How the fuck we got here
Have you been asking yourself reflexively every 15 minutes how the fuck we got here? Well, it’s actually pretty simple. This country is covered in a nationwide web of racist voter laws and racist voter maps that not only smother the Black vote, but wildly overvalue Republican votes. Without that advantage, our last Republican president would’ve been Dwight Eisenhower.
This white supremacist advantage distorts all of our national political systems. For example, Wyoming is the reddest state, with a population slightly higher than a quarter of California’s Black population alone. Both states get exactly two seats in the U.S. Senate, though! And then there’s the Electoral College, the anti-democratic system created to give enslavers disproportionate political power that’s since transferred that disproportionality to our current red states.
That’s it, really. That’s the actual problem. I know we all want to make it about personal choices, but the truth is that American political systems favor the bigot regardless of who you choose at the polls, and the Republican Party would be long dead without that favor. Of course, if you want to disregard the hornets’ nest for the individual hornets, I’m here for it, but get ready for the same sting!
After Trump won in 2016, study after study revealed Trumpers’ main inspiration to be “racial animosity.” Democrats knew this, by the way, which is why in 2020, after proudly announcing “the most diverse slate of presidential candidates in the history of the party,” they went on whirlwind media tours wondering aloud which one was really “electable.” The party decided the only path to victory was to pull bigot voters from Trump, and soon, so the most diverse slate of candidates in the history of patting yourself on the back began losing support and dropping out until only Genocide Joe was left.
A 2022 study from the University of Pennsylvania revealed that the mass uprising against police brutality following George Floyd’s murder in May of 2020 pushed swing voters away from Trump and toward Joseph Robinette Bloodbath. Back then, it was commonly understood that the Republican Party was extremist as a whole with a moderate fringe, and even though nothing about the party changed, Joey Holocaust spent his presidency normalizing them. The parties agreed on easily reversible policies, all the racist uncles were welcomed back to Thanksgiving and that police brutality problem was fixed!
Just kidding. Biden the Butcher made it much worse. His overfunding of police led to cops killing more Americans in 2022 than any prior year on record — a record broken in 2023 and again in 2024. He did bury it as a political cause, however, eliminating the issue that pushed voters away from Trump and hammering the final nail in our collective normalized coffin.
Then there’s our facilitating the genocide of the Palestinian people, Kamala’s refusal to listen to the Democratic base, and here comes Trump, running the same racist “immigration” campaign from 2016, this time unbothered by that pesky police brutality issue, and voilà!
In case you are still unconvinced, consider that within the first week of his new administration Trump froze federal DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs and called on government employees to snitch on anyone they suspect of following now-verboten DEI policies. He’s ordered the Department of Justice to freeze civil rights cases and attacked the Equal Opportunity Employment Act. He’s trying to abolish birthright citizenship. He ordered the Air Force to stop teaching about historic Black military pilots, the Tuskegee Airmen, and banned federal agencies from acknowledging Black History Month — happy Black History Month, by the way.
Trump has also canceled all pending asylum appointments and shut down the app used to make them. He shut off funding for refugee resettlement agencies nationwide. He changed the Indigenous-named Mount Denali in Alaska back to Mount McKinley and the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America — at least on all official federal maps and references. Trump also pardoned the two D.C. cops responsible for the 2020 death of a young Black man named Karon Hylton-Brown and a subsequent cover-up.
Schools, churches and hospitals are preparing for ICE raids, even here in Maine. And several of the 1,500 newly pardoned January 6’ers are being welcomed back to Vacationland, as well. In fact, one insurrectionist just spoke at an event in Topsham organized by the Cumberland, York, Lincoln and Sagadahoc county Republican committees.
So, the next time you see someone involuntarily blurting out, “How the fuck did we get here?” please show them this column. And remember, only about 32 percent of eligible voters picked Trump. He doesn’t have a mandate or anything near a majority. He needs your permission. Don’t give it to him.
Samuel James also writes “Banned Histories of Race in America” at samuelj.substack.com.
