As a four-year-old Baptist, I was old enough to know about the rapture, in which Jesus returns to sweep up all believers—living and dead—to meet him in the sky. Nonbelievers would be left behind. One night, I dreamed that my whole family had been raptured. I was the only one left, a little girl standing in her backyard looking up at a bleak gray sky. At breakfast the next morning, I told my family of the dream, and it quickly became a sorrowful family prophecy that everyone half believed would come true.
All these years later, we’re experiencing a kind of rapture justice, with Donald Trump sweeping up all those who’ve been left behind in the sociopolitical system.
Ask any anthropologist, and they will tell you that one of the worst experiences for a human being is to be excluded from their social group. In this country, Democrats and liberals have capitalized on this notion, expanding the social group to include all those who had suffered discrimination in the days of unquestioned white supremacy and male dominance. Liberals keep opening their arms in an ever expanding embrace: African Americans, women, religions other than Protestantism, Latinos, the LGBTQ community, the poor, immigrants, and so on, have been welcomed into the party and into the mainstream of America. In this march of social progress, much of the former mainstream was left behind—particularly undereducated white men, but also women. White men with college degrees usually made the transition to the new paradigm because they had education and perspectives that were prized in the increasingly technological economy with its more stratified social structure.
But who are these undereducated whites who’ve been left behind? Most of them are people who worked for a living. Many of them made things for the rest of America. They had been honored through the generations for having played an enormous role in building America, for raising families, paying taxes, and creating communities across the land. But the jobs they used to do, in great measure, have gone overseas or been outsourced to technology. No matter what Donald Trump promises them, we all know we can never go back to those times. By the same token, few in the next generation would want to.
We keep hearing about how angry Americans are, and the reasons given are almost always economic. But Trump has shown them to be more social than monetary. That’s why his message of building a wall and stopping immigration resonates so clearly with his supporters. They don’t seem to care that he doesn’t actually hew to traditional Republican virtues. He claims to be a Christian, but that itself is in doubt, given his brief biblical analysis: “Two Corinthians 3:17—that’s the whole ballgame.” Political commentator Fareed Zakaria and moral philosopher Harry Blackburn, among others, have called Trump a bullshit artist; Blackburn writes: “Bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies are.”
Trump’s three marriages and two divorces are considered forgivable because, as Jerry Falwell Jr. said in an interview with NPR, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Other values come into question, such as fairness. His business approach seems to be that of filing bankruptcy to avoid paying contractors after they have done the work—subsequently forcing many of them out of business.
But nothing Trump does seems to diminish the vigorous support of his core constituency: white people who feel their rights have been usurped by those who are much less deserving. It’s hard to defend people who appear on the surface to be nothing more than racists and sexists, but it is necessary to acknowledge that they are undergoing a social upheaval of their own, and their values have come into question.
Strike the plural and change that to “their value” has come into question—as human beings who were once considered intrinsic to America’s moral and economic well-being. Donald Trump bonds with his followers in a way that’s impossible for most politicians: He likes them; speaks their language; tells them he’s going to make them great again. Yes, he may be racist, but like his counterpart David Duke, the former grand wizard of the KKK, he is also standing up for the right of white Americans to still belong. They have heard his call, and they reciprocate his love: As long as they admire him, he will pander to them. As long as he panders to them, they will love and admire him.
We may feel justified in writing off those who have held themselves in higher esteem than the rest of us. Those who did little or nothing to foster equality for all. But we ignore and exclude them at our own peril, not to mention theirs. Even if Hillary Clinton beats Donald Trump two to one, these increasingly marginalized citizens will still be out there, angrier than ever—left out, and left behind.