Trump’s Targeting of Homeless Californians Just Another Battle in the Culture War
Donald Trump, apparently, has declared war on California. After the state, in cooperation with automotive companies, developed its own set of regulations on carbon emissions in response to the E.P.A.’s planned rollback of goals for automotive manufacturers to improve gas mileage, Trump took action to try to limit California’s authority to set environmental regulations, stymieing the state’s plan. Fueled by apparent anger towards the liberal state, Trump also recently took the bizarre step of pressuring the E.P.A. to declare California’s homeless population an environmental risk. Of course, it is shockingly obvious that the population in question pose no such threat whatsoever, and this political pressure has no basis in reality. The truth, in fact, is the opposite: homeless people both contribute the least of any population to climate change, which is the primary environmental concern, and suffer the most from its effects, as their capacity to find shelter during extreme weather events and migrate to more habitable areas is extremely limited. Rather, Trump’s decision to berate the homeless, blaming them for an issue they clearly have nothing to do with, is simply part of a pattern of behavior in which the President cruelly exploits the disenfranchised for his own political and personal ends.
This tactic is useful for authoritarian leaders such as Trump. A political coalition which is united against a common enemy is a powerful one, and the easiest enemies to unite against are those who do not have political, social, and economic power. Whether it’s a deliberate strategy on Trump’s part or a manifestation of his psychological pathology, the demonization of minority groups has been the Trump campaign theory since the beginning. The idea of the wall on the southern border has always drawn its power from being a symbol of the strength granted by minority oppression, and the US’s policy of deliberate cruelty towards immigrants serves as evidence of this political theory. While his targeting of Hispanic immigrants is the most obvious, Trump has also gone after other minority groups, infamously claiming there were “some fine people on both sides” of a deadly incident in Charlottesville involving a group of white nationalist protestors, and taking executive action in an attempt to limit the number of Muslim immigrants shortly after assuming the presidency.
The White House claims that San Francisco’s homelessness problem breaks environmental rules because used needles, originating in homeless communities, wind up in the ocean. San Francisco’s mayor, London Breed, was quick to refute this claim, citing the city’s advanced sewer system which prevents debris from flowing into the bay. The mayor also described how the city was already committed to helping homeless people, noting that the city was investing in improving homeless shelters, affordable housing, and programs to help people with mental illnesses and drug addiction. Meanwhile, under Trump, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is imposing additional limits on federal public housing opportunities, and in interviews Trump has shown his sympathies lie more with the taxpayers and others who have to deal with the problems created by homeless people rather than the homeless themselves, suggesting the real victims of the problem are people like police officers who catch diseases from the homeless. Any apparent concern Trump has for homeless people is at best insincere, or more likely a political ploy to demonize a vulnerable and underserved population for political ends.
By issuing claims that are, by their very nature, fundamentally and obviously anti-truth, Trump and his administration are asserting political dominance over facts themselves
From this perspective, the motivations behind Trump’s newest target become clear. By associating California with homelessness, Trump attempts to illustrate the failure of liberal politicians and policies, bolstering his oppositional political position. Because they are an easy target, homeless people are exploitable for the purpose of consolidating authoritarian power. Californian politicians are in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with Trump on the nature of the issue of widespread homelessness but disagreeing about potential solutions to the problem. Given Trump’s temperament and the nature of the political theory that drives his behavior, it is unlikely that any proposed solutions from the White House will actually involve benefiting the homeless. Rather, the White House supports a plan to move homeless people into the government’s care, which sounds appropriate until you consider the overcrowded, unsanitary, and inhumane conditions of these facilities. The cruelty, of course, is the point, as Trump sees this posturing towards California as a means by which to punish the liberal state, just as he views the cruelty of detention centers as a punishment for illegal immigration.
The fact that the belief that homeless people are an environmental threat is not only clearly false, but also the opposite of the truth, is also the point. By issuing claims that are, by their very nature, fundamentally and obviously anti-truth, Trump and his administration are asserting political dominance over facts themselves, a useful position in the establishment of a totalitarian state. Similar political behavior, in which government agencies present the opposite of truth as truth itself, was used to great effect during the rise of fascism in Europe in the 20th century and is chronicled in George Orwell’s famous dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty Four. In an authoritarian state, the various branches of government are gradually repurposed to serve as instruments with which tyrants can destroy their opposition; this is seen in the E.P.A.’s abandonment of concerns about climate change in favor of punishing homeless people, just as it is in N.O.A.A.’s knowingly false assertion that a hurricane was originally forecast to hit Alabama after the President said it was. In the culture war between the two major political parties, which Donald Trump deliberately stokes for political gain, the least privileged and culpable are the most victimized.
Featured image credit: Garry Knight, “Homeless by a Wall.“
Tyler Olhorst is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. You can reach him at inquiries@thenationaldigest.com.
