This is all a bad dream, right? Are we being punked?
I’d like to start out by saying something maybe a little unexpected: there is a small part of me that understands the Trump phenomenon. For one thing, at least before his act got really old, I thought he could sometimes be a little entertaining--in a guilty pleasure sort of way--compared with the stuffshirt Mitt Romney, the cranky old man McCain, the stiff as a board Kerry, the stiffer than a board Gore.... "There you again, Little Marco". "Very low energy guy". I mean it was a little funny at least for a while. John Oliver echoed my thoughts several months ago: "There's a part of me that almost likes this guy. It's just not a part of me that I don't particularly like".
It’s also easy to say Americans just fell for the richest, loudest, cockiest guy in the room, but the whole Brexit vote this summer suggests that the underlying theme of Trump’s campaign really does resonate immensely with more people in the Western post-industrial world than the elite ever thought. We have a new economy now. Globalization, outsourcing, and free trade have basically destroyed blue collar America. Trump ran a “make America great again” campaign which told all those people who feel betrayed and disenfranchised that he was going to make it better. He was going to avenge the injustices that had been done to them. He was going to destroy NAFTA, destroy free trade with the Chinese and bring back American manufacturing jobs.
And those angry people? In many ways, I think they may have every right to be angry. You’ve been working at a job for years but your company decides to ditch you and everyone you know in their race to the bottom, their never ending quest to get the same work done for less money in other countries. And by negotiating free trade deals which allow American companies to import those goods from Mexican and Chinese factories back here without paying tariffs, the government gave those companies a permission slip to destroy your livelihood—all in the name of greed, cheap labor, higher profit margins, better stock prices for shareholders, campaign contributions, etc. And let’s say you’re 53 years old and have no other skills and probably can’t afford to go back to school because of the insane costs of higher education….. You’re likely screwed. Trapped. Left to file for disability just to avoid foreclosure. You’re angry—and who wouldn’t be?
That very real gripe fueled this. Before Trump—and Bernie Sanders—came along, the bipartisan party line was free trade was awesome, we were going to replace those crummy factory jobs with new cooler jobs and everyone would live happily after. For many people, that hasn’t happened and they just feel they’ve been sold a fairy tale, a bill of goods.
Of course was the old industrialized, non-globalized America really a paradise that’s been lost? Well…no, but time and nostalgia and the inability to replace those old times with something better will tend to distort perceptions. I recently read two rock bios: Ozzy Osbourne’s and Bruce Springsteen’s. Ozzy talks about briefly working in a factory in blue collar Birmingham, England in the late 60's, hating it with a passion, seeing all these lifers who were so miserable that all they could do to cope with the dreariness of their job was get shitfaced every chance they got, and Ozzy dreamed of music as his only possible escape from that hell. Ditto Bruce. His dad worked in a factory in blue collar Freehold, New Jersey in the 60's, was also miserable and abusive, was also an alcoholic…and Bruce wanted out of that town that rips the bones from your back, that suicide rap. He wanted to get out while he was young cause baby he was born to run. And this is the “great” America Trump has promised to give us again.
So globalists like Hillary, Obama, and Bush could justifiably claim there’s no paradise to return to, so why don’t we focus on a better future rather trying to reclaim a lousy, air polluted past? But even a bad job is better than no job. And not everyone has the skills to become an app developer.
Never mind the fact that this populist champion of the downtrodden is himself a billionaire real estate mogul who wears pink ties, not hard hats and graduated from an Ivy League business school, not a technical school. He told them what they wanted to hear so they anointed “Mr. Trump” one of their own. And never mind that Trump seems far better at diagnosing the problem than prescribing the solution. First he proposed changing trade agreements and slapping stiff tariffs on imports but he seems to have backed off that—probably because that would risk crashing the economy. Recently it sounded like he had shifted to the old Republican playbook: lower taxes, trickle down economics. We’ve seen this before. That will be a benefit to the rich like Donald Trump but I’ll bet Trump a taco bowl on Cinqo De Mayo that that such corporate welfare will be of no help whatsoever to laid off Bad Company fans named Gary in Lansing, Michigan.
Trump the con artist knew what con to play. A brighter future? Nope, people want the past again. Better together? Nope, people want to stay in their own tribes. He played on everyone’s baser, angriest, most fearful instincts and everyone fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Hail to the Chief.
But in every con there has to be a kernel of truth and globalization is a mixed bag to say the least. I think a legitimate case can be made that the average American is not the beneficiary of it. But Trump appealed straight to America’s racist heart by using globalization to fuel anger at those
“rapist” drug smuggling Mexicans and those Chinese who have supposedly"stolen" our jobs from us. Or….there’s the Bernie Sanders perspective: maybe the villain is not the Mexican or Chinese worker. They are just people trying to put food on the table like everyone else. Maybe it’s the greedy multi-national corporations who have allowed themselves to become slaves to Wall Street and their insatiable and insane hunger for growth, growth, growth every quarter which drives companies to look for higher profit margins any way possible—including leaving American workers out in the cold in exchange for cheaper pastures outside our borders. Trump and Bernie were actually telling the same basic story but Bernie went after the big shots, picked on someone his own size. Trump, as his habit, picked on the little guys, the Mexicans, the Chinese, the ones earning pennies an hour. This is consistent with how he picked on Little Marco Rubio, mocked a disabled reporter, and groped women less powerful and wealthy than him….The Donald is all about finding easy prey. He’s like Kramer on Seinfeld wrestling children.
But there’s another aspect of this whole thing that interests me. The aspect of gender. The race fell along gender lines. Trump won among male voters 53 to 41 percent. Hillary won among women 52 to 42 percent. In the last two elections, McCain and Romney carried the white vote, Obama the non-white vote. People still generally vote for their own! (Except me: I voted for Obama and Hillary). Also interestingly this time: Obama got 35 percent of the white male vote in 2012, Hillary just 31 percent. But it’s not just guys. 53 percent of white women voted for Trump! This does beg a question, doesn’t it? Take your typical white person, your Joe Six Pack, does a black guy as President bother them less than a woman as President?
Case in point, when Trump spoke at the Convention Center in Hartford during the Primaries….I didn’t attend. But I did walk outside on my way home from work. Vendors were selling a couple of “witty” T-shirts and announcing what they said to everyone within earshot. One said "Trump That Bitch". Stay classy, Trump fans. The other—parental discretion is strongly advised on this one--“Hillary Sucks, Monica Swallows”. I heard absolutely NO “Get your Make America Great Again T-shirt here!” sales pitches. Again, this suggests Trump fans don’t even love the orange sniffling freak, they just hate Hillary SOOOOOO much?
Now I know it could be said we can’t make any broad inferences about gender or race because we’re dealing with a specific black guy in Barack Obama and a specific woman in Hillary Clinton. In fact Obama’s relative success with white voters could be chalked up to the simple fact that he’s better at making speeches. His recent campaigning for Hillary was a reminder that he’s really more articulate and charismatic than either Trump or Hillary could ever hope to be in their wildest dreams. Can you imagine either carrying off a “Fired up! Ready to go!” chant. Awkward.
That qualifier out of the way, indulging in broad speculation is what I do here! Again, people—including women—voted for Trump in droves. Despite his boast that his star power and Tic Tacs granted him a permission slip to kiss and grab women by the pussy whenever he felt like it. Despite Megyn Kelly, who dared to ask him tough questions about his past statements about women instead of bake him cookies or model lingerie. Our President elect’s response to her: “She had blood coming from her eyes. Blood coming from here….wherever”. The old, “Guys, you know how these women are on their period!”. They voted for him despite the fact that he bragged to Howard Stern that as pageant operator, he and only he can walk in and leer at Miss Universe contestants while they are getting undressed backstage. They checked off the name of the guy who said his daughter is his type and he would probably be dating her if she wasn’t his daughter. THIS GUY GOT 53 PERCENT OF WHITE WOMEN TO VOTE FOR HIM. He is our soon-to-be Douchebag In Chief.
But this didn’t happen in a vacuum. He got these votes against a specific woman with her own specific history. We all saw that Trump’s response to the leaked Access Hollywood tape was a full scale attack on…. Bill.
So now we get to my question—which probably none of the pundits will go near. What role did Monica Lewinsky play in the 2016 election? I mean it shouldn’t have played any role, right? Bill wasn’t running for President, Hillary has never cheated on her husband as far as we know….non factor. No scarlet letter to pin on her. But to what extent do we perhaps still hold women accountable for their husband’s actions? Is it still assumed among many—perhaps even among many women—that of course all men are tempted to cheat, to mess with the intern, but it’s the wife’s job to keep him happy enough so that he won’t. And if he does? Is it her failing? It’s 2016 and what I just said sounds like it’s from the Stone Ages, but is it still believed consciously or subconsciously by many Americans?
And then what do we make of a woman who is cheated on—in this case in front of the entire world—but stays with her husband? Are there some who judge such a woman harshly? Did the sins of Bill Clinton sink Hillary Clinton’s chances in 2016? Did their sordid, blue dressed stained history turn people off to such a degree that the thought of them returning to the White House was less a turn-off than letting a guy enter the Oval Office who is a blatant, shameless, chauvinistic pig who would have almost seemed behind the times in the 1950’s?
If any of this has any truth, all I can say is this: it’s still a man’s world. Reading the level of utter hatred toward Hillary on social media—surpassing even anything I’ve seen about Obama—has been pretty eye opening. I don’t think there was this much demonization at the Salem witch trials. You would swear Lady Macbeth was Mother Theresa compared with Killary. You're telling me this had nothing to do with her gender? But again.....many guys who may be out of work, struggling to get by, living off government assistance, they probably feel powerless, impotent, emasculated. So for them a WOMAN having far more power than them? Being President? It's a major threat to them. Just like scapegoating Mexican and Chinese workers, it's taking out their legitimate frustrations in illegitimate, toxic ways.
I might have once said sexism wasn’t even a real thing anymore. Granted, my perception might be skewed by working in an office where women are the majority—including management. But this is not the whole world. I mean creating signs about Obama which addressed his race in any negative way would have been completely unaccepted outside of maybe a KKK rally. But Trump That Bitch signs outside raised ranches in leafy suburbs? That was just “a joke”. Another “joke” was told a few years ago when the left was attacking Sarah Palin. People like Howard Stern and Bill Maher called her The C Word. I think Sarah Palin was annoying and unqualified and kind of an airhead, but doesn’t it seem stange that even liberals can toss around the C Word for laughs and continue to make millions and have highly rated shows? Iin stark contrast, Michael Richards—aka Kramer from Seinfeld—attempted to use The N Word for laughs a few years ago in a stand-up routine. Anyone heard from him since?
Misogyny is real. We now live in a culture where feminism is a dirty word—synonymous with feminazi. It’s almost assumed that any feminist must be an angry lesbian. We have a world where a well-informed, sane former US Senator and Secretary of State was deemed less qualified to lead the country than a guy with zero experience in elected office but a ton of experience starring on reality TV and selling steaks online.
You can’t make this up.
Oh well, we just have to hope that our system is so strong that even Donald Trump can’t ruin it. Our system of checks and balances does allow for some child proofing. Or, in this case, Trump proofing.
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