How We Came to This

In two previous columns, I focused on the importance of crafting a revitalized national ideology based on shared values that characterize what it is to be an American in a nation centered in liberal democracy. There is nothing easy about the task, and it requires each of us to take a more clear-headed look at how we got to where we are. What follows is my perspective, which I believe to be well-informed, but is certainly open to debate.

How on earth did a man like Trump manage to win his second election to the presidency? The tidal wave of fault-finding has been aimed directly at Democratic elites who failed to speak in the language of ordinary people. There is truth in that. Democratic campaigners overlooked the importance of kitchen-table, bacon-and-eggs conversations with ordinary people about the way they experience what’s happening in their lives.

On the other hand, Trump won by a few million votes. Not the landslide he has claimed. Still, he did win. Slightly more than 50% of the electorate knew he was unqualified for office, but a plurality believed he was the right choice, and he won. Omitting the realities of the world as they experienced it, they also bought into the fantasy world of Trump’s own creation and the landslide of lies easily debunked by anyone who paid attention to legitimate news sources. It’s not unreasonable, nor is it unfair, to point out that “ordinary Americans” bore some responsibility for being aware of and understanding the reality of events around them, and they chose to be unaware and get their information from propaganda sources they accepted as truth.

However, they are not blameworthy scapegoats. Blame is self-serving righteousness. What we need is understanding because none of us is innocent. W. Edwards Deming was a mentor in my younger days. He was adamant that when difficult problems are encountered, one should not start blaming individuals or even groups of people. One must pay close attention to the systems in which the problems developed; moreover, one cannot leap to the conclusion that they know what the systems are. There are formal and informal systems; for our purposes, we might think of them as the informal systems of social and political norms and the formal systems of institutions. The examination must be dispassionate, making as few value judgments as possible. What are the? How do they operate? What are their inputs and outputs, and what are their limitations? Those are the questions that need to be asked and answered before any attempt is made at assigning causes and proposing changes.

So, what processes have influenced this election in the way it turned out? Enough scholarship has been published to suggest the start of public distrust in traditional institutions of society and government began with the Vietnam protest era. Clearly, the nation has had other seasons of mistrust in traditional institutions, most notably those that ended with the Civil War. But this is our own season, and we need to pay attention to it with an understanding that historical precedent may be considered, but it will never be replicated in our own day. For better or worse, the Vietnam protest era legitimized the act of distrusting government and social institutions. It was a spark. The fire had to be kindled slowly and begin to take on real presence during the Reagan administration. It popularized the idea that government was the problem, not the solution. It was also a time of disillusionment with organized religion, sexual freedom, and women’s liberation, all of which challenged long-held social norms.

For some, they were years that inspired a certain sense of nostalgia for a romantic fiction of the way things used to be that never were. For others, they were years that inspired unreasonable expectations of a more perfect society of equality and individual freedom propelled by science and technology, leaving the past as far away as possible, and endorsed suspicion of those who would not let go of it. The result was a mutation of opposing sides into a scrambled multitude of interests forming unstable alliances and defining enemies. Taking advantage of it was the talk radio and cable news intent on inciting enmity against every idea, movement, and person who challenged the old social norms. For reasons I doubt even they understood, they began to endorse strongman rule as better than weak liberal democracy.

Forty years of social and political pot-boiling, stirred by opportunistic media personalities, created a condition in which the center could not hold because no one was sure where the center was or even if there was one. They were conditions favoring a character like Trump. He took advantage of them with the help of oligarchs who want to recreate government to serve them, and neo-fascists who want to abandon democracy for nationalist authoritarianism.  They are incompatible allies likely to tear each other apart.

What we will become remains to be seen. My hope is expressed in the previous two columns.