In lieu of recent executive orders by President Donald Trump, it has become abundantly clear that the nearly 60 million people who voted for him weren’t after a referendum on economic policy, but an outlet for racial restructuring.

It wasn’t the rural uneducated working class whites who gobbled up the nationalistic message born of the alt right, fostered by National Security Council member and former Breitbart media editor Steve Bannon, and then disseminated to the masses in the form of political red meat.

To the contrary, it was college educated whites who switched out their Obama/Biden ’08 bumper stickers for a chance to witness morning in Reagan’s America, experience Kennedy’s Camelot or just make America great again.

Exit polls from over 20 states during the primary elections showed Trump supporters bring home a higher income than the national average at roughly $70,000 per household.

The new car smell was gone from this administration the moment Trump signed his second executive order on Jan. 24.

It cleared a path to continue construction on the Dakota Access oil pipeline, disenfranchising thousands of Native Americans in the process.

His first order was to begin the process of repealing the Affordable Care Act.

On the following day, Jan. 25, Trump signed the order beginning the exploratory process of building the border wall and to add 10,000 immigration agents to the federal roster.

As the economic issues that conservative policy wonks championed during the campaign moved from the backseat to the trunk, the overwhelmingly white voting base still denied blatant race-based legislation was coming from the administration in the form of executive orders.

Public sentiment shifted following the travel ban executive order that unconstitutionally restricted the emigration of people from seven majority Muslim nations, fueling protests at airports and courthouses across the country.

Proponents of Trump’s order argued the ban was only about combating terrorism and that it had little to do with race or religion.

Targeted hate was again on display last week in what Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) calls a five-day targeted enforcement of immigration laws that saw 160 immigrants gathered and deported from Southern California, not to mention an Arizona mother of two whose crime was attempting to work by fraudulently paying into a system (Social Security) she could never collect from.

But if you ask Trump supporters, targeted deportations in immigrant communities while thousands of visa violators exist is not racist though, just protecting our borders. How about the nomination and subsequent confirmation of Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions as the 84th attorney general of the U.S.?

Sessions’ claim to fame is being too racist to be appointed to the U.S. district court while also saying that the Voting Rights Act is an intrusive piece of legislation.

I suppose his support of voter disenfranchisement laws like the one in North Carolina that was deemed by the courts to target black people with “surgical precision” is not racist either.

These people urging others to give Trump a chance aren’t the ones whose lives could be turned upside down in an instant.

So yes, affected groups are justified if emotions are worn proudly on both sleeves.

The unthinkable things that might never happen to you can happen to any of us with just the swipe of a pen.

Robert Clinton is the opinion  editor of The Advocate. Contact him at @Rclinton3 on Twitter.