The supporters of Donald Trump and of the right wing of the Republican party are, in general, those who dislike the changes of the past half-century: the globalization of the economy, the rise of diversity and cosmopolitanism, the broad migration towards cities, the challenges to traditional religious and communal values, the weakening of national self-confidence and power. Many of these groups define themselves by “traditional” values and communities, with strong and homogeneous local ties, clear gender roles, unquestioning pride in their region and nation. This world, now idealized, was one in which they felt valued and self-confident; they knew who they were, and had no qualms about it.
For the last few decades they have suffered constant attacks on their sense of self from elites who increasingly value diversity, innovation, globalization, cosmopolitanism. They have been told for decades that they are bad, racist, stupid, out of date, uncool. They have bowed before apparently universal social condemnation, suppressing their own feelings. Now suddenly they find in Trump someone telling them they don’t need to deny themselves, that they aren’t bad after all -- and millions of others who agree. The explosion of joy and solidarity is earth-shaking.
I speak from the point of view of my own tribe, the the privileged white coastal liberal intelligentsia. I, like everyone around me, find Trump repugnant. But I believe that no tribe has a monopoly on truth. We cannot move forward in peace and justice – we cannot deal with the great problems that confront us all – without a willingness to listen, understand, open ourselves to others, even and especially others we do not like. This is my attempt to understand another point of view.
Nearly fifty years ago I, like my friends, supported the movement for racial justice. Many of us went to the South to bring this message. We began telling the Southern whites that they were racist. While there were segregated water fountains and cafeterias and buses, many of them accepted the accusation, blamed themselves for participating in a culture that was so manifestly unjust. There were positive changes: the most obvious forms of discrimination began to fade, first in formal laws and gradually in the hearts of most of those who had once lived with and accepted the Jim Crow norms.
But we went a lot farther. We also told them they had to change the way they brought up their children. We agitated to put Black children side by side with them in the classroom. This was harder to accept. The education of one’s children is near the core of the sense of self, passing on what we feel is right and good. To have a bunch of outsiders telling them how and what they should teach their children, and how, was for many a step too far, and the resistance was fierce and long. This feeling extended far beyond the old South, to Chicago and Boston New York and Gary, Indiana, pretty much everywhere.
The message kept going out to the resisters that they were racist – racist, racist, racist. Eventually, most succumbed to the sustained pressure of the courts, the media, the political class; they told themselves they were wrong to resist, they tried to put up with it. Yet there was always some resentment of holier than thou outsiders.
Then we told them they were also bad because of their family and gender relations. We told them the way they thought about about housework, about the everyday expectations of what women and men should do, about sex – all this was bad. They needed to change everything, we said, to be more egalitarian and inclusive and just. They needed to change what they did when they got up in the morning – who made the breakfast, who packed the kids’ lunchboxes; to change what they did when they went to work, accepting an entirely different view of women’s role and capabilities from the one they had grown up with; to change what they did when they went to bed. We went on to tell them they were bad to tie their sense of self-worth to heterosexual masculinity and femininity.
We told them they were bad because of their friendships and associations. When men went off hunting with their buddies, they were reinforcing gender stereotypes and excluding women. When they went to their clubs, they were excluding blacks.
We told them they were bad because of the cars they drove, which (we said) threatened the planet.
We told them they were foolish and ignorant in their religious beliefs, which challenged our self-evident (to us) certainties about scientific Truth.
We had moral confidence in all of this, reinforced every day by the papers we read and the pundits we listened to. Our schools and universities repeated and extended the message.
The message of moral condemnation has in the way broadened its scope, from its initial focus on white Southerners, to encompass almost all groups that have been left out of the cultural and economic earthquakes of recent decades – including rural areas across the country, and some urban areas in which the fabric of community has been torn by economic change. Hunters in northern New York who love the skill and craft of handling guns; factory workers in Michigan who believe that a man has the responsibility to support a family; shopkeepers in Minnesota who have to deal with immigrant customers who have very unfamiliar needs and expectations – all of these feel they would like to go back to a more comfortable remembered past, where they felt confidently proud of of their identities and ways of life.
The spread of what might be called postmodern relations is threatening and difficult for all these groups, requiring them to reconstruct who they are, what defines them as worthwhile; it launches them into unknown territories where they can’t predict how others are going to respond; they feel uncomfortable almost all the time, not sure what will set off a charge or racism or sexism, not sure what the right thing to say or do is. Some feel liberated, but most feel uneasy, and many feel angry – but they can’t say so.
I believe in trying to define and fight for the good. But every time we do that we also define others as bad. We have sought to extend our sense of community to more fully include women and blacks and gays; but we have excluded many who used to feel central to the culture but now feel marginalized - the white men, and women, who are rallying behind Trump precisely because he makes them feel valid for the first time in decades, who tells them they can be proud of who they are.
The fundamental battle now is over whether to expand the boundaries of community, or retract them. When the members of my tribe talk with disdain about Trump voters -- see them as stupid and delusional, see their leaders as venal and evil -- we are deepening a divide that will not quickly heal, no matter what happens in November's elections. At the very least we should try to understand them, and converse with them. Maybe we would learn something. Maybe we could even work together on some things.
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