Let’s face it. Those of us concerned about the prospect of a Trump presidency are making him the target of our worry, fear, and anger (that combination of feelings may have a familiar ring to it). Heedless of what feelings we may have, attention is first of all what Trump wants. He’ll talk about himself endlessly whatever the reason: defensive and bullying if he’s offended, bragging and strutting if he thinks he’s heard praise. And let’s not forget he often mistakes astonishment and disbelief for admiration.
However, accurate renditions of who he is and what he is aside — and he’s a shape-shifter deliberately; those who don’t want to be pinned down are never wholly committed to a point of view; his entire view is himself regardless of all others — Trump himself is not the thing to be worried about. It’s natural to ask, “who would vote for such a man?” As if supporting him were an aberration in the voter. There is even a concession of sorts to the inadequacies of rational judgment for voting for someone so clearly unqualified for the office when supporters of his are asked calmly what it is that makes them think he deserves their vote with regard to specific substantive matters. To a person, they can’t do it.
Rather, I suggest that we are closer to the relevant issues in this election by asking the question no one likes, “why?” Why vote for him? Account for your reasons. Even if indirection must be employed to elicit an honest answer, it’s evident clearly enough.
We have to face the fact, for one, that whatever their reasons or what they think those are, and whatever the absence of sense in doing so, a significantly large number of people will vote for Donald Trump in November. However, even if an even larger number vote for Hillary Clinton and she wins the electoral college vote, even if Trump thereupon goes away — or at worst lingers, like Ann Coulter, as a lunatic fringe icon (and don’t kid yourself, the very day after Election Day, some reptilian impresario will already have a way to cash in on exploiting Trump’s continued presence on “reality” media) — the people who voted for him, our fellow citizens, will not have gone away. Rather, in addition to continuing to simmer with the entirely legitimate corrosive feelings they have about their lives, they will feel betrayed and further disenfranchised as well.
What we should be thinking beforehand, that is, before the election, is the most productive way of getting out a vote in favor of Hillary Clinton. Notice I said, “in favor of.” A vote for anyone else, or not to vote, will not get her elected. Flawed or not, and of course she’s flawed, as was every other president who has served, some more so, some less — and many of them more so, without one-tenth the venomous mendacious opposition she suffers, purely against her person, not her qualifications — she is the only hope of having someone in the White House who will not be an existential threat, not only to abstractions like democracy, order, lawfulness, justice, and equality (in as bad a condition as some of those may be at the moment, we have them) but to real people. To you and to me.
We can begin immediately with the next thing we must do well before election day. However, there are barely more than three months before that day, and it will be a big enough task getting out the sane vote for a sane president and sane productive members of Congress. We can begin now to do the even harder job of learning to understand that as wayward as their choice of savior might be, that there is legitimacy to the complaints of Trump supporters. Assuming he does go away, not only the grievances, but the legitimacy of those grievances will not go away.
The only candidate who spoke consistently and even possibly monotonously, though surely single-mindedly, about those grievances, or a large bloc of them, and their legitimacy was Bernie Sanders. He wasn’t making a strict political appeal. He wanted the support of everyone disenfranchised, despite affiliation, despite any demographic variable, despite gender, color, religion. People in one segment or another, because of the prejudices of other sub-groups and because of the stubborn persistence of fear and subjugation of the other, may suffer more from injustice in society than others. However, it’s clear that save for a very very tiny sliver of our population, we all suffer in some way from the severe imbalance of societal and cultural factors and the administration of justice and the enforcement of the law.
It’s beyond me exactly how we reach the people that otherwise seem so unreachable. Reasoned debate and discussion, however much patience is required on both sides, seems impossible. Even further out of at least my reach is, having reasoned together, how we get the vast majority of all citizens to understand what the best course is to erect a vessel of true equality for all. I was tempted to say “restore,” but I’d have to be partly delusional to think that such a vessel had ever sailed. If I thought I knew how, I wouldn’t be shy in telling, and hoping people would listen.
However, if I did know, or were capable of knowing, likely I would have been in a different line of work for most of my life. Most likely I would still be in it.
I think, in fact, any true success in such a quest lies not with a single individual. Bernie Sanders can tell you. Or Barack Obama. Or, yes, even Hillary Clinton can tell you, there is no single person, or even a handful with that competence or capacity. The almost insurmountable task is going to require most of us. And we will have to participate in some way in excess of our efforts until now.
We start by accepting there are a lot of injured people out there. They are people who will, in other superficial regards, never be like you or me. You don’t have to live like them. You don’t have to accept their taste in the quotidian aspects of life. But you and I, just as they, must accept that there is some common ground that must determine how we regard each other. We must respect each other’s common rights. We must conduct ourselves in a fair and equitable way with respect to those simple, if profound, rights that defined our establishment as a nation. In some ways, some large, some small, those rights have been impeached and stepped on, and they must be resurrected and restored and preserved.
Copyright © 2016 Howard Dinin
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