Donald Trump Negative Influence

Trump was born into wealth and has entrepreneurial and business experience, however, those skills are not necessarily transferable when it comes to occupying the highest political seat in the country. Nevertheless, Trump took over a dozen more experienced politicians, eliminating his GOP opposition and securing the nomination from the Republican party a little over a year after announcing his candidacy.
What would motivate someone like Trump to run for office? Neo-Marxian theorist, C. Wright Mills, argued that men of Trump’s stature, who are otherwise known as the “power elite,” are greatly concerned with exercising control over the institutions in society (Ritzer 2013). Mills also points out, “to be celebrated, to be wealthy, to have power
requires access to major institutions, for the institutional positions men occupy determine in large part their chances to have and to hold these valued experiences (Mills and Wolfe 2000:11).” Thus, by entering the presidential race, Trump could elevate both his personal and celebrity status.
Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump consistently engaged in deviant behavior, which not only went against social norms, but defied political norms as well.
He flooded the campaign trail with prejudicial, misogynistic, and slanderous rhetoric. He frequently criticized and insulted people based on their gender, race, religion, and even physical capabilities. Moreover, Trump promised to “make America great again,” which ended up being his most notable slogan. With this statement, along with his provocative behavior, one could presume that Trump was insinuating that this country was much greater in the past, and perhaps that concept does ring true for the white man. However, on the contrary, others might argue that America has made considerable progress over the last century and there has been no other time in the nation’s past in which it has been greater. This example of “institutional racism is the product of years of white supremacy, and [was] designed to produce far-reaching benefits for white people (Desmond and Emirbayer
2009:345).”
In their book, Racial Domination, Racial Progress, Desmond and Emirbayer (2010) explain how whiteness and blackness were invented after the colonization of America and that “race,” as we understand it today, was created in order to establish a legitimate hierarchy in society. In his Critical Race Theory, W.E.B. Du Bois postulates that race is a social construction. “It is not an inherent feature of persons tied to biology, but rather it is a historically bounded concept used to organize and classify people (Ritzer 2013:66).” In other words, race is based on phenotype and ancestry but also takes into account geographic and social factors (Desmond and Emirbayer 2009). Essentially, “blackness became associated with bondage, inferiority, and social death; whiteness with freedom, superiority, and life (Desmond and Emirbayer 2010:95).”
Although Trump’s political agenda and core policy views were never made fully clear during the presidential campaign, his firm stance on three key issues was repeatedly accentuated; he vowed to build a wall on the Mexico border, called for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” and that he would bring manufacturing jobs back (Qiu 2016). Trump recognized the fears and frustrations of middle class workers, whom he referred to as “the forgotten,” and found suitable scapegoats to blame for problems with drugs, violence, terrorism, and job losses that seemingly marginalized them. “Race, ethnicity, and nationality are overlapping symbolic categories that influence how we see the world around us, how we view ourselves, and how we divide “us” from “them” (Desmond and Emirbayer 2009:339).” In this scenario, whether intentional or not, Trump laid the foundation of an “us against them” disposition. If “them” is referring to Mexicans, Muslims, and foreign countries like China, then one can deduce that the antithesis correlates “us” to white Americans. This type of scapegoating and “racism is often habitual, unintentional, [and] commonplace...in the social institutions in which we are all embedded (Desmond and Emirbayer 2010:27).” At the turn of the century, for example, white, native-born Americans began blaming “immigrants for the rise of urban slums, crime, and class conflict,” thereby resulting in the creation of strict, new immigration policies in which non-whites were denied entry into the U.S. (Desmond and Emirbayer 2009).
In spite of all this contemptuousness, and contrary to election poll predictions, Trump managed to win the electoral college and become the 45th president of the United States. The results of the 2016 presidential election perplexed many Americans, however, by examining the exit poll results, it is easy to see where Trump got the majority of votes. According to the National Election Pool, voters without a college degree cast their ballots for Trump as follows: Black women: 3%, Black men: 11%, White women: 61%, and White men: 71% (Clement and Guskin 2016). The majority of supporters were middle class whites. Trump had successfully employed a method of estrangement which was used in the late 1800’s to drive a wedge between white and black workers with nearly identical interests. Du Bois elaborated by explaining “that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage...and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment deference shown them.” (Du Bois and Gates 2007:17). Furthermore, blacks and non-whites were exploited, repressed, and ridiculed; they lived in a state of constant fear of violence and lynching at the hands of the whites (Du Bois and Gates 2007).
During his inaugural address, Trump proclaimed that his vision was to put “America First.” The problem with this aggressive nationalistic identity is that, when led by the power elite, it can lead to hostile conflict within a nation as well as global rivalry. “Nationalism has been associated with racism and fascism [...and] stirred ethnic hatred and conflict that ignited two world wars (Cozic 1994:26).” It is dangerous for people in positions of power, to attribute negative connotations to socially constructed categories of people based on race, instead of the individuals themselves. “Such categories divide the world along otherwise arbitrary lines and make us believe that there is nothing at all arbitrary about such a division. (Desmond and Emirbayer 2009:339).” Moreover, leaders and lawmakers who regard their nation as superior to others, can implement disadvantageous immigration laws. For example, in 1790, congress passed a law granting citizenship to free, white people, and beginning in 1878, racial prerequisite cases were brought in front of the U.S. Supreme Court to determine people’s race and eligibility. “Deemed worthy of citizenship, white people were understood to be upstanding, law-abiding, moral, and intelligent. Conversely, non-white people, from whom citizenship was withheld, were thought to be base, criminal, untrustworthy, and of lesser intelligence (Desmond and Emirbayer 2009:342).” More recently, Trump followed up on his proposed Muslim ban by signing an executive order, one week after taking office, which temporarily barred citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. His actions caused chaos and sparked massive protests across the country; soon after, the travel ban was suspended by the court, being ruled unconstitutional.
Another potentially dangerous result of Donald Trump leading this country is the possibility of political corruption.
Mills believed that “higher immortality” is institutionalized due to the decline in ethics among the power elite. Even more troubling is that corruption is thought to be “deeply intertwined with the politics of the military state" which means that it can affect decisions that are made by politicians, government leaders, and the justice system (Mills and Wolfe 2000:343). Political corruption impedes democracy and can have detrimental political, social, economic, and environmental effects. Additionally, Dahrendorf asserted that social order stems from the coercion of the power elite as opposed to societies “being held together informally by norms, values, and a common morality (Ritzer 2013:95).” There is a chance that Trump will try to preserve white privilege and hinder diversification, as is already evident from his choice of cabinet members. One key element in Dahrendorf’s study of authority in social structure is that authority is attached to positions within societies and does not reside in the individual (Ritzer
2013).