Liberals (myself included) are aghast at Trump’s success. It’s all anyone can talk about, and has been for weeks now. I am right now watching Rachel Maddow interview Bernie Sanders (the 5/6 show) and they’re talking about how Trump has already damaged the American “brand,” if you will; they talk about how our reputation is soiled outside of our borders and people are looking at us as though we were deranged.
This perspective is wrong. More accurately, it’s short-sighted, and misfocused.
These people were always here. They voted for Ted Cruz and Pat Buchanan. They supported Senator McCarthy and they were the Birchers and the Dixiecrats. They were the ignored rednecks and stereotyped cowboys and they’ve always been with us. It’s just that until now, we’ve always been able to discount them, ignore them, wave them away and say, “That’s not really representative of *us*. They don’t count.”
And the rest of the world believed us, because people like that didn’t go work overseas, or get to positions of political prominence. To them, those people didn’t exist, or if they did, they were few and far between, part of the crazy minority that everybody else has too.
Now the curtains have been pulled back by a mere 5% of the populace and the rest of the world is surprised at what they see. And our reaction is to be concerned that it’s seen? Really?
How about being concerned that such crazies still exist here, in the richest, most powerful country in the world? The rise of the Tea Party and all its ilk should be seen as:
- a scathing indictment of our educational system. (Obligatory West Wing clip.) We let the crazies teach the other crazies’ kids and wonder why nothing ever happens. Why don’t we pay for teachers’ educations on the condition they go teach in places nowhere near where they grew up for a few years? A little cross-training, a little circulation around the country would help to bring up those regions that lag.
- a moral failure by a whole bunch of supposedly religious folks. Not much that can be done about that other than to prosecute the ones giving political guidance from the pulpit.
- a civil rights failure by a whole bunch of us, from national media figures on down. Since when did it become acceptable to have this kind of conversation in public? “Sir, all due respect, that’s the argument of a five-year-old” should be heard almost every damn interview. Or “That’s a false statement” or “How are you going to pay for that?” Every. Single. Time. No interview should be broadcast without a sidebar fact-checking every passing statement, and noting unsupported arguments. It’s not like the technology doesn’t exist to do that.
But let’s not get too far down into the weeds. My point is that we have willfully blinded ourselves to this growing problem over the years, and our first concern shouldn’t be, “Oh my God, the neighbors will see” — it should be “Oh my God, the house is on fire!” When the house is burning, you do two things: you put it out (elect Democrats) and you look to see what caused the problem, and fix it.
