Drew Magary publishes a hissy fit in GQ, to which Leslie Salzillo on The Daily Kos hums happily along. Here’s Drew:
Regardless, in the end, people are still gonna vote for this man. Maybe not enough to get him elected, but still: it’ll be in the tens of millions. (Note to the people causing the polls to fluctuate: What the fuck is wrong with you? I gotta meet the five percent of people who saw Hillary come down with pneumonia and were like, “Forget her, gimme the dictator with dryer lint hair.”) Nothing that Trump says, no damning piece of Trump reportage, and certainly no opinion piece like this one will stop his voters from pulling the lever. Nor will anything stop Trump from being the officious, braindead goon that he is. He will never answer for his crimes, and there’s a frighteningly large portion of the electorate that will always love him for that.
And it goes on like that for several more paragraphs. Delightful, if you’re one of those folks who have time for the sort of thing that, frankly, you (the reader) & I are indulging in right now.
I cannot go along with it, though.
I am slightly haunted by a scene out of the documentary Tickled (2016). It has nothing to do with the subject of the documentary. During the making of the movie, the makers travel to Muskegon, Michigan, which they describe and show to be a dying town, full of violence and crime, although they don’t go into detail as it’s not pertinent. But we discover that one of the major ways to make money for young men is to compete in Mixed Martial Arts, and as part of the interview process we also get to meet one young man’s parents and family.
The house was a pit. It had that air of mixed despair and bull-stubborness of people who’ve lost their jobs but not their pride, and that pride compels them to find someone to blame. My mother-in-law lives in Michigan. We visit often, and from talking with her visitors, even an introvert such as myself comes up against certain rock-solid beliefs; certainties that arise from people who’ve had the employment rug ripped out from under them. Doubt about liberals. Doubts about certain parts of government that I consider to be pillars of how we run society. Certainty that there’s a devil, and he literally walks among us.
So when I, or Drew, talk about Trump’s mendacity, his abuse of those he can dominate, these really are irrelevant, as Drew laments. But Drew never really asks why.
So let’s talk about the implicit social contract. (As much as I hate the term, it’s the jargon we all know it by).
For the citizen, for the people, for us, you, me, and the guys in Muskegon, the social contract, in our minds, should mean that if we work hard then we should get paid and maybe even get promoted, maybe have kids, retire, and eventually get chucked in a grave in preparation for living forever with the God of our choice. Maybe pitch in a touch of racism, and there ya go.
And it ain’t happening. Michigan’s a mess. Between the situation in Muskegon, jobs heading overseas and into Mexico, Detroit turning into a ghost town, and Flint being completely screwed over, the rip-currents are becoming deadly. And not only in Michigan, but other pockets of the United States as well. Folks lose their jobs and their faith in the contract as employers, in their eyes, fuck them over.
There’s a really good reason why both candidates want to present themselves as agents of change. Because the chunk of America that perceives itself as being in trouble (where folks are unemployed or underemployed, where houses are no longer maintained because of economic despair) wants to point the finger of blame, and after the employers (who really only care about their own wealth and welfare), comes the government. The national government sets the decisions regarding economic policy. If the populace is to prosper, the government needs to change.
So why Trump?
Because he’s new. He hasn’t had a hand in what the voting right wing perceives as disaster. Roll that word around in your mouth. For you and I, we may or may not suffer some discomfort. If you’ve lost a house because you’ve lost a job, then maybe you get to share in tasting that word, because you’ve been there.
I haven’t, so I don’t get to swish it about in my mouth. I have to get there intellectually.
So let’s be intellectual, then. Let’s go to an intellectual’s favorite pit of despair. Yeah. Let’s.
Let’s talk the Wiemar Republic. For those of you who are a little rusty on your history, this is a term for a very short era of German history, stretching from the end of World War I to 1933. During this period the German people transitioned from the German Empire, ruled by absolute monarchists, to the Wiemar Republic, a troubled, short lived democracy, to the rule of National Socialism, aka (hold your breath) the Nazis. (Viewed this way you realize the German people really had a tremendously long run of bad luck, especially those in the eastern half of the country, who went on to be subjected to Erich Honecker’s Communism.) One of the key facets of the time of the Republic was economic turbulence: hyperinflation, bankrupt companies, unemployment, mostly caused by the ruinous war reparations imposed on Germany after World War I. In my view, people in general follow principles not for any truly abstract reason, but because they perceive that by doing so some long-term advantage accrues to them. It may be, and often is, simple social stability.
So when some principle, which may not be as solidly emplaced as others, is viewed as perhaps not leading to such advantages, it’s not hard to see it being jettisoned. The German people were subjected to tremendous stress, and eventually rallied around the brutal National Socialism, which presently led them down one of the worst ratholes of history, from which even today they have not fully recovered.
So now some Americans look back over the last 16 years and they’ve not done well. It’s not so much that they’re rebelling against the Democrats or the Republicans so much as they’re looking at the principles by which we’ve – supposedly – elected these folks, and maybe they’re saying, Hey, does this principle of no racism really benefit me? Hey, what about these illegal immigrants – aren’t they taking my jobs? Hey, who cares about these laws about illegal search & seizure when people are dying in the streets?
Why should they adhere to these principles, even the common sense principles that the pundits lick with great enthusiasm, when that adherence has left them with no job, a wreck of a house, a family in turmoil and despair?
That’s the question Drew and those who share his frustration really must empathize with, and then answer effectively. Why are they idiots, Drew?
Because being smart hasn’t benefited them.
Being angry at them gets you nowhere. The first step in forming a persuasive argument must sometimes be walking a while in someone else’s shoes.
