Okay, everyone. It’s time for us to all to have a grown-up conversation. Your guy is not going to win. Nor should he. He has said and allegedly done things (over and over again) that would disqualify anyone from the presidency. But come January, we are still going to have to govern this nation, including all of the Trump Trainers, the “I’m with Her”-ers, the Bernie Bros, the people who threw their hands up in frustration and swore to not vote in this election, and all the rest. We just spent more than a year vilifying each other and it is going to have to come to an end if we are going to make any kind of progress.
Look, I get that some of you have legitimate concerns about the direction that our country is taking. The lack of availability of ways to make a blue collar living in areas that used to thrive on manufacturing is a point well taken (you might remember that that point resonated well with people on both sides of the ideological spectrum). It is clear that people in those areas are suffering, and policies will have to be made that deal with rural and Rust Belt poverty and lack of opportunity. But what we objected to the most was the way that some of you tend to wrap that and other issues up with race and ethnicity. “Make America Great Again” might be a laudable motto if it was not widely viewed as a dog-whistle that roughly translates to “Make America White Again.” The fact is that our country has a long, rich history of racism that we would do well to keep in mind as historical context when we are examining current events. But never before has someone so successfully weaponized this hate to further their own political goals–we have never had to deal with a demagogue or a fascist.
I feel like I am qualified to say all of this because I am from Trump Country. I have more than one family member that wears the infamous red cap with pride. And I know that their motivations are complex. Yes, there is a generous helping of racial anxiety in there, and that I cannot excuse. But there is also a pining for the “old days” (which may or may not have ever existed in reality), in which a man (or hopefully now a woman) could earn enough to raise his or her family without a college degree. The problem is that the rose glow in which some people recall those “old days” seems to filter out the racial strife, the lack of opportunities for women and minorities, and the lack of a social safety net that actually existed in those days. It would be foolish to forget that history, and to act like it has not profoundly affected the situation in minority and immigrant communities today.
Maybe there are ways that we can work toward progressive goals in this country while also revitalizing the type of blue collar jobs that used to sustain people like my forebears in certain parts of the country. Or maybe that goal is antithetical to the idea of the type of society that we progressives want to build. That latter idea scares me because I hate the idea that we would leave behind an entire group of people in the name of progress. I’m lucky because I got out, and I have been lucky enough to get a hell of an education off of my cis-hetero-white male privilege and a modicum of hard work. But I am not so encased in my ivory tower bubble that I cannot see that the movement that swept Donald Trump to within mere votes of the White House will never go away until will deal with the lack of opportunities in some parts of the country. So I’m with you all if you want to build a society that offers access to a good life for everyone, from Rust Belt to the poorest of inner cities, for people of all backgrounds. But you need to drop the fascist. He isn’t helping to get that message across, and he will just serve to further alienate you from the current power structure. Together, maybe we can “Finally Make America Great for Everyone.” Slap that on a snapback and I might actually wear it.
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