The Unifying Theory of American Politics

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White Patriarchy.

That’s it. That’s the theory. Nothing about American politics, society, or history makes sense without understanding white patriarchy and this country’s fierce loyalty to it.

The election of a bigoted, racist, adulterous, porn star bribing, alleged national secret selling, election strongarming, incoherent felon for his SECOND term as POTUS over the imminently more qualified Black and Indian former prosecutor, senator, and current VPOTUS only makes sense when you acknowledge that the white voting majority prefers to have a white man, any white man, in charge.

And it’s this fact of America, or rather, most white people’s reluctance to admit this fact, that has me so tired, angry, and disappointed. In my experience, the only thing white people dislike acknowledging/discussing more than other people’s race is their own.

Push a white person to talk explicitly about whiteness, and 999 times out of 1000, you’ll, at best, crash into a brick wall of resistance.

But what about the increase in the Black male vote and Latino vote for Trump?

The majority of the Black male vote was about 80% for Harris, and while Latino men appear to have collectively switched parties, the Latina vote pulled the majority solidly Democrat. Also, white patriarchy still explains these shifts, as whiteness and patriarchy have never lacked non-white people to campaign for their cause in exchange for being closer to power.

But they nominated a Black and Indian woman as their party candidate, Jonathan! Doesn’t that count for something?

Yes, they did, and yes, it does. But the nomination of Kamala Harris won’t mean shit when Trump’s administration begins to enact regressive policies. Hilary Clinton being the nominee in 2016 counted for nothing when white supremacists stormed the Capital, so spare me a silver lining narrative of “progress”.

Nominating Kamala Harris after Biden’s meltdown in the first debate and giving her the shortest runway to campaign for the highest office in the land is in the time-honored tradition of giving Black folks half as much and expecting them to produce more than their white counterparts.

But doesn’t Kamala’s failure to turn out voters signal that we were right? That Biden was the only one who could have beaten Trump?

My, how quickly do you embody a racist political analysis to excuse the fact that whiteness is doing the work here!

It might be that Kamala was a fatally flawed candidate. Still, the democrat establishment only pivoted to here when Biden made it impossible for the white democratic establishment to deny their candidate’s competence. If only they had listened to Black women…ever.

Biden beat Trump not because Biden was so charismatic but because the country had seen what four years of Trump were like and wanted a leader who didn’t behave like a spoiled five-year-old. He was the comfy white male alternative that made it easy for enough white voters to show up and get the orange menace out. Except, the majority of white people still voted for said orange menace.

If Kamala was only good enough when Biden politically shat himself on national TV, then how do you imagine undecided voters view Kamala? Put another way, if the backup QB only gets on the field after the starter throws seven interceptions in the first quarter, how much faith would you have that the backup can now lead the team?

Get your people!

For the last half-century, the most consistent voting block for the GOP has been the white vote. The conservative party has never failed to gain the majority of the white vote—not ever. Yet, Democrats' most consistent investment in the electorate has been trying to win over voters who vote for the conservative candidate.

Trying to win over white voters is something the Democrats should continue to do, but they only seem to be able to do so at the expense of supporting their base. I see this kind of failure to multi-task all the time in so-called progressive academic spaces, where throughout my career, I’ve had to listen to white colleagues claim that “diversity is important but…”

• We can’t lower our standards.

• We have to be strategic and not alienate resistant people

• There are other more pressing issues we have to address

• We don’t know where to begin

• We can’t anger our superiors

• We’re so afraid of saying/doing the wrong thing

• We don’t have time to learn all the things we need to know

Tell ‘em James

But white liberals aren’t the only ones engaging in excuse-making and scapegoating. Not even Obama has been able to break from this pattern of scolding Black folks for apathy in the voting process.

“Don’t boo. Vote!”

“MFer we did! For you and Biden and Kamala! Meanwhile, y’all expect us to save democracy while demanding nothing different from white voters. Never calling them out on the racist things they say and do.”

White women care more about upholding white patriarchy than their bodily autonomy. White men care more about being led by a man who makes them feel secure in their whiteness than they do that said man seems obsessed with Arnold Palmers dick’s dick.

There’s no economic analysis, no foreign policy analysis, no ideological analysis that explains the voting behavior of the voting white majority in this election better than white people are immoveably committed to having any white man in charge.

The single issue isn’t abortion, isn’t climate change, isn’t immigration, isn’t policing.

White voters vote for identity politics, which is to say they vote for whiteness. Ever. Single. Time.

Trump has already won a third term.

But that’s illegal, Jonathan! He can’t do that! The constitution says…

If you’ve made it this far in this week’s post and you still think the law will stop Trump from doing whatever he wants, I don’t know what to tell you.

The only thing the people who voted for Trump want from Trump is for Trump to be in charge whitely and patriarchal-y. So go ahead and bottle that hopes that his performance in this job will somehow lead to a reckoning and checks being put on his power. A 34-time felon was just elected to the POTUS by over 75 million people who know he’s a felon. Do you think people who can overlook Trump’s record care about his record?

I honestly sneer inside every time I hear a white person bemoan how people voting for Trump, “makes no sense”, and “how can these people keep voting against their own interests?!” Meanwhile, the majority of these same people cannot even bring themselves to say “white people,” “white supremacy,” or “racism” out loud when talking about American politics.

If you can’t face the apparent reason this man is again the POTUS, what good is your political analysis of the situation? You refuse to learn fractions but can’t understand why some think 2 + 2 = 7.

If it sounds like I’m angry, it’s because I am.

If it sounds like I’m mad at white people, it’s because I am.

Y’all keep doing this to us and yourselves, and I wish you would stop.

Where “we” go from here.

The “we” is in quotations because the “we” of the progressive political movement is not united. One portion of the “we” has to drastically change, and the other doesn’t. Compared to white people, people of color are doing just fine upholding “progress” in the United States.

In the aftermath of this election, I keep returning to the idea that no matter how this presidency goes, the American people are unequipped to examine cause and effect. We have been socialized to move through the world with increasingly convenient and basic proxies for critical analysis. So, we cannot understand our world without being spoonfed a tailored set of logic and conclusions.

A quick preview of the rhetoric we’ll see in 2028

The economy is terrible right now because undocumented immigrants are taking all of the jobs and opportunities. If people still feel that way at the end of Trump’s presidency, then the solution is to further control (oppress) the non-white population. The problem isn’t just undocumented immigrants but all non-white immigrants.

Kids still needing to be affirmed in their gender identity didn’t go away when we banned non-binary bathrooms, so now we have to make non-binary identity illegal and prosecute all doctors and educators for talking about the subject.

Increased policy funding hasn’t decreased the crime rates, so we need to double policy budgets because defunding the police would mean a wave of crime that would completely drown and destroy this country.

Trump is the only one who can lead us through a national transformation where we can realize our full potential, so we have to change the constitution so that he can have the time he needs to lead us to the Promised Land.

The danger of where this country is right now is that nothing can convince the voting white majority to fundamentally change their political worldview short of a complete and obvious failure of whiteness patriarchy to white patriarchy. And I honestly don’t even know what that looks like aside from Trump divorcing Melania for a trans-Black woman and telling Candice Owens she’s a self-hating Black person and an embarrassment to the ancestors.

But I digress.

At the end of the day, all we have is our people, our given family, and our chosen family. It’s all we’ve ever had, and it’s all we ever need.

So, as we re-enter a nightmare of white supremacy, violent patriarchy, planet destruction, and incompetence, I’m choosing to focus on strengthening my relationships with my friends and family. More specifically, I’m thinking about the gifts, talents, and experiences I’ve been fortunate to have and how those might help someone else.

As you might guess, I am very interested in wild food, and so I try to share what I know from my own journey with others, not just broadly in this newsletter and my other content but more personally with people in my area.

Donald Trump is a clown, an unserious person who will likely make things very seriously worse for all of us in these next four years. I’m so angry and sad that white people seem to have not learned better, but all we can ever do is survive to have another chance to make things right.

I want y’all to survive. I’ll be here with you, and we’ll get through this together.

We got this fam.

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So you want to hunt…

I’m slowly working my way back into a rhythm of creating long-form content. The wait will be worth it, as I’ve spent much time thinking through my video creation process and workflow. I’m still far from my goal to post every week, but I believe I’ll catch that pace before too long.

Check out this latest video on becoming a hunter!

Thanks for reading!

-Jonathan