I had to do a lot of soul searching after the 2016 election, after discovering that most of my family voted for Trump (my sister and I being the only ones who didn’t).
No one in my family, with the exception of my sister, has a college degree. My dad didn’t even finish high school. I went to college for one semester before dropping out and entering the workforce instead. This is all to say, I by no means come from the “coastal elites.”
My family has also been one that has always been very kind, loving, and accepting. My mom raised me to never disparage others, to always make anybody feel welcome regardless of race, nationality, or creed, to be compassionate and empathetic. So it was quite a surprise to be presented with the stark contrast between how Trump supporters were being portrayed, vs. my family whom I know well and love deeply.
To keep this somewhat brief, the conclusion I’ve drawn over the past four years is that, sadly, my family and many others have been duped: yet, I think it has been a mistake to place this blame directly on the shoulders of those who have been swindled. Most, if not all of this anger, should be directed towards the swindlers. The most tragic reality of our current state is that we have in fact managed to be turned against one another, I would imagine to the delight of those who push the blame on minorities and the spectre of some undefined version of “socialism.” With the nation divided, the attention cannot be turned towards those responsible for the degradation of society that my grandfathers fought and nearly died for in WW2.
The greatest trick the devil played was making the poor believe their misfortune could be attributed to the colored man. While the ultra wealthy continue to thrive from hidden tax shelters, tax loopholes, four decades of some of the lowest marginal tax rates in U.S. history, and de-regulation, the lowest skilled and low wage workers have watched as their labor has been devalued drastically. Nobody who believes trickle-down economics is bullshit should be voting for Trump; and yet, my poor, uneducated and severely underemployed family have put their vote in exactly that (although I have spoken with some of them, who didn’t understand this connection at all).
What Trump voters understand at some level is that they’ve been fucked. I think of my parents, who have undoubtedly found it increasingly difficult to scrape by and survive, when only three decades ago we lived as a family of four on my stepdad’s single income at a low-skill employer (that was part of a union). I think of the millions who look around and don’t understand why things have changed. This is demonstrably a population of low skilled and low educated laborers. I cannot in good conscience blame them for misdiagnosing the problem, or even for not understanding the rationale behind why they are being deceived: after all, the dollars that could have gone towards improving American education and circumventing this issue in the first place instead went to the lifestyles of the rich and famous. I think of rural America that overwhelmingly voted for Trump, a population that is not incorrect to feel completely disconnected, under-represented, and excluded from the national conversation due to the greater influence/perceived needs of densely populated urban areas. Again, they are not wrong in their hunch that they’ve been neglected, and without addressing their legitimate concerns, we will not move closer to resolving this issue.
So the challenge lies before us: how can we bridge the divide between Americans that has been created by the wealthy elite, who have blamed everything but the main culprit: their siphoning of wealth from the middle class? Truly, I believe all of humanity’s conscience needs to turn towards the drastic wealth disparity that has crept up for the past four decades, and with the advent of social media and globalization, is now on display like never before. It seems perhaps like a new political party would be needed to achieve this, which seems so outlandish at this point as to be impossible. What else can we do?
