Let's start by getting something straight. The differences between Donald Trump and Muhammad Ali are so stark that even the word "differences" cannot do them justice -- and I use that word purposefully. Ali stood up for his own conscience and rejected a war that made sense neither to him nor to millions of other Americans. He stood up for civil rights and for the oppressed. I may not have agreed with him on everything -- he opposed interracial relationships, for example -- however, the overwhelming majority of his stances were righteous. Furthermore, his willingness to sacrifice his material interests for his beliefs earns him even more respect. Trump? Well, he couldn't hold Ali's jockstrap.
One thing they have in common, however, is that both connected with and, for better or worse respectively, inspired many people. We must remember that people can be inspired to do abhorrent as well as great things. Much has been written about why Donald Trump has been able to move so many people to support him, including people turned off by more conventional politicians. Why? What I realized this weekend is that for some people Trump is their Muhammad Ali.
That's what hit me on Saturday as I was absorbing the news of Ali's death. I was listening to an interview with ESPN's Jemele Hill where she reflected on Ali's life and legacy, focussing on what he did for African Americans:
All of us want to be and live our authentic selves... [Ali] was his authentic self... He was unapologetic as a person and unapologetically black... For black people... in particular... we all drew some level of inspiration from that.
That's exactly what Trump does for his people. This became clearer to me as I thought and read more about the passing of the man we know as The Greatest. From Ali's New York Times obituary:
"He lived a lot of lives for a lot of people," said the comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory. "He was able to tell white folks for us to go to hell."
And this:
"I remember when Ali joined the Nation of Islam," Julian Bond, the civil rights activist and politician, once said. "The act of joining was not something many of us particularly liked. But the notion he'd do it -- that he'd jump out there, join this group that was so despised by mainstream America, and be proud of it -- sent a little thrill through you."
That living of the "authentic life," the "thrill" of doing what is despised by the mainstream, the telling of those whom you see as your opposition to "go to hell," that's exactly what Donald Trump does for millions of Americans. Going against 'political correctness' is their version of authenticity. It thrills Trump's core supporters -- the ones who backed him in the GOP primary when there were sixteen other Republicans to choose from.
To clarify, I'm not talking about everyone who will vote for Trump in November. I'm talking about the true believers. They are the racially and culturally resentful whites who want to build a wall and keep out all Muslims. As important as those concrete policies are to these Trump supporters, on a more fundamental level they identify with Trump because they want to feel like they can say in public what they really believe, something people who think they way they do supposedly haven't been able to do for decades, at least until Trump came along. As I've written previously:
Trumpism draws on a toxic cocktail consisting of white racial resentment, white cultural anxiety, and just general white despair. He offers an antidote to all these with his talk of making America great again. He evokes a better time -- saying he can bring back American greatness but, using coded language, making clear he's also talking about, as Jamelle Bouie put it, "restor[ing] the racial hierarchy upended by Barack Obama."
The people who want to see that restoration have hate -- born of anxiety and alienation -- in their hearts. They want to be able to express it, to shout it from the rooftops, and to destroy the value system and the 'PC' culture that tells them expressing that hate is wrong. They see themselves as racially and culturally oppressed. They see themselves as victims fighting for justice and freedom. They are wrong, but that doesn't change how they feel. They want to be their "authentic selves," and Donald Trump is their Muhammad Ali. Writing that makes me cringe, but that doesn't make it any less accurate.