Trump’s conduct consecrates the white male supremacy entrenched in traditional values

Evidence

Nihilism releases the will to power not only in subjects, but in traditional values themselves, baldly revealing the privilege and entitlement they encode, their raw power purposes and energies. Thus, morality, too, “falls back” to its elementary form, its will to power, as nihilism shatters its foundations and devalues its value. Pussy grabbing, adultery, consorting with prostitutes, scamming contractors and undocumented workers—these are rights of the powerful that traditional values implicitly license as they explicitly prohibit, encode as they disavow. If the power purposes in traditional morality are enormous, they are what remain when nihilism takes its Sermon on the Mount drapery off. More, for constituencies anxious about their ebbing place and privilege, nothing is more reassuring than Trump’s crass sexual entitlement to all women, the crude contractualism of his marriage, and for that matter, all of his crude conduct and flaunting of law and the protocols of the presidency … none of which a female or nonwhite politician could emit and survive for a nanosecond—which is precisely the point. Trump’s boorishness and rule breaking, far from being at odds with traditional values, consecrates the white male supremacism at their heart, whose waning is a crucial spur to his support. — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, 293

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Free speech claims now undermine most democratically enacted regulation. — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise…, 211; Patriotism as love of tradition makes racial-justice protest read as unpatriotic — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise…, 30; White supremacists were mainstreamed into conservative politics through Trump’s nativist agenda — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 1028 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Evangelical praise of Trump centers on an explicit list of traditional masculine traits #corroborates (0.82) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 612
• Evangelical Trump support culminated from an embrace of militant masculinity. #corroborates (0.82) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 8
• White supremacists were mainstreamed into conservative politics through Trump’s nativist agenda #expands (0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 1028
• Trump won white Christians by appealing to racism, not despite it. #expands (0.80) — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 53
• Militant evangelical masculinity predated and prepared Trump-era politics #corroborates (0.78) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 542
• Militant masculinity anchored white evangelical cultural identity before partisan mobilization #corroborates (0.78) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 29
• Perceived loss of white Christian status, not economics, drove Trump support #qualifies (0.72) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 603