What Do You Think About Trump?

As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

We’re walking a section of deeply shaded trail, our little group dwarfed by the huge Douglas firs and cedars that hold us, on a sunny day, in a kind of perpetual green twilight.  One of my hiking companions slows her pace and gets my attention.  “As an American,” she asks intently, and I feel a little apprehensively, “what do you think about Trump?”  I imagine the great trees, some of which have lived through the entire period of Euroamerican conquest and settlement of the continent, looking down at our little group from their great heights and pondering the question in the slow movement of the centuries.  We had hardly spoken before, but I know that she and her husband immigrated to Canada from Great Britain some years ago, and think that her interest in the U.S. presidential race reflect both European and Canadian perspectives.

I joined this hiking group last year to learn more about the local area and its trails; but unexpectedly find it almost as enjoyable for its companionship and conversations as for its walks in the forests and along the coasts of this beautiful area.  I hardly have time to roll my eyes and mutter something about Trump being an embarrassment when, seeing that I’m not a mad flag-waving supporter, she exclaims, “Isn’t he simply awful?  He’s an awful man!  Awful!”  I still hear echoes of her British accent and see her concerned expression as I write this.

It was not a one-off or unusual conversation. In get-togethers here in Canada, friends or acquaintances who know that I am American regularly wonder what I think about Trump and the American election.  Much the same split that runs through U.S. politics also divides Canadians, and a few that I meet think Trump would make a great president.  They usually refer to his success in business.  The man and his candidacy appalls most of those I have talked with, however.  They are concerned.  What happens in the U.S. matters, and many Canadians worry about what a Trump presidency would mean for Canada and the world.

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At this point, late August, some time after the Republican and Democratic conventions, Trump’s campaign seems to be tanking.  I’m personally not so much worried about Trump becoming president—never was, really.  Well, maybe a little.  But I always thought it highly unlikely.  What does worry me are the waves of anger, fear, hatred, racism and xenophobia that his campaign stirs up, that washed him irresistibly to the front of the pack of Republican hopefuls.  Where does that come from?  What does that say about American life?  Especially, what does it mean for the public sphere?  Here I am, talking like a political scientist.  What does it mean—”the public sphere”?

As citizens of Western democracies, we have our private lives, but also  public lives.  Generally, the private sphere refers to home and family, maybe job, hobbies, and other recreational activities, and also private business—although the actions and policies of very large business clearly shade over into the public life of the nation.  Many of our laws and constitutional guarantees establish and protect our private spaces of life from intrusion by others, and especially government.  The public sphere, by contrast, refers to the nation’s public life: politics, the economy, government at large, public policy, and so on.

The two, our public and private lives, are interrelated, of course.  The interface between public and private breeds some of our most difficult and contentious issues.  For instance, government controversially regulates corporations operating in the private sphere to protect the public interest; while corporations pour money into lobbyists’ pockets and campaign coffers to protect private profits from regulatory constraints.

A healthy democracy maintains a difficult balance between private and governmental power.  Like trying to rest a pencil on its point, the equilibrium is never perfect and requires constant attention and conscious adjustment.  If the tilt one way or another gets out of control, we’re in trouble.  That’s what I fear—that Trump’s successful run for the Republican nomination is a symptom of dangerous imbalance in U.S. political life.

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Especially after the tumultuous ’60s—the Civil Rights Act, protest against the Vietnam war on college campuses and in the streets, and a brief era of stronger environmental regulation—the far-Right in American politics launched a relentless drive to gain ascendance.  Historians and political analysts are still putting the different pieces of this campaign together, but here’s a brief overview of some highlights that I lived through and know of.

Playing on their lingering resentments and outright racism, Goldwater’s and Nixon’s notorious “southern strategy”  drew southern Whites into the Republican fold.  At the same time, in a bid to wrest the intellectual initiative from the Left, wealthy corporations and individuals, and their charitable foundations, funnelled large sums of money into right-wing think tanks and toward right-leaning university teachers and departments.  The disastrous “war on drugs,” began by Nixon and expanded under Reagan, became part of the picture as a means of disrupting and criminalizing anti-Vietnam war and civil rights (hippies and Blacks) communities.  Anti-government, anti-tax, and anti-regulatory sentiments were fanned and implemented.  Grover Norquist, “Bush’s field marshal,”  for instance, famously wanted to “reduce government to the size where I can take it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

Science itself was attacked and politicized.  Independent science, raising concerns about a range of issues from the health-impacts of smoking to environmental problems, became a particular target.  Universities were both attacked (public support withdrawn, tuitions raised); and, in various ways and to varying degrees, academic personnel and work were privatized and coopted.  Corporate interests, and anti-government activists in government, fomented campaigns to control science; and where they couldn’t control science they aimed to discredit it and cast doubt on its findings.  Among other things, conservative donors set up or funded “think tanks” to challenge and politicize scientific work that seemed to run against their interests or agendas.  Not surprisingly, one review concludes, “There are twice as many conservative think tanks as liberal ones, and the conservative ones generally have more money.”

A heightened climate of fear, insecurity, and competition seized the academic world.  I both saw this happening and experienced it first-hand.

All this was not some grand conspiracy (although actual conspiracies, such as Watergate and the criminal activities of tobacco companies were sometimes involved).  But altogether, it speaks to a concerted and conscious, if disparate and uncoordinated, effort to shift American politics sharply to the right.  And it was successful. It substantially worked.

Many of the policies and legal decisions of this era—roughly, since the Reagan era in the 1980s to the present—have worked to concentrate ever more wealth in the hands of large corporations and wealthy people. The divide between rich and poor grew as the middle-class was squeezed.  Wealthy individuals and corporations used their expanding wealth to hire lobbyists and influence politicians dependent on their contributions.  They aim to turn law and government ever more to their liking.  All this diminishes and degrades the public sphere in the United States.  This is the frightening imbalance, of which Trump is a symptom.

The U.S. Republican Party used race and fear of differences to align the interests of disaffected poor Southerners and struggling rural poor and economically-stressed middle classes, with the interests of immensely wealthy pro-corporate business leaders and their foundations.  By taking this tack, the Republican party remade itself into the political home for the racist and radical right interests it had been cultivating. Trump’s campaign, ironically, exposes some of the divides between these diverse and even conflicting interests that have taken shelter under the Republican party’s roof.

Middle- and working-class economic insecurities fuel much of the anger and fear that Trump stirs up. Ironically, Republican party neoconservative pro-corporate policies worsen those insecurities. They drain resources out of middle- and working-class wallets and public “safety-net” programs, and into the bank accounts of the largest corporations and their wealthy owners, (see the “Why Trump” post from May 18, 2016).  It’s a double whammy. The Southern Strategy roped conservative southern Whites into the Republican party, while Republican economic policies favouring corporations and the rich heighten the very real insecurities that help drive their angry xenophobia and racism.

But Trump’s bigotry and xenophobia aren’t subtle enough or sufficiently disguised for some in the Republican establishment.  Some Republicans reject him and his unsubtle appeals to bigotry, anger, and fear among conservative working class White voters. An article in New Republic Magazine sums up their quandary: “The [Republican party’s own] Southern Strategy was the original sin that made Donald Trump possible.”

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So, what do I think about Trump.  I too think that he is an awful man. Awful! Is it really possible that this person we see strutting and posturing, blatantly publicly lying, sputtering out negative and hateful utterances, is a serious candidate for President of the United States?  Argh!

But more than that, Donald also signals and embodies of a failure of our democracy.  The U.S. political/economic system has achieved much.  I think it was Churchill who famously said that “democracy is the worst system—except for all the others.”  But as our version of it struggled and evolved over the centuries it brought forward some serious flaws and failings, and developed others along the way, of which Trump now is one highly-visible piece of tangible evidence.  We need to look at our problems with clear eyes.  What Trump tells me is that we’re close to or at a tipping point.  We must go to the next level of self-awareness and consciousness at both the individual and the collective levels, or risk sliding backwards into the vision of America that Trump, in his person and in his words, holds up to us.