Obama's Indifference to White 'Deaths of Despair'

By Cliff Kincaid

A Soros-funded faux Catholic group called Faith in Public Life is holding what it calls a “special briefing” on “Faithful Resistance to Rising White Nationalism,” featuring Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). This exercise is designed to further demonize white Americans who are waking up to what President Obama has done to them during his eight years in office.

At Pearl Harbor, President Obama condemned “the tug of tribalism” and “the urge to demonize those who are different.” Yet his administration did little to stop the heroin epidemic that disproportionately affects white communities devastated by bad trade deals, open borders and the Democratic Party’s anti-industrial policies.

Several researchers are using the phrase “Deaths of despair” to refer to what is happening in the “heroin beltway” of America.

The Associated Press reports that preliminary death certificate data for 2015 showed that the U.S. death rate rose for the first time in a decade, and that experts say white death trends are likely the primary reason.

Rather than admit that Obama’s legacy turned many white Americans against the Democrats, groups like the SPLC are attempting to portray racial consciousness among white people as something to fear. The SPLC’s profiteering is designed to add to its $300 million endowment fund, built on the basis of previous scares.

Rather than face facts, Bill Clinton has complained about “angry white males” voting against his wife, while the “former” Marxist and CNN analyst Van Jones called the victory by Donald J. Trump a “whitelash.” MTV aired a “New Year’s Resolutions for White Guys” video designed to put white males in their place.

Meanwhile, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is offering a course on “The Problem of Whiteness,” while an assistant professor at Drexel University tweeted “All I want for Christmas is White Genocide.”

At the website of Accuracy in Academia, Spencer Irvine lists ten different examples of “anti-white rhetoric” and anti-white classes at colleges.

According to the SPLC, whites are just supposed to take it.

Jared Taylor of American Renaissance comments that white Americans are “beginning to realize that they need an advocate for their interests, so they start searching the internet for an honest look at the facts—and they find us.” He hopes to raise enough money to hire a reporter to cover various racial angles in developing stories, saying, “Groundbreaking pro-white journalism is exactly what American Renaissance—and the country—need.”

One can be sure the SPLC and other such organizations will object to this approach as “white nationalism” or “white supremacy,” and try to raise money in response.

But for those willing to understand the deteriorating conditions in many white communities, a good book is Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. A few correspondents, such as Jake Tapper of CNN, have discovered that Vance offers valuable insights that help explain Trump’s victory. During a recent interview, Vance highlighted how Trump had focused during the campaign on the heroin epidemic affecting white America in the Rust Belt states. “He really made it a focus of his campaign,” Vance said. “And people wanted that to be a focus of the campaign because they’re so worried about it in their lives.”

“Heroin overdose deaths are high across the United States, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest,” reports the Drug Enforcement Administration. “Nationally, overdose deaths more than tripled between 2010 and 2014, with the most recent available data reporting 10,574 people in the United States died in 2014 from heroin overdoses.”

Shannon Monnat, an assistant professor and research associate at Penn State University, has published a study, “Deaths of Despair and Support for Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election,” which found a strong vote for Trump in Rust Belt states with higher drug, alcohol and suicide mortality rates. The Trump support, she notes, was heavy in what her study called America’s new post-industrial “heroin beltway.”

I noted in a column in October how “most of America is witnessing the growing drug problem in their local communities,” but that major media commentators were turning a blind eye to it.

But people could see for themselves: Trump was talking about closing the border to drugs and illegal aliens, while Hillary was secretly promising a foreign bank that the U.S. border would remain open for business and trade deals.

It was this kind of indifference to real human suffering that led to Hillary’s defeat. She had to accept the consequences of the anti-white policies that Obama and the Democratic Party had put into place.