#Current Affairs

Understanding Donald J. Trump’s Psychological Warfare | Mohamed Elibiary

Published

March 17, 2017

It’s hard for non-Americans to reconcile the perception of our power as the globe’s only real superpower and our public’s political naiveté at times. However, truth be told we Americans are a very reluctant empire with the domestic political sophistication of a teenager. Why and how come the rest of the world wonders aloud, but, truth be told again, we, unlike any other nation-state on the planet, can afford to be reckless and self-centered.

Geopolitical experts of all stripes rave about our advantages as Americans, from the enviable security provided by two oceans to the possession of about half of the navigable internal waterways on the planet. Having a stable political system for about a quarter of a millennium and geopolitically weaker neighbors didn’t hurt matters either. Our country is so rich, spread out and demographically diverse that it doesn’t do revolutions and makes up existential alien invader movies from outer space just to challenge ourselves a bit, though we kick their butt too by the end of the movie.

For all American history, until a skinny Kenyan-Hawaiian-Muslim-y guy named Barack Hussein Obama came around, we had one single demographic dominate the presidential election’s voter pool. That demographic was White (racially), Male (sexually) and working-class (socio-economically). As the United States continues its historic demographic transformation from a pasty 80% White country in 1950 of 150 million into a very diverse demographic country of 438 million in 2050¹, naturally the previously dominant subculture, that I like to call Bubba, is grumpy.

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Last time Bubba encountered a knight in shining armor he could champion was the Saint of my Republican Party known as Ronald Reagan. So, when the “blue-collar billionaire” Donald Trump came around, Bubba was eager to propel him into office. For full disclosure, this white-collar writer got his rear-end beat by Bubba from one end of the 2016 Republican presidential primary to the other, but Bubba and I are cool now. Having grown up in Republican circles over the past quarter century, it was easy for me to understand Bubba and foretell on Muslimmatters² during the George W. Bush administration how nationalism was Bubba’s kryptonite.

One need only go to YouTube and listen to the Charlie Daniels Band classic “What the World needs is a few more Rednecks”³ to understand Bubba and hear Trump’s political platform outlined. Bubba might have a social media account and a smart phone today, but he’s fundamentally not all that more sophisticated today to the complexities of the modern era. Bubba defaults to nationalism, simply because his image of America is all he’s got. As Charlie Daniels says, all America needs is a “little more respect for the Lord, the law and the working man.”

Educated Americans, like prominent political scientist Ian Bremmer brilliantly outlined in his most recent book “Superpower: Three Choices for America’s Role in the World,”⁴ can intellectualize America’s role in the world. White-collar Republicans, like myself, went hoarse during the 2016 presidential primary trying to explain to Bubba how the liberal global order needed an indispensable America or at least a money-ball America, but Bubba was dead set on nationalism’s independent America. Similarly, and until now, Bubba could not be persuaded by white-collar Republicans during the primary that automation and artificial intelligence were the real forces causing his economic disruption, and not some globalist elite favoring Mexicans and the Chinese to blame for the loss of his manufacturing job.

As J.D. Vance brilliantly outlined in “Hillbilly Elegy,”⁵ what I call Bubba might be a socio-economic basket case but he does have his pride so he must look down upon somebody else. And that’s where xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, etc. all come into play. It’s not that Bubba has a well thought through strategy of how he’s going to reverse any of the macro trends changing his reality since 1950, and frankly elevating different demographics than his own out to 2050 and beyond. It is that Bubba just wants to vent, elect one of his own as president, and go back to numbing his socio-cultural reality with drugs and alcohol.

Ronald Reagan understood Bubba’s psychology, but he also understood that America was greater than just Bubba and thrived upon the new energy of immigrants. Reagan also understood the psychology of southern white evangelicals. Reagan understood that conservative evangelicals are a constituency to be mobilized, not empowered by delivering on the government imposed theocratic order they seek. Donald J. Trump, much like Reagan, is a TV personality and has so far played the same script Reagan played.

During the recently concluded presidential election, Donald Trump passed what I call Bubba’s Charlie Daniels litmus test, but this time added globalization and free trade to the cocktail mix of “others” to blame. Similarly, with conservative Evangelicals, Trump has tried to give them the “Radical Islam” ideological foe to reorient their “spiritual warfare” towards. Trump correctly understands, as a New Yorker, that conservative Evangelicalism today is simply a regional oppositional subculture and must therefore have a villain to play the role of spiritual hero against to maintain its own fracturing base. Trump throws conservative Evangelicals the rhetorical “Radical Islam” red meat, because, truth be told, he has no interest in delivering for them their longtime bread and butter social issues of abortion and gay marriage.

Some conservative Evangelical leaders have looked back upon the Reagan era and rightly concluded they achieved nothing strategic for their decades of “moral majority” Christian-Nationalism, aka Christianist, activism in politics. Bubba also looks back upon the Reagan era, and sees that millions of undocumented immigrants were granted citizenship further expediting the demographic and socio-economic transformation of America begun in the 1950s.

As Stephen Prothero explained in “Why Liberals Win (Even When They Lose Elections): How America’s Raucous, Nasty, and Mean “Culture Wars” Make for a More Inclusive Nation,”⁶ we Americans, culturally speaking, are a loud and frankly unsophisticated bunch. There’s a pattern to our madness that goes back over two full centuries. Islam has featured prominently in 18^th, 19^th, 20^th and now 21^st culture wars. Donald J. Trump is simply the latest standard bearer for a minority sub-culture that occasionally achieves plurality status during elections.

Trump was a minority candidate during the Republican presidential primary with simply a plurality support, and in the general election won the electoral college but lost the popular vote. Today in 2017, President Trump governs as a minority president with declining public support desperately trying to keep his own base from fragmenting further in the current political environment. 2017 is already off on a very rocky start for President Trump with multiple courts halting his executive orders and a Republican Party moving in three different directions on his initial legislative agenda, the repeal and replacement of Obamacare.

The history of the Donald J. Trump administration is not fully written yet, but more than half-way through his first 100 days he can’t give Bubba today what he promised him yesterday.

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Mohamed Elibiary

Mohamed Elibiary co-founded the Freedom and Justice Foundation (F&J) in November 2002 to promote a Centrist Public Policy environment in Texas by coordinating the state level government and interfaith community relations for the organized Texas Muslim community. In 2005, Mohamed spearheaded the launching of the Texas Islamic Council (T.I.C.) as an F&J program for Muslim congregations, which has quickly grown to become the state's largest Muslim network encompasing 100,000 Texans. As Coordinator of the T.I.C., Mohamed developed working relationships with similar faith-based entities around Texas including the Texas Conference of Churches, Texas Catholic Conference and the Baptist General Convention of Texas. In 2006, the 16 largest Muslim congregations and civic organizations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area followed this example by creating a collective representative body called the North Texas Islamic Council (NTIC) and Mohamed was elected to its 7 member executive governing body. Since 2005, Mohamed, as a National Security Policy Analyst, has been advising intelligence and law enforcement agencies (ex. FBI, DHS, NCTC, ODNI, etc.) on various Counter-Terrorism (CT) issues (ex. Domestic Intelligence, Strategic Intelligence Analysis, Information Sharing and Radicalization).

3 Comments

SD

March 18, 2017 at 12:26 AM

Muslim Matters, you have sunk to a new low by publishing the above editorial.

Had this screed been written about any other group than the white, male working class, it would have been deemed too racist for almost any publication except Storm Front. Had the demeaning term “Bubba” been replaced with “Ahmed” or “Miguel”, it would have never passed muster. This opinion piece drips with unabashed racial animosity. What exactly have the white working class done to you, Mohammed Elibiary? Have they attacked you on the street? Raped your wife? Burned down your house?

The truth about the white working class is that they are a loyal and hard-working group of people, who struggle to provide for their families. Evangelical Christians, as much as I might disagree with their theology, are extremely generous and kind, even to those with whom they differ. Appalachia, one of poorest regions of the country, and full of the Bubbas you despise so much, is rich with culture and low in crime–in spite of the desperate conditions people live in.

My great-grandfather dropped out of school in third grade after his father died and worked to support his family. Was he one of the “unsophisticated” Bubbas you describe?

This article literally makes me sick to my stomach. Here is what Walt Whitman, the Good Gray Poet, said about Bubbas:

“I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe
and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the
deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the
morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at
work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young
fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.”

Walt Whitman was a man with more insight than one thousand Mohamed Elibiarys.

Reply
Kristy

March 19, 2017 at 4:19 AM

While I can excuse you for poor writing skills, ignorance of American Christianity and your overall oafishness, I will not let you go without pointing out that grown men who resort to name calling and insults directed at those they perceive to be of lesser value, coupled with intentionally spreading deceptive lies, topped off with a generous helping of what I call distractics, and always blaming others for their own misfortune and failure, is the calling card of Islamists.
Suffice it to say that your parents are likely to blame for both your failure as a human and your morphing into an Islamic terrorist.

Because of your self-aggrandizement of your own self-worth, you may not yet know that ignorance is not bliss. This is particularly true in your baseless bigoted bile that “Trump correctly understands, as a New Yorker, that conservative Evangelicalism today is simply a regional oppositional subculture and must therefore have a villain to play the role of spiritual hero against to maintain its own fracturing base”. Where are your references to the truth of this statement? But of course, fake news has no references. On the other hand, it is laughable to note your diligence in providing references to your other favorite human idols in your essay.

So as a Public Service to you I am informing you that no matter what word you use- whether Evangelical, Evangelicalism or Evangelists- they all mean the same. “Evangelical” comes from the Greek word Euangelion, meaning “The Good News” or the “Gospel.” The Evangelical faith and its followers focus on the Gospel of Salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ’s atonement. The only villain we call upon The Lord God to push back against for our protection is the evil of Satan himself. Evangelism, missions, and nurturing the faithful are our common goals.
Unlike Islamists, the more conservative the Evangelical, the more Christ-like in love, forgiveness and peaceful they become. No one in the civilized world has reported hearing an Evangelical Christian shout “Praise Jesus!” while cutting off someone’s head or blowing them up.
As to Evangelicals being a regional subculture, our region is the world and as a subculture, 58% of all American Christians are Evangelicals belonging to over 95% of Christian denominations. While united by the Truths of the Nicene Creed, we are denominationally diverse.

Politically we are also diverse. The same Evangelicals who helped oust Jimmy Carter, the born-again Democratic president who brought Evangelicals into the political light, replaced him with Ronald Reagan, the movie star Republican president.

Your pre-pubescent opinions that “Bubba might have a social media account and a smart phone today, but he’s fundamentally not all that more sophisticated today to the complexities of the modern era” and, “It is that Bubba just wants to vent, elect one of his own as president, and go back to numbing his socio-cultural reality with drugs and alcohol” reminds me (and all those Bubba Evangelicals you tried to belittle) of these words of Jesus: “Father, forgive them because they do not know what they are doing”.

Lucky for you that Bubbas are Christians and not Muslims.
Bless the good Christian folk you shamelessly ridicule.
And I’m sorry if you lost your government job under Trump for being a fake. God help us when fakes who write fake news brag about receiving fake rewards no better than the blue stars you received as a child for “effort”. The next time I need proof of snakes in the FBI and Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) at DHS, I will be sure to quote your words, Bubba.

Reply
Sharron Marshall

November 11, 2020 at 8:14 PM

This message is for Mohamed Elibiary, Thank-you for doing goodwill toward fellow believers and persons at large. The transition from one place to another may be trialsome with all the effort you put into establishing a spiritual haven for Muslims also Islam America is an benefactor of a wonderfully warm people and you are praise worthy for your care of others.

Reply