As I have tried to comprehend the
election result, I came to a single conclusion:
that Shakespeare was right. "There are [indeed] more things in
heaven and earth, [sic] than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Hamlet (1.5.167-8),
Hamlet to Horatio.
Thinkers and writers everywhere
have tried to make sense of the outcome, particularly in light of the polling
data that led us all to believe another outcome was all but inevitable. In our
efforts to process, much has been written about the White women's vote; the
White working class men's vote; the Whites who make more than $70k vote. Writers
have split the voters primarily by economic status (the list of articles on
White working class male rage and dispossession is quite long) while ignoring
the thing that to my mind makes the most sense to consider. It was, as far as I
can tell, potent emotional forces (PEF's) that allowed voters to
overlook behaviors and utterances that would, in a 'lesser' candidate, have
been unoverlookable. It
was those forces, that once again, got White men and women to vote for a
clearly unqualified character with temperament and ethics challenges galore. It
was PEFs that will keep us all from finding a firmer and more equal economic
foundation for this nation.
So what are these forces? By my
assessment there are at least three. First, there is the deep-seated fear of
majority-minority status of Whites; an attendant concern about a shortage of
resources and a (perfectly reasonable) worry about allocation of same should
such a shortage actually occur. Second, is a willingness to tolerate the
intolerable if that ‘intolerable’ targets some group other than my own. Third, there’s
plain old odiosity*. The basket does indeed, contain some deplorables. Who
knew?
PEF #1: Becoming a majority of
the minority
The real psychological challenge
isn’t the majority part of the maj/min status, it’s the min.
White folk are generally very
coy about racism. Many practice it on a daily basis in ways small and large,
but like to pretend to be either colorblind or otherwise immune to the effects
of supremacist thinking, training and a lifetime’s worth of subliminal
inculcation. Never mind any and all pretense to the contrary, the current
majority is well aware of the taxes that it regularly levies against POC. That
knowledge alone is a sufficiently potent force that it may have driven some to
vote perhaps against their own economic interests but definitely in favor of
their supremacist interests. Their worry is simple: will I be treated in
minority the way I’ve treated others currently in the minority? It’s a
reasonable worry. There’s no telling
what folk will do when the equation flips. No one can soothe frayed nerves or
offer any guarantees, which, I imagine is why many voted as they did. Heaven
knows, it wasn’t the Don's clearly articulated plans for dealing with income
inequality or any of America’s other ailments.
PEF #2: The intolerable is
tolerable if the intolerable befalls others and benefits me.
Some voters made the simple calculation that they could afford to
ignore the candidate’s (now president-elect's) blatant disrespect, bullying, a
history of mismanagement of companies and the willful harm done to contractors
only because (i) in their heart of hearts they wish they could do (and get away
with) the very same kinds of acts or (ii) they care not one whit for anyone
other than themselves. The vote wasn’t about country, state or county. Nope. The
vote was wholly self-preservative, and was made with the knowledge that such self-preservation
would come at their neighbors’ expense. Such is the nature of the colonizer
mindset I suppose - me first and if you have to die for me to be first then
whoopsie. I’ll shed a tear over your grave and remember you fondly or I’ll
demonize you in death and claim it was your own fault. Either way, I win.
These voters might be separated
into two groups: the It’s-the-Economy-Stupid Group 1 (who don’t care about the
President-Elect’s ethical and business failures) and the It’s-the-Economy-Stupid
Group 2, who are too poor to care about niceties like common decency.
Group 1 (the I-don’t-give-a-shits)
has strong economic concerns, to wit, their taxes. These voters are simply not
interested in any other considerations. A candidate can be as odious as he
wants to be, if he’s going to positively affect their economic situation,
that’s all they’re interested in. The rest is of no import. This explains why
there are so many Trump voters whose average income is $70,000+. These folk
don’t even notice Trump’s odiosity quotient, because nothing is of greater
significance than their taxes, their pocket books, their stock portfolios. Them. If I end up brutalized in the street as a
consequence of forces unleashed by their candidate, well, that’s my problem
ain’t it?
Group 2 (the
I’m-too-poor-to-give-a-shits) is too far gone economically to be overly
concerned about integrity, decency, politesse or the rise of the alt-right. At
the end of the day, these two groups’ concerns about problematic behaviors were
insufficient to resist the draw of the economic argument (such as it was) being
made to them. For them, the voter calculus came down to either “Where’s my
(refund) check and how much is it?” or “How soon is the coal plant gonna
reopen? When do I get my job back?”.
This “Me and mine first” thinking
has been at the heart of every single act of brutality in this nation’s
history. America’s history isn’t past, it’s present continuous. And it’s
continuing even as we speak. Some folk are lucky enough to be untouched by it,
I suppose, but those people are always very few in number. Such is the power of
politics. Whether we sign on or not, the winning party’s policies touch us.
PEF #3: Is the hired killer any more odious
than the one who hires him?
If, as a voter, you were able to
put your economic concerns above the real human decency challenges that the
former candidate, now president-elect, presented day after day, then you may well be precisely as odious as the man you have chosen as your leader. This
is not really surprising, bands of marauding jackals are not typically led by
lambs.
The voters now out "Heil Trump"ing; hijab snatching; swastika painting and generally making others miserable are indeed held in the thrall of some pretty potent emotional forces, the most potent of them all: White supremacist emboldened hate. Let us not
pretend. Let us also not pretend that there aren’t way more of them than any of
us might have previously guessed. And they, their anger, their guns and their
righteous odiosity are a potent force
with which we are going to have to deal for the foreseeable future.
Much has been written about the pain of middle America; about the anger of
White men (and by extension, their wives, partners, mothers and sisters who also
voted for 45 in droves) but what has not been said is that this is the very
group that has, from time immemorial, benefited from the pain of others.
The reality is that ever since
Christopher first Columbus'ed his way over here, the forebears of today's angry White
voters have been reaping where they did not sow; planting on land they did not
own; and building a nation with bricks they did not themselves fire in the kiln.
Angry middle America was granted all
manner of state and federal benefits, all of which were routinely denied and
are still being denied to people of color.
In the South, the forebears of
today’s angry White voters grew rich on cotton they neither planted nor
harvested off the labor of human beasts of burden whom they barely fed. So
while author after author has demanded that the world acknowledge and feel their
pain today, we have heard little about the pain of the oppressed groups who have
largely remained oppressed; the oppressed whose boats have little risen, no
matter how high the tide. White male anger is nice and all, but it ain't the
only anger out there. But as always, theirs is the only anger or pain that matters. The
earth screeches to a halt in the face of White pain and dispossession.
And so, here we are.
From all indications, America is set to begin yet another era of dancing on the bones of others and expecting to feel no consequence. That right there is a whole other essay, but I'll leave that for another day, month or year maybe.
At the end of the day, I refuse to accept that this
election was based purely on economics. It was not. In the election of 2016,
economics and decency were in a barroom brawl and voters picked their sides.
Now, we must own the sides we chose and clean up the mess our choices will surely leave behind.
*Odiosity: hatefulness
