Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump campaigns in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on March 9, 2016. Photo from Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.

Mohawk artist and poet Alex Jacobs offers his take on the state of the Republican and Democratic parties and the 2016 election cycle:

It took generations for Americans to get this stupid. And that’s saying a lot when you actually look to see what passed as knowledge or just good information back then. And let’s move back then up to the 1950’s, since the Good Old Days of when America was Great was most likely that era, pre-Civil Rights and pro-Jim Crow. Can you believe Donald Trump is engaging in a War of Words – “I have the best words!” – And he’s winning!

Experts are calling him a bigot and his supporter’s racists and morons, but Trump is smart, not book smart but street smart, as in start a fight and let others get hurt. He is media smart. He and TV love each other, since they seem to need each other. We have called Reality TV programming the low point of American Culture yet now find ourselves in the middle of a Reality TV show we cannot turn off. If you believe in voting then consider using that act as “blowing up the TV and the System.” Some of Trump’s supporters are definitely racist but many of them are just angry, out of work or lost a good job for a new shitty job. It is hard to get by for many folks, they’ve seen their status drop and worry about not getting it back anytime soon. Some of this angst is race-based, the end of the white majority and the browning of America. Some say that the brown generation will soon be born and immigration adds to the brown-ness.

But it is the economy (stupid!) that is driving the populist rage for both Trump and Sanders. People used to discount the far left and the far right and just massage the big bulge in the middle, the silent majority. The extremes used to call for overthrowing the System but now it’s the middle calling for upheaval, as is their right in the Constitution.

Get the Story:
Alex Jacobs: When the Council Fire Becomes a Brush Fire (Indian Country Today 3/26)

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