Donald Trump’s presidency is the bitter irony at the heart of white supremacy.  It’s like a real-life fanfiction where everything noble is flipped on its head.  In this version of America, the Black man — Barack Obama — brings the intellect, grace, and vision befitting a president, uplifting the nation with dignity and hope. And the white man — Donald Trump — is crude, cruel, and obsessed with domination, taking pleasure in shocking and degrading others.  If Obama represented America’s future, Trump is the ghost of its past, dragging us back to the pre-Civil Rights era.

Trump is not an accident. He is white supremacy in its purest, most practical form: the political and social power of mediocre white men defended at all costs.  Trump is the perfect storm — born into inherited wealth, armed with social privilege, and driven by a deep masculinity insecurity.  His ignorance and arrogance aren’t liabilities to his followers — they’re assets.  Because he is the anti-Obama in every way that matters.

John C. Calhoun, the old architect of white supremacy, once argued that slavery gave poor white men pride — letting even the most destitute white man feel superior when standing next to Black and brown people.  That same logic is at work today.  Trump reassures his supporters that no matter how far they’ve fallen, no matter how mediocre, they are still on top — because they are white.  And supremacy, by design, guarantees that the lowest white man is better than the best Black man.

This is why Trumpism feels like home to so many.  In Trump, they see the world as it should be: a white man unbound by rules or conventions — because those conventions gave us Obama.  Democracy gave us integration, Affirmative Action, and progress.   And progress elevated a Black man above the lowest white man.  Trump’s entire appeal is a backlash to that progress.  He is the living embodiment of the Confederate flag raised over the U.S. Capitol: a defiant rejection of America’s future.

So, again — what is it about Trump?  How does he get away with it?  He is the white shoplifter no one follows.  The drug dealer no one profiles. The man who walks openly armed and gets the benefit of the doubt.  For many Americans, Trump must be the face of power — because to accept anything else would shatter the myth they’ve clung to for generations.

For the lowest and lowliest of white men, Trump is their last American Dream.  And they will defend that dream, even if it means burning the rest of the country down.