Recently a former student and FB friend told me that she couldn’t understand why it is that Trump supporters seem so angry. I didn’t really answer the question, but had some thoughts about how we need to tell the stories that bring working class people back to a more progressive outlook on society, and the votes that support that outlook. For some additional context, please read some of James B. Greenberg’s articles on Substack. He’s amazingly insightful and cogent. substack.com/...
Recently a former student and FB friend told me that she couldn’t understand why it is that Trump supporters seem so angry. I didn’t really answer the question, but had some thoughts about how we need to tell the stories that bring working class people back to a more progressive outlook on society, and the votes that support that outlook.
I think that Bernie is right when he says that many families are living from paycheck to paycheck, and believe that the system is rigged against them. It is. Mix in lack of education and fear of "the other" - immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ - and boil it all into a Faux News racist, sexist stew of lies and misinformation. You get people who want to hear a simple story with villains, and tough guys who will save them from those bad guys. The Republican Party has always used fear-mongering to motivate its base - Trump is just better at it than any of his predecessors.
And I think that one of Greenberg's most salient points is that people begin to incorporate themselves into the story - dishonest as it may be - and think that the story is actually their story as well. Any attack on the story's hero is an attack on them. How else can we explain working-class support for a bunch of Ivy League millionaires and billionaires, who do everything they can to make life harder for working families. These grifters should not be able to pass themselves off as men "of the people," but their “good vs evil” story resonates with angry folks who want to grab pitchforks and go after easy targets.
This is why I keep pushing myself, unsuccessfully, to not aim my anger at Trump voters. Instead of trashing them, as I have done, we need to begin telling a different story and we need to repeat it over and over. That's how stories catch on. And I sincerely believe that the story has to have an economic base. The millionaires and billionaires who control our country are, in fact, ruining that country for their own shamefully selfish gains.
In putting out this message relentlessly, we have to call Democratic politicians to task as well. Bernie's right again - he usually is - when he says that the Dems have let working people down. They've pursued policies that helped the wealthy become even more rich and powerful, and they've taken almost as much money from corporate lobbyists/PACs as Republicans have. Bill Clinton did as much to hurt the poor as any Republican president (I can explain how if anyone wants to know).
Focusing on how our system has been totally corrupted by the wealthy isn't easy. One of our most cherished national myths is that anyone who works hard will be successful, and on the flip side, anyone who is successful obviously worked hard. We revere the rich, hoping to be like them one day. That's why study after study has shown that middle class people associate themselves more with the wealthy than with the poor, though in reality, they are much, much closer to poverty than to an abundance of wealth. The other difficulty is that most of the media is either owned or controlled by the wealthy class. It’s completely inconsistent with class interests to report honestly about
That’s why we need to tell the story of the disgraceful way in which the wealthy have been ripping off workers, the middle class, and the poor for many generations. We can easily back these stories up with facts, but facts don’t matter any more. Trump’s ascendency has proven that. Here is man who has told tens of thousands of provable, verifiable lies and mis-representations of the truth, but his supporters refuse to acknowledge or care about it. We get angry and call them stupid for accepting such obvious bullshit: “Gangs taking over towns in Colorado”; “Haitians eating pets in Ohio”; “January 6th as a Day of Love.” But they aren’t stupid. It just doesn’t matter to them if Trump is lying, because “everybody lies.” Facts and evidence have become irrelevant, which is really scary.
Many of you have probably seen variations of the quote by Hannah Arendt in which she states that the object of constant lying is not to get people to believe the lies, but to keep them cynical about the existence of truth. Though it was published in 1951, how well does this passage from The Origins of Totalitarianism describe today:
"Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness."
Therefore, we need to stop thinking that presenting enough “Truth” will ultimately sway voters. We need to tell stories that incorporate elements of the truth, but don’t rely on it. Stories about banks forcing people off their land; about huge ag firms driving small farmers out of business; about toxic waste that makes people sick; about the differences in worker and management salaries; about billionaires cutting government programs while enriching themselves through government contracts and tax-breaks (Musk); about market manipulation that enriches the super-wealthy while devastating 401Ks and pension funds (what Trump is doing now with this absurd yo-yoing on tariffs); about corporations keeping wages low and moving jobs overseas; about big pharma destroying lives in Appalachia and elsewhere; about the countless examples of how government helps, rather than harms people; about how it was the Democratic Party that put people to work and kept them from starving during the Great Depression.
There are thousands of other stories to tell, and despite what I said earlier about the challenges we face in exposing the wealthy ruling class for what it is, and what it’s doing to people, we have to keep telling them. Bernie tells them. AOC tells them. But Bernie is seen by many as a cantankerous old, left-wing broken record, and AOC has been thoroughly demonized by the right-wing media.
In a country with a long history of branding any left-of-center ideology as “communistic,” they are seen as radicals by both liberals and conservatives. I believe that we need to start normalizing their anti-billionaire, anti-oligarchy positions. Let’s stop wasting so much time posting about what an asshole Trump is, and start telling compelling stories that illustrate how everyone is being harmed by him and his billionaire/corporate backers.
Thoughts?
