No one has ever gone broke betting on whiteness and patriarchy in America. by Marcus Harrison Green No one has ever gone broke betting on whiteness and patriarchy in America.  What else to make of Donald Trump’s re-ascension to the White House? How else can we metabolize this madness and glee that MAGA-lovers are feeling at this moment? “Your body, my choice,” white nationalist Nicholas Fuentas gloated post-election. Later in the week, Black people were assaulted in mass by racist text messages invoking slavery by an anonymous sender. Before and since his re-election on Tuesday, there has been a glut of think pieces exploring the wayward shift of people of color toward Trump. The implicit message is to blame the 46% of Latinos, the 20% of Black men, and the 12% of LGBTQ voters for his return.  Let’s cut the nonsense. A second Trump term and the calamity it will surely produce is not the result nor fault of Americans who are historically and still to remain, marginalized. It is not the fault of Arab Americans, Black Americans, or Latino Americans - whose marginal increase in support from men within those groups wasn’t enough in itself to secure Trump the White House.  No, it’s the clearest example of Occam's razor. Trump increased his votes amongst men this election, with TKK million casting their vote for him this week. So did 60 percent of white Americans. Men haven’t given the majority of their vote to a Democrat in 60 years, and the Republican party has owned the white vote for more than a decade.  Trump’s impending presidency is a product of white supremacy and the patriarchy it feeds. The fault lies with too many white Americans who would cling to the promise of power they believe they’re entitled to, rather than link their fate to anyone else’s humanity. It is their lust for exclusionary dominance atop a racial caste.  Whatever your opinion of Kamala Harris, she was never going to win a majority of white men. No Democratic, let alone progressive presidential candidate, has received a majority of their vote in 60 years, but way to task a Black woman with the impossible. This isn't to excuse the feckless and inept Democratic party. It is to say that a Trump rise should be impossible no matter the political party. Trump is projected to win the popular vote with roughly 74 million ballots cast for him, a figure closely mirroring his failed 2020 campaign. Nearly 85% of Trump’s voters were white, unchanged from 2020. Sixty percent were white men. In our history, if we only counted white men’s votes, we would never have had the enforcement of the Civil Rights Act, the expansion of health insurance, job-protected family leave, marriage equality, and (as paltry as it is) an increase in the Federal minimum wage. Each achievement happened under presidents they rejected.  One can argue that due to their voting propensity as a group, we lack universal healthcare, free college tuition, and a national living wage. Policies that would be beneficial to them and the entire country.  When it comes to marginalized communities, our existence in this country will always be precarious unless enough white men decide to be communally human instead of uniquely superior.  And that is a decision they have made in the past.  At a time of chattel slavery when Black men were auctioned like cattle and only white men could vote, there were enough of them in 1865 to pass the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments - abolishing slavery, extending civil rights, and presenting the right to vote (at least to Black men), without one Black vote. With an all-male constituency, there were enough of them in 1919 to pass the 19th Amendment enfranchising women with the right to vote, with no women eligible to vote. With a predominantly straight Congress and Senate, there were enough of them in 2022 to protect marriage equality via the Respect for Marriage Act. In the lead up to the election, the way our media coddled White men’s sense of self-worth at the expense of the concerns of others during this campaign was as repulsive as it was farcical.  Now, I do have sympathy for the plights of white men who our media has fixated on this last year. Their life is hard. They are experiencing increased loneliness, addiction, economic anxiety, and the list goes on. But the thing is, life is no less hard for women who still make 84% less than men. Or Native Americans, who have the highest addiction rates in the country. Or Black women who are more than twice as likely to die during their pregnancy than their white counterparts. Or Black men, who are still more than three times more likely to be killed by police. Yet, at one time or another during this campaign, all of these groups were publicly scolded, shamed, and patronized for not enthusiastically supporting Harris. But not white men. We spent hours of podcasts and gallons of newspaper ink on their support for exploring their newly discovered malaise.  Meanwhile, the coalition of the historically marginalized still voted as a majority to reject Trumpism.  Trump’s presidency is built on the myth of white male exceptionalism. From the way Trump’s economic plans were hailed, you’d think he magically transported the whole of this nation from the breadline to the penthouse during his first term. His economic agenda is not one of mass prosperity. It includes deficit-widening tax cuts for the rich, inflationary tariffs, and mass deportation that will devastate the construction and agriculture industries, at least. Nor did he pretend that he was anything other than he was: unapologetic in his brutality of women, disdaining of trans people, hater of immigrants, and dismissive of racial prejudices. Upon news of his reelection, the top 10% of wealthiest Americans saw in $64 billion increase in their net worth. Pardon my skepticism of them anticipating a mass redistribution of capital to our poorest.   This country will only reach its final form when enough white men reject a myth of ultra-individualism, superiority, and dominance in favor of a saga of solidarity. A saga that is difficult, challenging, occasionally infuriating —but ultimately hopeful.  On Tuesday, we saw that happen in our majority-white state of Washington, and our majority-white city of Seattle. Both dived deeper blue on Tuesday.  Many pundits and commentators are wary of discussing race at patriarchy at the moment. But It is precisely because we have failed for generations to seriously consider those duel poisons and their lingering effects that we have arrived at this point.  If we accept that the only recourse we have to better this country is to bow to the whims of recalcitrant white men then where exactly does that lead us other than the hell we’re already in?