A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing Gets Invited Into the White House

A group of people was pissed off, so they did what pissed off groups of people do — react. These working class white people, mostly along the Rust Belt, rallied behind a candidate speaking their language. They bought his message, of anger and needing to blow up Washington, enough to look the other way on his many transgressions and fatal flaws. They saw her as the embodiment of the path to their despair.

What they didn’t bother to see is what was promised to come next. They didn’t kick the tires because they were just plain fed up. In the process, what they managed to do is invite a wolf in sheep’s clothing into the White House.

With control over the government a lot can happen. We Trump intends to do is all written in his “Gettysburg Address” — and it looks very familiar. So let’s take a look at what working class white people can expect:

• First, he’ll replace the tax system with three tax brackets. For the richest Americans, taxes will go down 10%. About 20 percent of households and more than HALF of all single parents in the United States will pay more in taxes. True, some middle class families will see a slight reduction in their taxes, but this plan by no means lifts the middle class up in any big way. According to the Tax Policy Center, “by 2025, about 51 percent of the benefits of Trump’s tax plan would accrue to the wealthiest percentile of taxpayers.” The same people he campaigned against.
• That crippling national debt you railed against? With no spending reductions proposed, the $7 trillion in new debt Trump’s tax plan creates will have to go somewhere. It’s simple math: you can’t bring less money in and keep spending the same amount. So, stay tuned I guess?
• 20 million or so people can expect to lose their health insurance. If you buy your own, expect to pay higher premiums. According to a study by the Commonwealth Fund and Rand Corp., an individual policy under Obamacare would cost $3,200 a year in 2018, but without Obamacare the cost jumps to $4,700. Many people will likely decide to forgo healthcare altogether and take the risk — but their health care bills will get passed on to taxpayers, including working class white people. Another reason to be pissed.
• Trade policy poses a more tangential threat to the working class. TPP is gone and NAFTA will be undermined, but at the heart of Trump’s trade agenda is imposing tariffs on goods from countries like China. This puts the auto, oil and tech industries at an immediate disadvantage, but steel and manufacturing probably see a net benefit. The real risk is that this increases the potential for a trade war that will make it difficult for U.S. companies to sell their goods abroad, which has a jobs impact and an effect on the prices we pay for stuff. Again, this trade is a much grayer area at the moment, but there’s no clear win here for the working class.
• With all of Trump’s promises on taxes and infrastructure projects, the money has to come from somewhere. Many economists agree the only feasible place for this money to come from is in entitlements. So, if Trump really is serious about these policies that means Social Security is going to get a hard look. I’d be worried if I were you. Congressional Republicans have also long been out to get Medicare and Medicaid, so expect those to be a bargaining chip when Trump needs to make good on his promises.
• A vast majority of Americans favor campaign finance reform that takes power out of the hands of corporate special interests and returns it to the people. What these voters managed to do, unfortunately, was open the floodgates. The party Trump leads will stop at nothing to grow the financial role corporations and wealthy individuals can play in our elections, because it benefits them more than their political opponents. Trump even brought the head of the conservative group Citizens United onto his campaign in the final stretch — the same group that won its case, of the same name, in the Supreme Court to allow corporations to spend unlimited sums broadcasting political messages. And the irony of a billionaire preaching about the unfair advantage billionaires have in our political process is all too apparent. If there was ever a way to disenfranchise voters who don’t have tremendous wealth, this is it.

But of course this isn’t the whole picture of how people in this country will be affected. I take the working class whites who lifted Trump up on their word that their vote was economic, but truly don’t see the ROI for them.

I also take their word that they didn’t vote for him out of some nationalistic, anti-gay, anti-black and brown, anti-woman penchant. I do have a hard time disassociating their votes from the harsh realities these groups are facing because of the election, though. That working class whites didn’t think these things were important enough says a lot about them and this country. So here are some of the many ways in which entire groups of people in the U.S. are now at risk.

• With the stroke of a pen, Trump could undo all of the civil rights protections for LGBTQ people that President Obama put on the books, including eliminating non-discrimination protections for federal workers and and thousands of trans students in public schools. During the campaign, Trump said he wanted to return these types of decisions to the states, which is essentially dooming them — not because the average American doesn’t support protecting its citizens from discrimination but because of the way the Republican party has routed state legislatures and shifted them uncharacteristically to the right. There’s also a real threat to marriage equality, regardless of what Trump says. And you can’t expect much in the way of equal rights when the Vice President believes in conversion therapy for gay youth. Another big factor here is the message this all sends, even before laws are enacted. Trans kids are committing suicide, gay people are being targeted and living in fear — this is tangible.
• As the “rule and order” candidate, Trump’s policies will also impact black people. At one point, he proposed a national stop and frisk policy, which is blatant profiling and will only further create divisions along racial lines. Instead of proposing policies that lift black people up, he wants to impose “order” on them. At a time when racial tensions are high and the relationship between police and community is at a dangerous fever pitch, this can’t be good. Can you imagine Trump visiting a historically black community reeling from police violence? Voter suppression, too, is only going to rise, simply as a way to retain power. Again, as with the LGBTQ community, there are racists who feel empowered by the election and are exacting their hatred on black people in a more eager and open fashion because they feel they can.
• If you’re Hispanic in this county you probably feel the weight of this election most. The wall, whether it happens or not, is a symbol of the coming vilification of the Hispanic population. Deportations are a real possibility, which means families being ripped apart. Xenophobia will have wind in its sails too, so you don’t have to be an illegal immigrant to feel the impact and experience the prejudice. I’ve been shocked to see kids — KIDS!! — chanting “build the wall” in schools across the country to taunt their Hispanic cohorts. This is a failure of parenting and the direct result of the breakdown in human values we are seeing as a result of this election, or at least the environment that made it possible.
• The stop and frisk concept is as much targeted at black people as it is Muslim Americans. Again, we’ve seen the reports of assaults on Muslim people. Apparently Newt Gingrich wants a committee to monitor “un-American activities,” which will be targeted at the Muslim population. And plans for a Muslim registry are actually being drawn up. All of this should be terrifying to anyone with common decency. And what about the religious test Trump touted? If that’s a thing it should be scary not just for Muslims but for all of us who care about the constitution and equality.
• And last but by no means least: women. There are real bedrocks of American law that currently protect women that we should fear losing. Trump didn’t want to take on reproductive rights, but now says Roe should go. You can rest assured highly conservative Republicans will feel emboldened to. They want to take a woman’s heath care decisions out of her hands. Equal pay, too, is off the table now I assume. But equally important is, again, what this election says about how women can be treated. I can’t look my wife and my newborn daughter in the eyes without feeling the immense gravity of this. Sexism and assault on women is real. We’ve given it a presidential platform and, like it or not, now are in a place of having to defend each other against predators.

These aren’t crazy imaginations of the coming of the Third Reich, they are the legitimate human rights implications of this election. Most of the angry working class whites who made up the late Trump surge won’t really feel this effect, but they were too angry to consider what impact their vote will have on these groups. Maybe not their neighbors or family and friends, but real Americans.

Of course, the human impacts are more than just about civil liberties and civil rights — there’s more.

• America’s role as a leader in the climate fight is basically fu*%#d. All that spending on clean energy? Done. The EPA and the regulations put in place to reduce carbon dioxide emissions? Done. The international progress made on global warming? Certainly in jeopardy. At the same time, the oil, natural gas and coal industries — and the wealthy individuals who run them — will likely make their greatest profits under a Trump administration.
• Public education in America will come under major attack. Trump’s school choice proposal sounds a lot like Senator Lamar Alexander’s 2014 proposal. The effect of this would plan would to gut the U.S. Department of Education and decimate public schools across the country, including where working class white people send their kids to school. Of course, we don’t truly know what Trump intends to do, because he’s never given any specifics on the matter. We do know, however, that the people he’s brought into his inner circle have a record of trying to hollow out education resources that benefit low and middle income families. Another repercussion of Trump’s presidency and the potential gutting of the Education Department is that civil rights protections for students of all colors, genders and orientations will be wiped off the map. Sad! Trump’s thoughts on student loans, although not fully understood at this point, seem to be a silver lining in the education category in that they aren’t terrible.
• The foreign policy state of play is truly frightening. Trump has said more countries should have nuclear weapons. His quest to thaw relations with Russia and align with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will have major implications in the Middle East, which can come back to bite us just as America’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan have. The most accurate way to characterize a Trump foreign policy is “unpredictable” — and that’s not a good thing when we live in such a dangerous world. Saying you would shoot at the Iranians has grave implications for Americans and people across the globe.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it should get the point across: there is a wolf in the White House come January 2017.

I take solace in the fact that a majority of people in the country did not buy Trump’s rhetoric, that they spotted the wolf. But that’s water under the bridge now.

Like it or not, now it’s time to defend what we know is right. It’s going to be a long and tough four years, but we’ll take it back victory by victory. We have come too far and made too much progress to let this setback stop us.