How did America, the “Shining City upon a Hill”† manage to elect a thin-skinned, sexist, racist cretin as a president? It just seems crazy — until one begins to analyze the depths of despair some large segments of American society have experienced over the past few decades. And realize how far a desperate people will go.
American journalist and author Glenn Greenwald describes the large reasons why Clinton and the Democratic Party failed to prevail over Trump in his essay in The Intercept today (Nov. 9). Titled “Democrats, Trump, and the Ongoing, Dangerous Refusal to Learn the Lesson of Brexit” it outlines three major points last night’s election results illustrate. They are:
- Democrats have already begun flailing around trying to blame anyone and everyone they can find — everyone except themselves — for last night’s crushing defeat of their party.
- That racism, misogyny, and xenophobia are pervasive in all sectors of America is indisputable from even a casual glance at its history, both distant and recent.
- Over the last six decades, and particularly over the last 15 years of the endless war on terror, both political parties have joined to construct a frightening and unprecedentedly invasive and destructive system of authoritarian power, accompanied by the unbridled authority vested in the executive branch to use it.
While the entire article is worth reading, the reasons why Democrats blame everyone but themselves (#1 above) and what needs to change most interests me here. As Greenwald write in July about Brexit, so is true here (emphasis mine):
Instead of acknowledging and addressing the fundamental flaws within themselves, [elites] are devoting their energies to demonizing the victims of their corruption, all in order to delegitimize those grievances and thus relieve themselves of responsibility to meaningfully address them. That reaction only serves to bolster, if not vindicate, the animating perceptions that these elite institutions are hopelessly self-interested, toxic, and destructive and thus cannot be reformed but rather must be destroyed. That, in turn, only ensures there will be many more Brexits, and Trumps, in our collective future.
The elites in this case are the economic elite (the 1%, in both parties), the political elite and the most influential members of the press (journalists). They collectively caused or ignored or denigrated the plight of many Americans who would go on to vote for Trump. Greenwald again:
The indisputable fact is that prevailing institutions of authority in the West, for decades, have relentlessly and with complete indifference stomped on the economic welfare and social security of hundreds of millions of people. While elite circles gorged themselves on globalism, free trade, Wall Street casino gambling, and endless wars (wars that enriched the perpetrators and sent the poorest and most marginalized to bear all their burdens), they completely ignored the victims of their gluttony, except when those victims piped up a bit too much — when they caused a ruckus — and were then scornfully condemned as troglodytes who were the deserved losers in the glorious, global game of meritocracy.
That message was heard loud and clear. The institutions and elite factions that have spent years mocking, maligning, and pillaging large portions of the population — all while compiling their own long record of failure and corruption and destruction — are now shocked that their dictates and decrees go unheeded. But human beings are not going to follow and obey the exact people they most blame for their suffering. They’re going to do exactly the opposite: purposely defy them and try to impose punishment in retaliation. Their instruments for retaliation are Brexit and Trump. Those are their agents, dispatched on a mission of destruction: aimed at a system and culture they regard — not without reason — as rife with corruption and, above all else, contempt for them and their welfare.
That dam was eventually going to burst. And it did, in this election where against odds and expectations and prognostications and common decency, they elected Trump.
This oppressive system absolutely needs destruction. But who could do it? Who could clean up the mess? Surely there are decent men and women out there who can see it and could do something about it, if they were President. Except. In this country, in this day, only the most connected, most egotistical and most wealthy have any chance at all at winning such an election.
Trump was, in a perverse way, just the right man for the job. He was wealthy enough and ego-driven enough, and had enough fame, that he could get elected and upset the apple cart. Will he, not through good intentions and moral character, but rather via outraged supporters and simple chaos be enough to provoke the needed change? Can he cause the Democratic Party or even the Republican Party to throw off their institutional, elitist self-serving policies and behaviors?
Let’s hope so.
†From the 1630 sermon “A Model of Christian Charity” preached by Puritan John Winthrop while still aboard the ship Arbella with future Massachusetts Bay colonists.
Photo credit: @nodigio on Flickr, CC by attribution.
