What kind of country will we be on Wednesday, November 9?
The
expedient answer is the dismissive one. Nothing will change. Everything will be
fine. Nobody’s life is much affected by the triviality of selecting the next leader
of the free world, anyway.
I beg to differ. Not this time. Not after the campaign that Donald Trump
has waged for the White House.
Since
the announcement of his candidacy in June 2015, Mr. Trump has sold the
electorate a vision of America so dystopian that I wonder if the windows at
Trump Tower require a more rigorous cleaning. Trump has placed America in front
of a funhouse mirror, presenting the nation with an image of itself as a
crime-infested hellscape. In his view, the United States has lost its place
atop the global marketplace due to the mismanagement of political elites who
have enriched themselves at the expense of their fellow citizens. And, like
other aspiring authoritarians, Trump has offered
his rabid supporters a mixture of
vulnerable and powerful scapegoats to blame not only for America’s
perceived decline, but also for their own reversals of fortune. Into the former
group Trump has placed undocumented Mexican immigrants and Muslim
refugees seeking asylum in the United States. Mexican immigrants, according
to Trump, are stealing
jobs and driving up
crime rates, while Muslim refugees cannot be trusted to assimilate and very
well may plot terrorist attacks. Onto the list of powerful saboteurs Trump has
lumped together the media, the political establishment, international corporations,
various special interest groups, and countries like China and Mexico, which he
claims are taking advantage of lopsided trade deals.
Does
it matter that illegal immigration has zero impact on jobs
and wages? Is it surprising that Donald Trump’s claim about illegal immigration
causing an increase in crime is not supported by empirical
evidence? Should Trump supporters reconsider their candidate’s dire warning
about the dangers of Syrian refugees in light of the two-year
vetting process the United States has in place for asylum applicants? How
does one reconcile the fact that the television networks handed the Trump
campaign $2 billion in free
advertising during the primary season with the notion that the media has
somehow tipped the scales against the GOP candidate? Is it disingenuous for
Trump to target a political establishment that has endorsed
him and helped him craft a list
of potential Supreme Court nominees, thereby assuaging any concerns about the Republican
nominee’s conservative bona fides? Is it disconcerting that Trump’s concerns
about a cabal of global special interests derailing his election chances bear a
resemblance to the plot of The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion? Should we engage more with the nuances of the free
trade issue instead of resorting to simplistic declarations of failure?
Of
course not. Because, according to Trump, the entire system has been rigged against him. In
this environment, facts no longer matter because the integrity of the
journalists entrusted with establishing the truth has been challenged. Trump
partisans have eschewed the reportage of The
New York Times and the Washington Post
in favor of “more venerable” outlets like Breitbart and the Drudge Report.
On
these Trump-friendly websites, one can blissfully avoid stories about
Donald Trump’s history of stiffing
contractors and outsourcing
business. Into these dark recesses of the internet one intrepidly travels to
discover the “evidence” that the racist Obama birther conspiracy in which
Donald Trump reveled for years actually originated with the Clinton
campaign in 2008. Rather than wrestle with the implications of Trump’s history
of sexual harassment, a reader can indulge in the lurid catalogue of Bill
Clinton’s indiscretions. In this alt-right oasis, Khizr Khan is not a grieving
father wronged by Donald Trump, but a Sharia
Law proponent and a supporting
player in the criminal outfit known as the Clinton Global Initiative. Moreover,
Donald Trump’s racist attacks on a Mexican judge presiding over a lawsuit
involving Trump University are deceitfully substantiated
and his absurd claim that “thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the
fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11 is accepted.
Most importantly, Donald Trump’s fundamental inability to articulate a
substantive policy on any issue is ignored, while the various shortcomings of
Hillary Clinton are scrutinized and imagined scandals are contrived.
Trump-friendly outfits like Breitbart would never expose the confidence scheme
their favored candidate has been orchestrating because they are cashing in on
it.
But
make no mistake: Donald Trump is a charlatan. He is an aggressively ignorant buffoon
who erroneously believes he can conceal his lack of fitness for the office he
seeks by speaking loudly and audaciously.
And
yet, Donald Trump will garner a significant portion of the popular vote. Nate
Silver’s reputable 538 blog projects 45% of
voters will cast their ballots for Mr. Trump in the general election.
Judging by previous cycles, this percentage should translate into somewhere
around 60 million votes.
Of
these tens of millions of citizens, the overwhelming majority would not fit
into what Hillary Clinton infamously labeled a “basket of deplorables.” Taking
into account the high unfavorable
ratings of the two major party candidates, one might safely assume that a
significant portion of Trump voters will be motivated more by a disregard for
Hillary Clinton than an affinity for the Republican candidate. Undoubtedly,
many pro-life voters will reject Hillary Clinton on principle. A large number
will support Donald Trump because he is the Republican candidate and, no matter
their personal feelings about the man, he best represents the conservative values
that they believe are most suitable for the country. Furthermore, economic anxieties that
are driven by problems like the soaring
cost of health care premiums and long-term unemployment will push voters to
the Republican banner.
It
is this last issue of economic angst that I believe has driven much of Trump’s
support among the “non-college
educated white male” portion of the electorate. It has provided the fertile soil needed for the seeds of xenophobia and racism that Trump has sown to
bloom. We saw a similar historical pattern with the rise of the Native American
Party from the ashes of the Panic of 1837. Back then, the Irish were pegged as
the source of the country’s woes. They allegedly committed crimes at outsized
rates and took work away from “native-born” Americans. According to these proto-Know Nothings, the Irish Catholic presence constituted an existential
threat to the established Protestant identity of the country. Does any of this
sound remotely familiar?
We
can dismiss the Trump campaign as an historical aberration. We can pretend that
Trump is the disease and not merely a symptom of an ailing system. But we would
do so in error. Trump has exploited a tumor on the body politic that we
assumed was shrinking as our society progressed. Our negligence has caused a
metastasis.
Deindustrialization
and globalization have ravaged the economic stability our nation enjoyed in the
postwar period of the 1950s. One need look no further than Kensington, an
industrial powerhouse that has been reduced to an abandoned slum teeming with
drugs and despair, to witness the erosion these forces have caused. Though the
American economy has generally recovered by transitioning to a
services-oriented model and relying on technological innovation, we have not
addressed the vast displacement these changes have caused. Even if Donald Trump’s
chimerical promise to “Make America Great Again” by repatriating long-lost
industrial jobs could hypothetically be realized, the sad truth that machines
would replace much of the workforce seems lost on his fan base.
The
jobs of the 1950s are leaving; they have been for a time that long predates NAFTA. The ability to carve out a middle-class existence
and earn a pension with a blue-collar job is disappearing. American labor has
priced itself out of the industrial sector. High tariffs and protectionist
policies will not save us from the efficient machines that are rapidly taking
the place of humans in the job market.
We
have choices to make. When the Democrats are finished congratulating themselves
for their historic nomination of Hillary Clinton, they can choose to ignore or reckon
with their selection of a flawed candidate. Yes, Hillary Clinton will be the first
woman to assume the office of president. Yes, this is an historic
accomplishment that was long overdue. We can grant these points while also
acknowledging that Hillary Clinton and her political team represent much of what has plagued the culture of Washington, DC: the
cozy relationships with Wall Street; the monetization of government service
through the creation of a revolving door from public service to private
enterprise (the money-for-access deals struck by the Clinton Foundation only
reinforce the perception of self-dealing); the formulation of policy that
caters more to special interest groups than the general public; the advancement
of rhetoric about Republicans “shipping jobs overseas” in order to win elections,
but the seeming indifference to the concerns of union workers when
international free trade deals are initiated; and the quixotic desire to pursue
an interventionist foreign policy without drawing any lessons from our painful
experiences of the past decade in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.
On
the Republican side, the GOP must purge itself of Trumpism. General elections
cannot be won by alienating huge swaths of minority voters. The tent must
expand lest the party fade into irrelevance. Simple solutions to complex
problems must be rejected in favor of a more comprehensive approach. A blanket
acceptance of charter schools will not fix our education system; a wall will
not stem the flow of drugs into our country or curb the desire of Hispanic
migrants seeking work and refuge from the gang violence that plagues parts of
Mexico and Central America. Panaceas do not exist. The Party must work with its
Democratic colleagues in Congress to find actual solutions for these matters.
To that end, obstructionism can no longer be embraced as an operating
philosophy. Self-serving ideologues like Ted Cruz who attempt to hold the
business of government hostage until their demands are met must be relegated to
the back bench, not empowered.
We
need to talk to one another. We must resist the urge to yell and instead try to
listen. Empathy and charity need to take on a greater role in our public discourse.
The
folks who have complained about the two choices with which we have been
presented today must consider how we arrived at this point. Our widespread
apathy toward politics has amplified the voices of the most extreme elements. We
have allowed them to dominate the conversation. If you want to change the tone
of said conversation, you need to participate in it.
To that end, we
need to stop rewarding with our viewership television networks that cover politics
in a way that prioritizes personality conflicts over substantive discussion.
The talking-point robots that argue for our entertainment do not advance the
debate. They poison it.
We
must demand more from our candidates for local and state offices. Television
commercials touting a state representative’s position on various third rail
issues should have little impact. An aspiring state legislator’s position on sanctuary
cities, for example, does not matter a great deal; rather, he should tell us
how he plans to plug the hole in the state’s pension system. A more informed
and engaged electorate will produce better candidates for office and a
healthier political dialogue.
We
must realize that though we have differences, we are not all that different.
There is more common ground on seemingly intractable issues than we might realize.
On
Tuesday, the election ends. The show, thankfully, will be over.
On
Wednesday, the real work of healing this nation and bridging partisan divides
begins.
What
kind of country do we want to be?
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