The Loveshade Family Blog

This blog post was submitted to a political commentary site in March 2020. That’s months before America’s political parties decided on their candidates. But as COVID-19 was then the big political story, the publisher wanted to wait to consider it until later. COVID-19 is, unfortunately, still headline news. So before the presidential election happens, here it is.

As I am a borderline fanatical personist, I hate to even think this, but I have to face reality.

How was Donald J. Trump, who arguably doesn’t even sound “presidential” unless he’s reading somebody else’s script, elected president? Why is it quite possible he could be re-elected?

I believe Trump was elected president of the United States in 2016, and could be re-elected in 2020, for three primary reasons:

1) The percentage of minorities in America was (and is) increasing; many “whites” see that as a threat. For a historical example, during the time of American slavery, “black” males were seen as inherently subservient. When slavery ended, the stereotype quickly changed to them being violent and raping white women. That’s entirely illogical, but it’s how stereotypes work. Fear can change one’s perspective very quickly and radically.

2) Many people weren’t (and aren’t) getting their news primarily from reliable, accurate news services. Instead, much of their news came from highly biased news commentators and from completely unreliable sources including shared posts on social media such as Twitter and Facebook. When they were students in school, they received little training on how to check on the reliability of news sources. That’s because, when they were kids, it wasn’t all that necessary. Most of the information people read and saw had been gone over by an editor or chosen by a librarian concerned about presenting accurate information. But right now we’re living in what I and others call the Misinformation Age, when inaccurate sources are more abundant than accurate ones.

3) Barack Obama was president of the United States–and he was black. (Actually, he had mixed ancestry, but I’ll ignore that here as it was generally ignored). Any fear that the minorities posed a real threat of taking over America was verified in the minds of many white voters.

So you have non-Hispanic white people who are afraid of minorities taking over, and believe inaccurate things about them. And they’re afraid.

Well guess what? Women are socially considered a minority. I think many of the same people the above three points apply to are also afraid of the idea of a woman being president. Including some women.

Being a personist, I don’t like this at all. Even though I’m classified as a non-Hispanic white male, I have a minor from my university’s Ethnic and Women’s Studies Department. With my first three friends being girls, I rejected the concept of sexism at about age 6. When a little older, I studied American Indian dance on a reservation and performed at local events. As an adult, I ran a computer lab at a school that was about 80% Hispanic, and was once the only male to help set up an event for women’s rights. I am very strongly opposed to discrimination and prejudice, and have actively written and worked against them.

But I’m also a realist. For right now, the 2020 presidential election year, I think a candidate who has the best chance of beating Donald J. Trump in the presidential race is going to be this: a non-Hispanic (and probably non-Jewish) white male.

An opinion of a member of The Loveshade Family does not necessarily reflect the views of the whole family.