1.
Trump is obviously ignorant, and, I suspect, not
particularly intelligent. But he identified something in the electorate that
most people in high places had ignored, and that is the long-simmering
resentment of many ordinary citizens over how their concerns are dismissed by
those who spend their time worrying about the market, the Israel-Palestinian
question, international politics generally, and the mechanics of governance
(or, in the case of Repubs, non-governance). Those people came out and voted,
and because so many of them live in small places, they were under-counted in
the polls. Hillary’s voters, on the other hand, weren’t so passionate about her
(who could be?), and many of them didn’t bother to vote, having been assured
that she would win anyway. Close to 9 million more people voted in 2012 than in
2016; Trump got fewer votes overall, in his victory, than Romney did in losing
badly in 2012.
2.
The supporters of Hillary took Trump literally,
but not seriously; Trump’s own supporters took him seriously, but not
literally. This, which I heard tonight on the News Hour (public TV), is
evidently a formulation by a writer for the Atlantic,
and it rings true to me. Hillary-people heard the outrageous comments about
Mexicans, Muslims, and so forth, and believed that he was serious, and so
dismissed him as a clown. Trump’s voters heard the same things and laughed: in
interviews over the past few days many of them actually laughed when confronted
with the crazy statements, saying, in effect, that they never believed any of
that. What they were responding to was his basic, gut message: the system is
rigged –not the votes, but the whole system: the economy, the culture; and it
needs to be torn down and rebuilt. That is a powerful message, one I myself
believed, forty and fifty years ago.
3.
Trump has an enormous problem: he really thinks
he can fix things by common-sense, tough-business-guy type negotiations or
sword rattling. He can’t; the world is much more complicated than a contract
over an apartment building. The good news is, there are a few things he can do,
and so he will probably try those first: rebuilding the infrastructure (he said
this immediately upon being elected): bridges, airports, highways, inner
cities. A huge public-works project would be a very good thing, both because
our infrastructure is really in bad, and deteriorating, shape; but also because
it will spend a lot of money and put a lot of workers into decent-paying jobs
who are now not working at all, or are flipping burgers and greeting people at Wal-Mart.
People on the Left have been arguing for this for years; but the Repubs have
refused to consider it, arguing disingenuously that it would increase the
deficit and the debt. No one believes they actually care about the deficit or
the debt; and now that they are in control they can forget about that. They
will give him the money; unless the wacko far-rights in the House gum up the
works. I predict they won’t do this; their constituents are largely Trump
people.
4.
The Wall won’t be built. He’ll pretend to start
that project, and events will quickly push it off the front page. It will
languish and eventually die, with Trump saying it turned out to be unnecessary
because he was so brilliant he stopped illegal immigration without it (More
Mexicans returned to Mexico in the past year than entered the U.S. illegally,
so he has a ready-made fact that he can use as proof that he stopped illegal
immigration).
5.
Trump is clueless in foreign policy, or in
foreign anything; and this is our biggest risk. He is thin-skinned and
egotistical, and it’s hard to imagine how he will react when thwarted by
international events. He may try to “bomb the hell” out of ISIS, for example,
and that could well lead to a disaster. Putin is a clever man, though, and may
be able to convince Trump that he (Trump) is controlling events even as they go
Putin’s way. Trouble is, that would also probably be a disaster.
6.
A Trump administration may still be a very bad
time: the people he appears to be considering for his cabinet and other top
positions are second-and third-raters (Gingrich, Christie, Ben Carson) when
they are not crazies (John Bolton, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Palin).
He will have a hard time finding experienced people for many positions, notably
national security posts, because virtually all of the senior Repub people in
these areas signed an open letter refusing to support him –he may have to rely
on less-experienced junior people. Mike Pence is now the head of his transition
team because he couldn’t staff it with experienced people. Pence only took the
VP job because he was going to lose in a re-election bid in Indiana, and he is
a far-right ideologue; Christie, besides being badly damaged by Bridgegate,
backed off when the “grab her by the xxxxx” tape came out; and Trump requires
absolute loyalty.
But Trump will probably be able to
fill 2 or more Supreme Court seats, and republicans have a history of poor
appointments there when it comes to tense situations: Nixon on Carswell and
Haynesworth; Clarence Thomas; Bush II on Harriet Myers. Trump may well appoint
a third-rater; and he may get away with it if only because he is feared by many
Repubs. So the Court is likely to go farther right –which in this case means,
the side with the most money (usually Business) will prevail in important
cases. This may not sit well with Trump’s “base,” who, remember, are not really
passionate Trump supporters, in many cases.
7.
Things that may go very badly:
a.
Tariffs that Trump has promised to impose on
China. Could cause a trade war, higher prices here in the U.S., especially for
cheap goods that Trump people buy at Wal-Mart, and loss of jobs in export
industries in this country.
b.
Military adventures, if Trump persists in
believing that he can kill off ISIS quickly and easily, or that he really understands
ISIS better than the generals. Also, trying to blackmail allies over payments
to NATO, for example, and encouraging small countries to build their own
nuclear arsenals, while creating deteriorating relations with China, could have
the effect of making North Korea think it really ought to try some experiments
in dropping nukes on a few countries.
c.
Foreign relations, if Trump tries to cancel the
Iran deal. He can take the US out of that agreement, but our allies won’t go
along with him, resulting in isolation of the US and, incidentally, a loss of a
lot of foreign business for companies like Boeing.
d.
Obamacare, if he really tries to repeal it. It
was all good fun for the Repubs in the House to vote for repeal 50-some times;
but actually repealing it would cause chaos in a huge industry. He is already
backing off that, though.
e.
The economy, if he actually cuts taxes as he
proposes, retains Social Security and Medicare at present levels as he has
promised, “rebuilds” the armed forces, and embarks on a big infrastructure
project. This is why, although stocks have hit new highs since Tuesday, bonds
have come crashing down: inflation and interest rates could very well go up a lot.
So, I worry. Not as much as my kids do –I don’t think Daniel
and his friends will be “rounded up and shipped out,” as he said; he lives in
Massachusetts, not Alabama--, but quite a bit. The swastikas showing up in
various places and the fact that the real crazies of the alt-Right are now seen
as legitimate where they were formerly regarded as trolls who creep around in
the dark places –those features of the new climate will debase us all.
But what underlies the Trump phenomenon? Where did we go wrong?
First, we have the tendency, almost exclusively among Republican politicians, to deny the legitimacy of a president, and to openly advocate opposing that president regardless of the positions he advocates. This happened to Clinton, and of course to Obama. A famous example is the filibuster, on January 26, 2010, by the Republicans in the Senate to defeat a resolution to create a deficit-reduction task force. This bipartisan resolution had been supported by Mitch McConnell and John McCain; but these two senators, as well as six cosponsors of the resolution, voted against it. Why? Because, between the time of the original crafting of the bill and the vote, President Obama had gone on record as supporting it. Being a Democrat has, itself, become illegitimate, if not (see Ann Coulter) treasonous.
Then there is, accompanying this, or following from it, is the increasing demonization of people who disagree with oneself. The only time you hear "I disagree with ..." from the mouths of an increasing number of people, both public figures and ordinary citizens, is when someone they support goes very far out of bounds. Thus, Republican politicians, confronted with Trump's comments on Mexicans, or his proposal to ban Muslims from the U.S., "disagreed" with him. As for political or cultural opponents, one doesn't "disagree" with such people, one abhors their beliefs, or is outraged by their statements. This is prevalent on the Left as well as on the Right. Just look at the headlines on the widely-followed news/political websites.
This demonization has been accompanied by, and facilitated by, our increasing tendency to segregate ourselves politically: as a nation, we've gradually sorted ourselves, so that most people don't encounter those unlike themselves (socially, politically, or economically) in the normal course of going about their days. This began with the super-rich, who are too precious to risk encountering, say, a homeless person or a tradesman other than at one's back door; but it has spread widely. Just as most black kids attend schools that are (a guess) more than 90% black, most of the states in the country are reliably "blue" or "red." Although I personally appreciate the lack of political advertising I am faced with here in Illinois (and when a local candidate advertises, you can instantly identify if he or she is a Republican, because the ad doesn't mention the party), this facilitates seeing the Other as fearsome and alien. Japan is one of the most anti-Semitic countries in the world. Jewish population in Japan: zilch.
Our population is increasingly ignorant, indeed functionally illiterate (this ignores areas where illiteracy rates results from a high proportion of immigrants). Newton Minnow, who famously declared, in the 1960s, that television was a “vast wasteland,” would today consider it an oasis of enlightenment compared to the Internet. I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said that the man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot. Such people get their information from self-selected oral sources, and the tendency is to select sources that provide views comfortingly like ones own. Those sources rely on that, to tailor, indeed distort, their product to reinforce the political views they want to advance. Of course, when a steady consumer of such views hears a contrary piece of information, his response is that it is simply untrue.
Trump advances this tendency: when a person of national stature states as a fact things that are untrue, he legitimizes those ideas. Last year a survey found that regular viewers of Fox News were actually less well-informed than those who consumed no regular source of news at all. And when a national political party nominates such a person, it lends credibility to those views. Routine surveys show that most Americans have no conception about basic facts regarding our government's performance, and often believe things that are actually directly opposite the truth. And ignorance doesn't just mean unaware of the facts: it means unable to connect things intellectually, to parse statement, to reason clearly.
contrary to the facts pr
Beliefs that are contrary to the facts produce justifications for draconian social policies. If one believes that most homicides are committed by blacks, and that most blacks are willfully unemployed, violent, unpredictable, and irresponsible, we shouldn't be surprised that a cop (who is most likely under-educated and under-trained, and subject to the prejudices of his class), shoots a big black guy who is standing by his car and makes a sudden, ill-advised move. And it is a short step from that to a presidential candidate who urges the adoption of national "stop-and-frisk" policies and national "concealed carry" legislation.
