In many ways, the United States was founded as a white supremacist state, where blacks and indigenous people had no rights and worse. What we are witnessing now with the Trump phenomenon is the pathetic last dying gasps of a bloated old whale of white supremacy. Working and middle class whites have seen their position in the traditional hierarchy downgraded, so when a guy like Trump comes along and starts throwing red meat their way, they eat it up. It's a fundamentally racist campaign in a country that is stretched at the seams with racist incidents, like all the extrajudicial police killings of blacks, and the church massacre in South Carolina. It's a really ugly spectacle.