By Marc Jampole
In imagining presidential candidates at the beginning of 2016, if someone had said to me that an erratic and narcissistic sociopath would garner even a million votes, I would have considered it a national embarrassment, regardless of that candidate’s political stances.
In imagining presidential candidates at the beginning of 2016, if someone had said to me that an erratic and narcissistic sociopath would garner even a million votes, I would have considered it a national embarrassment, regardless of that candidate’s political stances.
Same feeling if even one million people had voted for a
candidate without government experience who failed miserably at his profession
of real estate development and casino management, be that candidate of the left
or of the right. A national embarrassment that a million people would think
such a failure to have presidential timber.
Same feeling of embarrassment if one million people had
voted for someone involved in thousands of lawsuits, most involving other people
suing him for nonpayment. Or if one million people had voted for a candidate
who routinely slurred women, Hispanics and Muslims. Or if one million people
had voted for someone who told bald-faced lies about his past and the state of
the country in every speech. Or if one million people had voted for someone who
used a charitable foundation to make private purchases and bribe government
officials.
Or if one million people had voted for someone who admitted
to sexual assault on camera and in doing so committed a serious violation of
law by creating a hostile work environment for women.
Mainstream news media and Democratic politicians can wring
their hands all they want about Russian hacking, FBI manipulation, voter
suppression laws, the double standard applied to Hillary, fake news, the Stein
effect (which turned Michigan and Wisconsin red), Hillary’s mistakes, the news
media’s failure to call Trump on his lies and the unfair skewering of the
electoral college in favor of rural states—they can harp about all the many unfortunate
happenstances that had to align in some kind of disharmonic convergence for
Trump to win the electoral college while losing the popular vote by an
unprecedented (not “unpresidented”) 2.8 million votes—moan about it all as much
as they like, but it does not change the fact that not one million, not ten million,
but almost 63 million people voted for Donald Trump.
That’s a little more than a quarter of all Americans
eligible to vote and 46% of actual voters who cast their ballots for someone
documented to be an unethical, law-breaking, sociopathic, racist, erratic, misogynistic
liar with no government experience. Law-breaking. Erratic. No Experience.
Sociopath. Racist. Misogynistic. Lying. Unethical. Any of these eight traits
should have disqualified him in the minds of voters.
No one knows the real reason we elected Donald Trump. Was it
a “perfect storm” of coincidences, which besides the ones listed above also
included the lack of any mainstream Republican candidate and the absence of Republican
super delegates? Was it a moment of mass hysteria or mass anger at the
establishment? Was it a brilliantly executed strategy that bypassed the news
media by relying on revivalist meeting events and social media? Was it because the
Democratic Party based too much of its program on identity politics, a popular
explanation among self-loathing progressives and their mainstream media
enablers? These self-flagellators seem to forget that walking away from asserting
the rights of ethnic, racial and sexual minorities involves selling out the American
dream and that the very term “identity politics” undercuts the legitimacy of
the injustices that women and minorities still endure.
In my view, what elected Donald Trump was the merging of two
evils which have poisoned the American body politics since the white rich
merchants and slave owners whom we call our founders formed the country more
than two centuries ago: racism and greed. Many people voted for Trump out of
fear and resentment of blacks, Hispanics and Muslims. Many other people voted
for him because they wanted to lower taxes, no matter what. The greedy ones
have cynically financed a war against multicultural values and science to
pander to the racist (and ultra-religious) ones. Rich folk supporting the beliefs of racist
(and culturally conservative) folk in return for support of economic policies
that hurt 99% of all Americans has pretty much described the Republican play
book since the rise of Ronald Reagan. If the sleep of reason produces monsters,
then the reasoning of the Republican Party has produced the monstrous Donald
Trump. Or perhaps it’s the reasoning of consumer capitalism.
Let’s not forget, though, that both racism and greed run
deep and long in Americwan history. In fact the white rich merchants and slave
owners who created the Electoral College did so to keep real control of
governance in as small a set of hands as possible. Other aspects of the
Constitution in its original form show favoritism to both the propertied and
slave owners. From its very inception, we can view most American history
through the lens of either racism or the battle to divide the economic pie
between the wealthy and everyone else.
No matter the explanation for the election of Donald Trump,
we should all feel ashamed and embarrassed. That the ballots of one quarter of the
voting population should elect such a dangerously unqualified president
reflects poorly on our education system, our political parties, our news media,
our system of checks and balances, the motives of the ultra-wealthy and our cultural
norms. It is our national shame. And once Trump’s cabinet of crony capitalists,
retired generals and ideologues springs into action, it will also be our
national tragedy.
The American dream has proved to be weaker than the American
original sins of racism and greed.
