Poor White People

Come and let us pity white people. They are the real victims here.

That, in essence, is the battle cry that’s powered much of American politics for the last 30 years, the last 15 in particular. It has echoed from the halls of government to the set of Fox “News” to the far-flung strands of the world wide web.

Poor white people. They are being overrun by caravans when not murdered by illegals or terrorized by Muslims or tyrannized by masks or oppressed by vaccinations or canceled by culture or lied to by media or lied upon by media or cheated by elections or blamed by Blacks or vexed by “Press 1 for English.”

Or replaced — evicted from their God-ordained pre-eminence by “others” who will be obedient voters for the liberal left. So says the so-called “Great Replacement Theory,” which originated in the fever swamps of white supremacy and now has a regular megaphone on Fox, courtesy of Tucker Carlson.

But that hasn’t been his message alone. It’s also been the message of New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, would-be Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, of conservatism as a whole, in response to a demographic shift first forecast years ago: that by 2050, people of color will constitute a majority of the population. Where some of us saw in that prediction change and challenge, they saw the gains to be made by fomenting white panic.

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That’s how you get a country where Critical Race Theory is banned by law, but you can learn Great Replacement Theory by turning on Fox. Where voting keeps getting harder and gun ownership easier. Where Colin Kaepernick is unemployed, and Carlson is not.

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