Seeking Supremacy Lessens Everyone
The take that pleases no one.
Last weekend, ProPublica revealed the identities of the Border Patrol agents who executed Alex Pretti during the ongoing MAGA occupation of Minneapolis. They are Jesus Ochoa, 43, and Raymundo Gutierrez, 35. People have presumed from their names that they are Hispanic or otherwise “non-white,” which has resulted in much commentary and assorted academic tracts about how “non-white” people can still promote white supremacy.
Of course, I have a slightly different perspective. I’ve long believed that in our screwed-up society, the “identity” that matters most is “power” — who has it and who doesn’t. There is a revelatory scene in Tony Kushner’s Angels In America, when Donald Trump’s mentor and future bunkmate in hell Roy Cohn rejects his doctor’s observation and diagnosis that he’s gay and dying from AIDS.
Your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words, on labels, that you believe they mean what they seem to mean. AIDS, homosexual, gay, lesbian, you think these are names that tell you who someone sleeps with? They don’t tell you that. No. Like all labels they tell you one thing and one thing only: where does an individual so identified fit in the food chain, in the pecking order? Not ideology, or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout. Not who I fuck or who fucks me but who will pick up the phone when I call, who owes me favors. This is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not understand this, homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men. But really this is wrong. Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who in 15 years of trying can’t pass a pissant anti-discrimination bill through city council. Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows. Who have zero clout. Does this sound like me, Henry? No. I have clout. A lot.
…
I don’t want you to be impressed. I want you to understand. This is not sophistry. And this is not hypocrisy. This is reality. I have sex with men. But unlike nearly every other man of whom this is true, I bring the guy I’m screwing to the White House and President Reagan smiles at us and shakes his hand. Because what I am is defined entirely by who I am. Roy Cohn is not a homosexual. Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man, Henry, who fucks around with guys. So, no, Henry, no. AIDS is what homosexuals have. I have liver cancer.
(Watch below. Sorry, I can’t find a good copy of the Al Pacino performance online but Larry Yando does a great job here. He actually sounds like Cohn.)
When people point out that “whiteness” is arbitrary and conditional, they are referring to power, not physical appearance or cultural heritage. We don’t know why Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez became Border Patrol agents. Their motivation could be perfectly mundane, like when Maxwell Smart explained that he became a spy because “I needed the money,” but the chances are very good that they enjoyed exerting power over others. The idea that people of color are immune from this craven instinct — the urge to dominate — is itself racist. Like Roy Cohn, many “non-white” MAGA types take offense when liberals seek to define them as the powerless, the victimized. It’s a rigid, fixed class with no chance for advancement. They far prefer the power they wield when they put on a uniform, a suit, or a robe.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is often accused of “self-hatred,” but I think he loves himself just fine. He simply has no affection for the powerless and vulnerable just because they have a similar complexion, and he greatly resents the liberal assertion that he should. He has ascended to the ultimate private club of privilege. That’s his “community.” There’s no reason Thomas should care about a poor Black person who’s unjustly on death row any more than his billionaire buddy Harlan Crow cares about a white Appalachian on the same cell block. The capacity of empathy isn’t influenced by melanin count.
Alex Pretti grew up in Wisconsin, where he was in the choir and the Boy Scouts. He attended Preble High School in Green Bay. It’s a very middle-class upbringing. Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez are both from South Texas. They were able to execute an American citizen, who’s white, and the government fully supports them. That is power, the free exercise of vicious brutality without accountability. They are like the droogs in A Clockwork Orange. They found a gang with benefits and far too much job security. It’s the fulfillment of their own perverse American dream. (Watch below.)
Black people who owned other Black people or just looked down on darker skinned Black people perhaps “bought into white supremacy,” but practically speaking, they embraced the dehumanization of others for profit and status. I think my issue with the concept of white supremacy as a sort of Rosetta Stone for society’s ills is that racists ultimately end up hating everyone. It’s what drives them. True, Trump demonstrates special contempt for Black women but he’s also horrible to white women … and white men … and ultimately anyone who’s not him. He has no loyalty to a master race. He’s out for himself, and his list of victims is quite diverse.
Of course, Stephen Miller and Elon Musk are definitely white nationalists but even that seems like too fancy a term for emotionally damaged man children whose insecurity demands they feel superior to someone. In a blistering decision that stayed Kristi Noem’s order removing temporary protective status for Haitians, Judge Ana Reyes argued that Noem’s motivations were transparent “hostility to nonwhite immigrants.”
Kristi Noem, The Merry Puppy Murderess Of South Dakota, With Her Rendition Of The Gravel Pit Tango!
There’s solid evidence that Kristi Noem’s a white supremacist. Her initials are literally “KLAN.” However, she shot a puppy gangland style and bragged about it, so I think her true defining ideology is sadism. She’s also a soulless opportunist who doesn’t mind hurting people in pursuit of power. The think pieces argue that Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez will never benefit long term from serving white supremacy, but neither will Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller, or Donald Trump. The same is true of those who respond to white male supremacy with their own forms of racial or gender supremacy. The need to feel superior to others eventually destroys you.
Well written and thought-out piece.
𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑙 𝑠𝑢𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑦𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝑢.
A guy in a bunker over 80 years ago proves the truth of that statement.
I've always thought that the Log Cabin Republicans primarily identify not as (almost entirely) gay men, but as Wealthy-Americans. They're in the club and that's all that counts.