(Like Panda, apologies for the length, but this is what I sent to friends and family the morning after)
Donald Trump swept into the presidency by tapping into a current of emotion that mushroomed into a movement. He prevailed over a more qualified and ‘reasonable’ opponent.
Barack Obama swept into the presidency by tapping into a current of emotion that mushroomed into a movement. He prevailed over a more qualified and ‘reasonable’ opponent.
The fact that you may see one of these currents as ‘good’ and the other as ‘bad’ is irrelevant. The person next to you may define them conversely. In either case, the members of these movements were demanding the same thing: “listen to me!”
The fact that the media may have readily heard one of those pleas but largely turned a deaf ear to the other is now inconsequential. They have their own soul searching to do.
Underlying both of these instances is the eternal argument about emotion versus reason. The ancient Greeks believed reason to be predominant, although Socrates allowed that they were two horses connected to a chariot, pulling in opposite directions.
Not until the Enlightenment was this orthodoxy challenged, when David Hume countered, “reason is a slave to the passions.”
And while I hesitate to suggest any implication or association here (none intended), it was Hitler who said, “I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.”
There will be a thousand explanations offered and a billion words written to explain this election. I think a writer in Mother Jones, who spent five years studying those who would come to be known as ‘Trump voters” probably stated their feelings best:
You are patiently standing in the middle of a long line stretching toward the horizon, where the American Dream awaits. But as you wait, you see people cutting in line ahead of you. Many of these line-cutters are black—beneficiaries of affirmative action or welfare. Some are career-driven women pushing into jobs they never had before. Then you see immigrants, Mexicans, Somalis, the Syrian refugees yet to come. As you wait in this unmoving line, you're being asked to feel sorry for them all. You have a good heart. But who is deciding who you should feel compassion for? Then you see President Barack Hussein Obama waving the line-cutters forward. He's on their side. In fact, isn't he a line-cutter too? How did this fatherless black guy pay for Harvard? As you wait your turn, Obama is using the money in your pocket to help the line-cutters. He and his liberal backers have removed the shame from taking. The government has become an instrument for redistributing your money to the undeserving. It's not your government anymore; it's theirs.
And I think, there it is. There’s the resentment. There are the votes.
We can say this is demonstrably false—that progress these last eight years has helped every group. But that’s my reasoning.
It doesn’t erase their anguish. No person wants to be left behind…and certainly not see their kids left behind. And that’s what they feel. That’s their emotion.
But before we dismiss this as unfounded complaint from the right, we might want to consider another current of passion that fueled another major candidacy: Occupy Wall Street gave birth to Bernie Sanders. Many Trump voters listed Sanders as their second choice. These are two sides to this same coin. Something is wrong in who gets what.
So over the closing days, when Donald Trump started complaining about a ‘rigged system’, the punditry pooh-poohed that. How in the world could you fix an entire national election, across all those three thousand counties?
But I think in the heartland…and also in some parts of liberal America…the message was heard differently. The rigged system that needed fixing was the one that funnels money from the middle…and pushes it either to the bottom…or to the top.
And now it’s up to the King of the Top, Donald Trump, to fix it.
Here we go…