Last fall, when my wife and I vacationed in Ireland, the first thing we did after we checked into our guest house was hit the streets. Not far from our lodgings, we stopped to get our bearings. An elderly man walked up to us, and with the frankness and openness we’ve come to appreciate among many of the Irish we met, he asked us two questions. The first was, “Are you lost?” Our answer was, “No, but thank you.” The second question was, “What is wrong with your country?”
That proved to be a more difficult question to answer, especially under the influence of jet-lag. I’ve had some months to contemplate how I might explain it now, and while I’m unable to reduce my explanation to something succinct, I at least have a better way of explaining it to myself. I’m not a sociologist or political scientist, but I do come from what we quaintly used to call a conservative family, and this experience, I believe, affords me some insight into the question.
For example, my mother’s husband, when he lived in the Northwest, was what I’d call a union Democrat. He was also deeply racist, though he would deny that, saying that he’s merely being fair in his judgment of “the Blacks and the Mexicans.” After he retired, he and my mother moved to Arizona, and slowly over time he’s gone from being a racist union Democrat to a racist Trumper Republican.
He, like my mother, seems capable of tolerating a considerable degree of cognitive dissonance. Or maybe he doesn’t experience it as dissonance at all? I don’t know. Between my right-wing brother and me, I am the one who is most attentive toward my mother. That is, the lefty liberal who has called Trump a fascist and decried the way he has divided the country is the one my mother’s husband feels most kindly toward. In fact, he expresses open resentment toward my brother, a successful businessman whom he sees as self-consumed with his own wealth and status. My mother’s husband somehow manages to separate political loyalties from personal loyalties. Despite our political differences, he will always be more loyal to me than my brother because I am more caring toward my mother.
The Democratic Party is not—and rightly so, obviously—a “safe space” for racists. The Republican Party is, and that is why my mother’s husband is a Trumper. That doesn’t explain all or perhaps even much of what is wrong with our country. After all, the Southern strategy goes back to Nixon, and ever since the GOP has been solidifying their appeal to racist union members in the North. However, there is an important counter-trend we’ve seen at work in the last few years. Younger union members have been organizing and asserting themselves in the North and even parts of the South, and the Democratic Party has the potential to earn the long-lasting loyalty of these new union activists.
This was brought home to me this week when the Western Academic Workers United (WAWU) struck at Western Washington University in Bellingham. As a former teacher’s union member who participated in a couple strikes and one long one in 2015, I joined the picket line. I was impressed by the energy, determination, organization and solidarity of the members of this local, which is part of the UAW. I was especially heartened by the ground-breaking nature of this local, which at Western includes both undergraduate and graduate students. I’m happy to report that they reached a tentative agreement in two days, and after eight long months of bargaining, they have a contract with higher wages, more protection against discrimination and harassment, and progress on tuition support.
How many of these student workers will cast their vote for Joe Biden this fall? Yesterday, during a march to the university President’s office, they passed by an anti-genocide encampment in front of the library. I know from speaking to students on the picket line that at least some of them are also participating in the encampment. Not surprisingly, the anti-genocide protestors signaled their solidarity with cheers and raised fists. My guess is that the solidarity largely goes both ways.
Despite the way some people sometimes speak on this site, we all share that peculiar form of blindness that keeps us from seeing what our shared fate will be in the future. I don’t know how many members of the WAWU will cast their votes for Joe Biden or even if they will vote. Nevertheless, I am not without hope when I meet college students who are rediscovering the power of a widely shared, ever-expanding solidarity among equals.