Trump's America

I'm trying to understand those who so wholeheartedly and passionately support Donald Trump, because it can't be because of his sterling character, glibness of tongue, pious faith, astonishing and finessed understanding of foreign policy matters and negotiation, his fight for human rights, or any one of a dozen other absent assets. People straight up either love him or hate him. His interjection into this election cycle has spawned passions I haven’t seen in my lifetime. To be fair, the rhetoric is no better for HRC for a load of other reasons but that’s not my point. What has Trump, as the media says, “tapped” into? I think the whole “Make America Great Again” theme is the clue. As this article written by the controversial Charles Murray illumines for me along with JD Vance’s new book “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis”, it’s the disenfranchised and struggling working class who are primarily rallying for him and passionately trumpeting his message. The separation between the “elite” and the new lower class is a chasm. The middle class is disappearing.

It didn’t use to be this way I don’t believe – I don’t remember it that way growing up, but admittedly my lens is narrow. There is definitely a more noticeable class consciousness. I find it incredibly ironic that one of the so-called elite has become the banner carrier and champion du jour of the struggling masses. It had to be the rhetoric at first which implied something had been lost and he was going to take up the cause of hard-working and struggling Americans and take back the territory. It struck a chord with some of a certain age who remember “how it used to be,” and are in fear of the future, not just theirs, but their children’s and their grandchildren’s.

We are looking back, pining for the old days. It says in Ecclesiastes 7:10, “Do not say, "Why were the old days better than these?" For it is not wise to ask such questions.” It also says, “Do not be eager in your heart to be angry, for anger resides in the bosom of fools.” But angry we have become. Both sides. Even the candidates say heinous things no Presidential candidate has ever said, behave in ways most people would not allow their children to behave, and there’s not even a pretense of decorum. It’s embarrassing to watch and makes me afraid for America. I know it serves no purpose to look backwards at once was, but I find myself doing that all too often. 

These candidates, each grossly faulty and inadequate for the task at hand in so many ways, are sadly all we have. I wonder sometimes if maybe they are what we deserve. They are like a mirror showing us what we have become as a nation. How far down we have gone from the “American creed”. [“Its three core values may be summarized as egalitarianism, liberty and individualism.”] The partisan division; the trickery and parsing of Right, Truth, & Morality; the vitriol with which those who have differing convictions or views are attacked on social media, even brother against brother; the violence and threat of violence – it is as this article states as if we “have detached ourselves from the bedrock that has made us unique in the history of the world."

 (Cheryl Banks, 2016-10-21)


"There’s nothing irrational about Donald Trump’s appeal to the white working class," writes Charles Murray: "They have every reason to be frustrated with the raw deal they’ve received in recent decades."

WSJ.COM|BY CHARLES MURRAY
http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trumps-america-1455290458