The historical inevitability of Donald Trump

I don't think Donald Trump will be elected president of the United States.

I know it doesn't really matter what I think. I intend on following the process, writing about the issues and voting in the election. I don't think I'm going to change anybody's mind by what I write, but maybe I can contribute to the conversation, and maybe the conversation causes people to think about things in ways they otherwise might not; maybe people will be motivated to question all their received ideas. Maybe they'll be motivated to look into things for themselves; maybe they'll be better able to tolerant different opinions if they are able to understand them a little.

But the fact is, the trolls are right. Nothing I write in this column is likely to make any difference.

I have to be OK with that. And most of the time I manage to maintain a certain detachment from political events. I feel strongly about some issues, others I hardly care about at all, but recognize I'm fortunate enough to be insulated from a lot of the problems that a lot of people face day to day. No matter who becomes the next president, I don't expect my life to change very much. If Trump is elected, I think he'll be a disaster, and the people he will most disappoint will be those who have placed the most faith in him. The people who would be most hurt by a Trump presidency will be those who sincerely believe that Trump is the answer.

I don't believe Trump will set up re-education camps. I don't believe he'll be able to build a wall or implement any of his outrageous suggestions. I haven't spent a lot of time considering what might happen if Trump is elected because I consider it too unlikely to take seriously. But I could be wrong. A lot of us have been wrong during this campaign. Anyway, certainty is a dangerous thing.

And the other day I caught a video in which a guy named Steven Thrasher--a former Village Voice writer who now works as a columnist and writer-at-large for the Guardian--argued that the election of Donald Trump was a historical inevitability because throughout our history major advances in human rights have been answered by vicious backlash. And so the election of our first black president eight years ago must be met by the election of the "meanest, whitest, most vile bigot possible."

I don't believe Thrasher is as convinced of Trump's inevitable election as he sounds in the video. Some opinion journalists say things to drive traffic and burnish reputations. But I'm glad he made this video and said what he said. Because even if Trump isn't elected, the fact that he's made it this far has exposed something ugly and vicious about the American psyche.

Trump is a manifestation of white male rage, an incoherent, petulant and blind lashing out at the way America is evolving. Thrasher sees it as a kind of raking back of power from the newly seated voices, the empire striking back at those impudent enough to demand equality. That's a fair point. To a person, the Trump supporters I've interacted with are angry with what they perceive as the erosion of their personal prerogatives--they don't like that gays or blacks or Mexicans are accorded what they see as special privileges. They don't like that the world is changing to accommodate people who don't look, act or believe as they do. They think they're losing America, in large part because the loss of some mythical, apple-pie America has long been a talking and rallying point for cynical politicians.

They wish with a white-hot fever to return to a time that never existed. They are at best nostalgists disconnected from our real history. You can find the roots of the problem in a failure of education, in the capitulation to intellectual and physical laziness that permeates our culture. You can blame it on what you want. Blame it on TV. As Kris Kristofferson said, blame it on the Rolling Stones. Whatever.

It's easier to embrace some demagogue who promises magical solutions than it is to realize that the only way to begin to make the world better is to make yourself better.

This election isn't about choosing between two unappetizing candidates. While we might have hoped for a more inspiring choice than Hillary Clinton, there's nothing to suggest she won't be a competent steward of the nation. Trump on the other hand is a bully, a con man and a liar who employs fascist rhetoric. I don't think he's Hitler, or even Mussolini, but he's gone further than any other American demagogue.

I don't think we will elect Trump, but if we do it will prove that we are not the people we pretend to be. It will prove that we are as susceptible to the appeals of aggressive nationalism and authoritarianism as Europeans were in the 1930s. Trump tells us we've been victimized--and provides scapegoats.

I'm not saying ordinary Americans shouldn't be angry--though our economy is doing well, the average American isn't benefiting. Most of us aren't better off than we were in the last year of the (Bill) Clinton administration. A lot of us have no savings and are deep in debt. The system has been gamed. Late-stage capitalism incentivizes the cold-blooded assessment of the world as it is and will be at the expense of actually making things; the way to grow rich these days is to bet other people's money and charge them for the privilege of loaning their capital.

That's wrong, and Hillary Clinton won't fix it. Neither would Bernie Sanders.

And neither will Donald Trump.

I don't think he'll be elected. But I'm not so naive as to believe it can't happen here. It can and it will unless we decide to be the sort of exceptional people we've always pretended to be.

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

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Editorial on 06/19/2016

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