The Desperation that Feeds Trump Supporters and the Other America
I’ve been thinking about how to address Donald Trump’s ascendancy, and it took me a few days to process the election and see it clearly for what it is. My starting place is one of love for my brothers and sisters, but I must admit this election is a little hard for me. After all, Trump has fed the sleeping lions of white-lashing racism with his rhetoric, and he has promised to ban Muslims, deport millions of illegal immigrants and build a wall to separate us from our southern neighbors. Moreover, at least eleven women have accused Trump of sexual assault, and Trump himself has admitted to believing that his celebrity status entitles him to grab women by the genitals. This is the man Americans elected. And the response of many Americans is one of anger, fear, and dismay.
Like I said, it took me a few days to process my own feelings and thoughts. I shared some of this outrage and dismay. But I am not, as so many people have suggested, a Clinton apologist. Indeed, I see, as many others have seen, the Obama presidency as representing a dramatic expansion of Executive powers, with a corresponding decrease in American freedoms. Poverty still haunts minority populations, and we still see Two Americas, as Martin Luther King pointed out: one is rich, the other is poor. One is entitled; the other is deprived. Under Obama, big banking grew larger and continued its criminal taking from the lower and middle classes; drone attacks accelerated on innocent populations; health care grew exponentially more expensive; real wages hardly changed (except to feed the deep pockets of the autocrats who run big corporations); surveillance of innocent Americans expanded beyond measure; police brutality and militarization spiraled upward; in other words, the rich got richer, and the poor ate canned soup for dinner. If you look critically at his actual record, Obama grew the government, fed the corporate coffers, and did very little to protect human rights.
At least, that’s my take on it. In coming to my conclusions, I was influenced by blogs written by Deb Bryan and R.R. Wolfgang, as well as articles that appeared in The Intercept, Democracy Now, The Guardian, and the website Brand New Congress. Finally, I was also impacted by a book review of Arlie Russell Hochschild’s new book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. Hochschild spent five years traveling to Louisiana and getting to know some of Trump’s most ardent supporters, or those who live in the economically deprived and environmentally ravaged vicinity of the Bayou in southwestern Louisiana. Hochschild listened to these southerners and tried to comprehend them in full.
I need to emphasize this point: we need to listen to one another’s viewpoints in order to understand why people voted the way they did. Instead of jumping to the conclusion (which itself relies upon a logical fallacy) that all those who voted for a man who speaks in racist and sexist terms are also racist and sexist, we need to listen to Trump supporters and seek to understand their actual point of view. Those of us who voted for someone other than Trump may well feel horrified by the prospect of a fascist takeover of America, but to arrest the movement that supports Trump, we also must understand what fuels it. We need to understand our fellow Americans and offer them another alternative. And we also need to understand that many, many Americans viewed the Obama presidency in a negative light. In fact, many of the so-called “Deplorables” felt like they were drowning under Obama. Their piece of the American Dream had shrunk to a phantasmic sliver, like silvery fairy dust dispersed over a wind-blown range.
Russell Brand spoke of this in a recent video:
As often is the case, Russell Brand delivers a solid and comprehensible perspective on how to think about the Trump Presidency. The fact is we need to listen to those who feel like Trump gives them a voice. We need to understand the failures of Liberal Democracy in America if we are to achieve meaningful political change. Russell lists some of these failures:
- Americans are seeking true change, and viewed Hillary Clinton as likely to continue Obama’s policies. Many of these policies failed to ameliorate the lives of the common people.
- Over the last eight years, there has been terrible unrest in many populations, fed by poverty, racism, and a sense of despair. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, drones kill, and money from America feeds the killings, which in turn feeds the growth of terrorist organizations like Isis. Amid all this appears corporate bailouts without corresponding aid to the lower classes, who flounder at subsistence wages.
- We still have the mindset that created the nuclear weapons; we haven’t achieved disarmament, and we keep ploughing more money into armaments and foreign entanglements.
- Hillary Clinton would have continued Obama’s war on the Middle East and she would have continued to cozy up to American banks and corporations, all of which has led to the decline in how real Americans are treated. After all, real Americans fight in these wars, real Americans are struggling to live off of subsistence level wages, and real Americans are facing their Other America each and every day.
- The conditions have occurred under which Trump could become President. He is merely taking advantage of a failure of American Liberalism, which did not offer a choice that made sense to the electorate.
- The political system does not connect with people or give the disenfranchised Americans true power.
- A true alternative was not provided by Hillary Clinton. The Democrats had the revolutionary Bernie Sanders and gave the people a recycled alternative instead: a politician beholden to banks and corporate cronies.
As Russell explains, we need to offer actual not superficial alternatives. Clinton would have continued policies begun under prior administrations that did not solve the issues faced by blue collar Americans. This election, argues Russell, was inevitable and it had to happen–we needed to reach some sort of crisis, so that we could not continue on as we were.
Now we know that politics cannot continue on as they have been. But we must seek change going forward by starting with our own inner reality. In order to change the world, we must change our mindset. And we need to love one another–absolutely we must love one another. We must find a way to see how our brothers and sisters reached a place where such a desperate vote for an individual like Trump felt necessary. We need to understand how they feel; we need to comprehend and care about the Other America. And all of us need to become involved in our country’s political and social future. We must work on true democratic reform. We must prepare for revolution. Peaceful revolution.
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As good of a closing paragraph as that felt to write, it lacks specifics, and thus felt a little hollow to me. I want to give you things you can actually do.
For starters, you can get involved in your local community.
I volunteer through my nonprofit, Strays Welcome Interfaith Ministries. We help the homeless and abused women in particular. For certain, there are shelters in your community who need your support, and there are also churches who are helping various people who are in need. Speaking of churches, one near me is adopting a Syrian refugee family, and I am thinking of asking if my own church, The Unitarian Universalist Church of the Shenandoah Valley, will do the same thing. I’m gonna offer to help run the program. If you wanted to help refugees, you could ask your church if you could get involved in a similar program or efforts.
Another way you can help is by getting involved in local politics. There is an organization built by Bernie Sanders supporters, called Brand New Congress, that is trying to recruit 400 individuals (non-politicians) to run for political office. For more information, please go here: https://brandnewcongress.org/home. To better reach politicans, here is a helpful article: “How to Make Your Congressman Listen to You“.
You could also dedicate your art to revolutionary politics. I, for one, am beginning a new novel which will be a political saga. The entire point of this novel will be to help awaken humanity to the need for change, and the intent will be to provide a moral and positive blueprint for change. If you’re not inclined to art, but wish to speak up, you could write letters to newspapers or media outlets, or you could call your senators–just don’t be silent. Silence is what got us here. Speaking up with love and commitment to achieving political change is necessary.
You could also work with environmental action groups. Many, many organizations are rising up in support of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. And keep in mind, Obama is taking a “wait and see” attitude, which means the pipeline is gonna get built unless enough citizens rise up in peaceful political protest against it. Here are some places to find Standing Rock protest information:
https://www.facebook.com/nodakotaaccess/
https://www.facebook.com/Standing-Rock-Rising-1131347910264898/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1749814981940531/
http://standwithstandingrock.net/take-action/
http://hugs.world/standingrock/
And here’s a link for a list of peaceful protests occurring around the nation’s capital: Assemble
There are also peaceful protest groups you can join, like:
My point is, get involved. Get involved locally; get involved globally. But get involved. Use your special, God-given skills and abilities to make this world a better place. With love as your root, and courage as your foundation, please, get involved.