“Tragedy is like strong acid - it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.” - D. H. Lawrence
Ok, we’ve all had our shock, our disappointment, our terror. We’ve all cried, all raged. The worst of us have cast about blame and accusation, the best of us retreated into the solace of love and hope. One way or another, we’ve each of us weathered the initial shockwave of Tuesday night. Now it’s time to pick ourselves up and do some serious thinking. It’s time to face some reality.
I have a feeling you won’t like it. It won’t be what you likely expect or want to hear — namely, that we are right, but wronged. Cheated — by the media, by the elites, by the electoral college. Our opponents (their victory notwithstanding) are wrong, evil, crazy and stupid, and all this election result means is that we miscounted them.
Well, I’m not going to tell you that, or anything like that. Because it’s simply not true. Donald Trump is not headed for the White House today because there are just so many more racists than we thought in this country. He’s going there because we fucked up — and we’ve been fucking up for a long, long time.
“The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.” - Arthur Schopenhauer
The people that voted for Donald Trump are not some great hidden nation of racists. Yes, the alt-right has attached itself to him, David Duke (a longtime nightmare for native Louisianians like myself) is cheering his election, and there’s a depressingly large contingent of his followers that are at least open to white supremacy, if not actively advocating it. There is no doubt at all that he has a racist following.
But to dismiss all his followers as racists, sexists, xenophobes . . . that’s not realistic, and it’s not right. Donald Trump got over 65 million votes, including (sadly) a number of people I know. They are not all white supremacists. Nor do they all hate Muslims, or Mexicans, or women. Do not bore me with anecdotes about what this guy in that one place said, or the offensive T-shirt at such-and-such rally, or the picture of the graffiti you saw on your Facebook feed. Those are individuals, and they’re in every movement, every political party, every group of any kind. Painting every Trump voter with that broad and filthy brush over the actions of a few — however ubiquitous they may seem - well, that’s just simple bigotry.
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” — Marcus Aurelius
This is a nation of some 325 million people. Those people vary wildly in race, religion, culture, preferred Skittles flavor and just about every other way imaginable. There’s a world of difference between a rural Texan and a New York city-dweller. I could bore us all with a long list of those differences, or possible differences, but I won’t. It’s enough to say that they have a thousand reasons, if not more, to the see the world differently. It’s also enough to make their best interests, or apparent best interests, seem to lie in totally different directions.
But honestly, they don’t. We all want health and a modicum, at least, of security. We all want to protect our families, provide for our children and feel good about the state of the world at the end of the day. What we think we need for that, the best way to get to it . . . that’s the sum total of the ongoing debate we call “politics”.
“Truth is what works.” - William James
Every policy idea doesn’t work. Every opinion is not correct. Objective reality – unfashionable as it may have become in modern media – is still very much a thing, and it still matters. Ideally, political debate is how we whittle away the bad and keep the good.
We each bring our own perspective, our own preconceptions and fears and expectations to the table. We all have our own oxen, and no one wants theirs gored. We all want to be listened to, and we all want to feel like we’re being taken seriously. And when we all do that, we find answers, compromises, solutions. We find the way that does the most good, with the least goring. We find what works.
Progressive polices are supposed to be the good, the theory that stands up under the weight of facts and evidence. Most times, I believe they are, and that’s why I support them. Some I’m less sure about, and some I question altogether. I’m sure you’re the same, though probably the specifics between us would vary. But in all cases, I know that the debate needs to continue. Progressive policies aren’t perfect, and those imperfections can do real harm . . . especially when too many voices are left out of the debate about them.
“Politics is tricky; it cuts both ways. Every time you make a choice, it has unintended consequences.” — Stone Gossard
There are millions of people in this country who are suffering. In some of these cases — way too many - their problems stem from Democratic policies — economic and other changes that considered them an acceptable level of collateral damage . . . or didn’t consider them at all. You can talk about some ridiculously high gas tax as a way to fight fossil fuels if you live in a city with good mass transit, or you bike everywhere, and it might sound good to you in the abstract - but to the rural redstater whose livelihood hinges on his truck (and there’s plenty of those), you’re talking about financial death. Likewise, you can talk about 1000% sales taxes on bullets as a way to put the brakes on gun violence, but for the millions of people who grew up with guns, the sportsmen and target shooters and other enthusiasts — and who handle them safely and responsibly — that sort of proposal is a slap in the face.
There is no perfect law, no policy that doesn’t gore someone’s ox . . . but one of the vital elements of good governance is trying to limit that as much as possible, which retaining the good effect. When we stop caring about how policies affect “those people”, we’re committing a special kind of malfeasance. And we’re killing ourselves in the long run.
Side note: if your immediate thought was “well, I guess we should just legalize pussy-grabbing and cross-burning, so we don’t offend the rednecks”, congratulations — that’s exactly the kind of arrogant jackholery that’s the reason you woke up in the political reality that greeted you Wednesday morning.
“Let's not leave an educational vacuum to be filled by religious extremists who go to families who have no other option and offer meals, housing and some form of education. If we are going to combat extremism then we must educate those very same children.” - Hillary Clinton
We made a fatal error, a long time ago. We ceded whole regions of the country to the Republican party. Oh, we still speak to them all on a national level — but we talk mostly in terms of policy built in a Progressive echo chamber. We talk down, not to. Not with. In these places, we’ve given up the fight at the level where people really live. And what you just saw Tuesday night were the sorry spoils of that surrender.
We left them to the GOP, and the conservatives were more than happy to do all the talking we wouldn’t. And boy, did they lie. They lied about everything — every measure we put forth, every act and intention and the very nature of the people whose policies they were lying about. They’ve been lying for years — decades — and we decided there was no value in debating those lies at the ground level in places like Kentucky and Utah and Georgia, no value in engaging whole swaths of Americans with different concerns and perspectives, because it wasn’t “strategic”.
Know what the end of the 50-state strategy brought? It brought Donald Trump.
So now we have legions of Americans whose perceptions of Progressive policies — and Progressives themselves — is skewed beyond recognition. We can’t blame them — that’s like blaming a native-born Parisian for not speaking English. They’re going by what they’ve been told, over and over again.
It’s not their fault. It’s ours. We’re the morons that decided “those people” or “country folks” should just be left to the GOP (and yes, I’ve seen that exact argument on this site). As though Progressive ideals like fairness and cooperation couldn’t work for them, too. As though they were just too alien to bring into the conversation.
What did we offer them, Tuesday night? We offered them more of the same — the same policies they had no reason to trust - because, even if they hadn’t hurt them in actuality (which they might, since we were largely ignoring those people in their crafting), they’ve been brainwashed in the vacuum of our silence to think they will.
We offered them “Washington”, when either all their experience with Washington has been bad, or the liars we left as stewards of these places blamed Washington for every ill and anxiety they did experience. Not surprisingly, they said “no, thanks”.
We can fix this. It won’t be easy, or fast, but we can. It’s time to reboot the 50-state strategy, with a vengeance. It’s time to make the case at the ground level in these red states, and actually listen to the concerns those people have. Treating them like the primitives we have to educate isn’t just arrogant, wrong-headed and dickish . . . it will cost us.
Like it did Tuesday.