (to his warped way of thinking) imagination.
Trump won’t say Jacob Blake’s name because, to him, Jacob Blake doesn’t exist.
I can’t think of many things more dehumanizing than that.
PFeatured photoFeatured photo: Protesters holds a sign in front of the U.S. consulate in Hamburg, Germany, in June 2020, by Rasande Tyskar, CC BY-NC 2.0.