Thrasydeilosocracy

The weekend's news was dominated by Trump's executive order restricting immigration, which manages to be cruel and incompetent at the same time. But this striking actualization of a campaign trope comes after a week in which lying was the most notable behavior by Trump and members of his administration. Confronted with lies so blatantly false and easily disproved, some reporters created a slack channel to exchange tips for submitting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests regarding the Trump administration. While some observers sought to explain Trump's lying as learned behavior that had benefited him in his career as a businessman, others saw a more pernicious phenomenon.

Responding to Meryl Streep's speech after receiving the Cecil B. DeMille award for lifetime achievement at the Golden Globe awards, Donald Trump denied having mocked a reporter with a disability. 

"Throughout history, there are many examples of how the racism of white voters has been mobilized to favor a candidate for president," wrote Think Progress's Casey Quinlan the morning after the election. Quinlan cited particularly the candidacy of Barry Goldwater, and Richard Nixon's "southern strategy," which "took advantage of white people’s anxieties about the economic and social advancement of people of color."

Despite a persistent tendency on the part of mainstream media to omit the racial component and highlight economic anxiety of a so-called "working class," research and analysis has shown that this is inadequate. A Gallup study of 87,000 interviews conducted over the past year found that Trump supporters "on average, do not have lower incomes than other Americans, nor are they more likely to be unemployed." 

Among those who are similar in terms of income, education and other factors, those who view Trump favorably are more likely to be found in white enclaves — racially isolated Zip codes where the amount of diversity is lower than in surrounding areas.

In fact, as a number of studies showed, racial resentment correlated strongly with voters' support for Trump.