If you were confused by Trump’s address to Congress, you’re not alone. The racism, mythmaking, and long periods of clapping conspired to make his address particularly ominous. Perhaps you were wondering, “Why are all these people standing and clapping, even the Democrats?” Or, “Why is Trump calling DACA recipients, asylum seekers, refugees, and permanent residents ‘removable aliens’?”

Perhaps you know something about the history of police in the United States, and especially in Chicago: formed by political patronage to keep fluctuating populations satisfied with, or at least submissive to, low-wages and long hours; and normalized by controlling political rhetoric that protected property owners. (Political patronage refers to the appointment of an individual — or invention of a whole damn policing body — based on political affiliation as opposed to merit.) This rhetoric has worked so well that when people hear “police,” they think “patriotism.”

Just like police have been normalized, the word “criminal” is code for people of color. Presidents from Reagan to the present (yes, even President Obama) have relied on this codification to speak to white audiences and to support the police. But no one does it like Trump. It’s no coincidence that Trump talks about “real Americans” and his new registry and deportation program, VOICE (Victims of Immigrant Crime Engagement), in the same breath.

Trump displays families of victims of violence like objects to reassure his white audience that he is not a racist, all the while touting traditional racist ideologies. I sincerely hope they got paid, and paid well.

And what about Trump’s mythmaking? Trump describes his ascendance into office as a “rebellion” that crescendoed into a “loud chorus” that erupted into an “earthquake” and could not be stopped. This “rebellion” insists that “America must put its citizens first.”

It’s true that Trump rode an earthquake of racism into the White House, but when he talks about America’s citizens, don’t doubt yourself. He’s talking about one group of people only.

And now, the clapping. If all other evidence was erased from this godforsaken era of U.S. politics, what would future generations think about Trump’s address? More bluntly, where is the protest?

It isn’t in the Democratic Party’s representatives and senators wearing white, harkening back to women’s suffrage, which excluded all people of color. It isn’t in Senator Warren’s occasional clapping for a Trump statement that isn’t completely heinous. And no, it isn’t even in Senator Sanders’s scowl — although at least those shots provided visual relief from the wide pans of enthusiastic cronies.

What the clapping shows most is that our great division is between legislators, racists, and everyone else. And our legislators, by and large, fall on the side of racism. Of violence. Of sexism.

Again.

By Illaria Dana
Beacon Managing Editor, 2016