Ricky L. Jones

Opinion contributor

Undercard bouts are over, and the main event is set in Kentucky’s gubernatorial race. As polls predicted, the state’s Attorney General Andy Beshear will try to unseat Republican incumbent Matthew Bevin in November.

It should be an interesting race because the political bad blood between Bevin and the Beshear family has reached Hatfield/McCoy levels over the years. For Americans who love carnage and drama, this fight is sure not to disappoint.

Like the coming presidential election in 2020, the Beshear-Bevin showdown again unearths interesting, enduring and troubling questions about the country. During Kentucky’s Democratic primary, each camp argued their candidate was the person best-suited to defeat Bevin in the general election. Reasonable observers queried how could any of them not beat Bevin? The same can be asked of Donald Trump next year.

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Years after their elections, Trump and Bevin are no longer unknown commodities. There is no need to theorize, predict or debate about who and what they are or how they will lead. We know. We know they are mean-spirited, closed-minded and xenophobic. We know they are petty men with dictatorial tendencies.

We know they subscribe to backwards paradigms that peripheralize women, the poor and minorities. We know they are racially challenged. We know they are morally bankrupt liars. These men are not just terrible leaders, their humanity is questionable. Yet many people continue to pull them to their bosoms, defend and support them. Why?

In 2016, Trump called Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman,” and it became a rallying cry among his supporters. To be sure, this nastiness is not limited to Clinton. It comforts us to restrict our demonization to individuals like Trump and Bevin (and they certainly deserve it), but that’s too easy.

It is far less soothing when America has to look in the mirror and ask, who and what are we as a country? What have we become and, possibly, what have we always been? How deep into the abyss have we collectively descended to choose demagogues like Trump and Bevin, see them for what they are, and deign to choose them again?

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These men are not con-artists. That is a tired argument. They are open and notorious with their madness. Americans who back them have not been duped. They simply love them. To be sure, there is no need for extreme, elementary, blanket condemnations here.

All Americans do not embrace the Trump and Bevin archetypes, but a significant enough percentage certainly does. At the end of the day, this isn’t really about these two men. Even if they win again, they will eventually term-out. After that, we will still be left with the inexorable truth that our troubles remain because America is a nastier nation than many are willing to admit.

Think about it. Much of this nakedly capitalist country values paper (of the green variety) over people. Many are oblivious to immigrant children dying in American custody in a supposed effort to nativisticly “protect the borders.”

America watches the poor suffer and blames them for their fate — condemning them for “not working hard enough” while never engaging the systems that benefit the few and crush the many. This country claims to love and honor veterans, yet sits passively by as they suffer from homelessness, mental illness, and commit suicide in disproportionate numbers.

The nasty segment of this country still makes excuses for white supremacists — in the White House. It continues to glorify ideologies and iconography that reinforce the legitimacy of the Confederacy.

It is led by a president who prefers to keep a genocidal maniac like Andrew Jackson on its currency rather than an American freedom fighter like Harriet Tubman. The Bevins and Trumps of the world are not outliers or lepers in this putrid space — they are champions.

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Democrats have famously sent a long line of painfully average, uninspiring, milquetoast candidates into the political arena. That is not the case with Andy Beshear. He is actually well-suited for leadership.

In a sane state, he should beat Matthew Bevin running away in November. In a sane country, any nominee from the Democratic Party, even if it were your neighbor’s dog, should shellac Donald Trump next year. But alas, America is not sane — it is a nasty place, very nasty. So, we’ll see what happens.

Ricky L. Jones is chair of Pan-African Studies at the University of Louisville. His next book, co-authored with Marc Murphy, is titled, “Colin, Confederates and Con-Artists: The American Tragedy of Erasing History.” His column appears bi-weekly in the Courier Journal. Visit him at www.rickyljones.com.