How We Really Lost The Election…
A Consensus of Conscience
It seems that many of us in the Democratic Party assumed that we had won the culture wars, that liberal values have already triumphed, and that the nation was marching arm-in-arm toward the end of gender discrimination, of racial violence, of income inequality, and of discrimination against all minorities. Many liberals are crying into their Chardonnay today. We correctly believe that many of the people who voted for President Trump voted against their own economic interests. But the power of the culture wars actually has given the Trump uprising the color of a populist reaction against an elite. Much working class anger in the last election was not aimed at the owners of the means of production, but at what they see as the liberal elite, that is, the owners of the production of the message they have overwhelmingly been hearing, which is a lecture on how and what they should think. If my fellow liberals want to spread the blame for losing the last election, there are plenty of places to look.
Colin Kaepernick might be a good place to start. When he took a knee during the national anthem to protest racial violence in America, any reasonable person would say that he was exercising that most American of rights, the right to dissent. President Obama even said so, at the time. But the utterly impolitic nature of this position was even recognized by Mr. Kaepernick later, when he announced his change of heart, presumably for reasons related to his personal brand and to commerce, which is the brother of politics. To the vast majority of Americans and fans of the National Football League, he had been showing disrespect to the flag that many of their relatives had carried into battle. And he was doing so as a wealthy man who had benefited from the freedoms within the nation represented by that flag. Such a protest in Russia, or Saudi Arabia, or China, or even France, would not have earned him a pat on the back from the leader of the country. Protest is patriotic in America. We should keep that in mind when we consider the form and manner of our protest. And so should Democratic leaders who praise it when that form and manner achieve the opposite of the goal of the protest.
Yale University might actually be depicted in the dictionary, right next to the phrase “liberal elite.” The students at Yale (disclaimer: my alma mater) complained that the university was not giving them a safe space by protecting them from the free speech of others, one, the wife of an administrator who said that maybe a Halloween costume is just a Halloween costume, and the others, some frat boys who may or may not have posted an offensive sign. The President of this elite institution did not tell them that any university must respect diversity of opinion first, even above diversity of identity. No, he said, “We have failed you.” This led to America watching the unseemly scene of Yale abetting students to shout down the administrator and his wife for not being part of the liberal consensus of what should be said and not said. It is exactly this idea, that there is a “consensus of conscience” which is the flag we all must salute, which the Trump voters were opposing. And it is why they support his effort to defy this “one message,” and to bypass it.
“Hamilton” was one of the best new musicals in many years. (Disclaimer: I have seen it twice and loved it.) But upon further examination, there may be many ways to look at it. One such way might be from on the ground in Ohio or Michigan, over which wealthy people fly on their way to New York City, to plunk down fifteen hundred dollars per ticket to watch a show in which the Founding Fathers are members of ethnic minorities, singing rap music. Manuel Lin Miranda created “Hamilton” with the utterly benign and laudable goal of showing that the ideals espoused by the landed white men who founded the United States (and which they kept to themselves) have inspired (and have finally been applied to) all Americans. But those ticket prices and the seeming universality of the musical’s acclaim cannot help but to have been seen by some as affluent liberals telling America what it must think.
Bathrooms are always difficult things to discuss. It is not polite to mention what goes on in them at a dinner party. We even use many different euphemisms to name them. When President Obama made bathroom use a federal issue, presumably to lock down the massive transgender vote for the Democrats, he put something into the national consensus of conscience that most of us will not discuss outside of our homes. If certain issues may be best left to local decision makers, this may be one of the foremost among them.
This tone deafness hit a high note when Meryl Streep claimed that were it not for the performing arts, we would all be forced to watch football. In her apology, Ms. Streep then referred to God as She. Even an agnostic could have told her that such a clever remark, to tens of millions of Americans is merely an insult to their religion.
When the Trump shock troops take to social media they often rail against Hollywood, the press, television, and the government, for telling them what they must think. And it is not an irony that this is the complaint we on the left make of President Trump, when he tells his supporters to believe his fantastic claims. On wanting to see an end to gender discrimination, of racial violence, of income inequality, and of discrimination against all minorities, we may be entirely in the right. But the liberal elite may have been too righteous in insisting that all opposing viewpoints are despicable and must be silenced. Those other viewpoints have found their voice, and it is now in the White House.
(Gerald Weaver is the author of the novel, The First First Gentleman, August 2016, London Wall Publishing. It is among other things a sly tribute to almost all the novels of Charles Dickens. His well-received first novel, Gospel Prism, was published in May 2015. Each of its twelve chapters paraphrases a great work, by Cervantes, Montaigne, Shakespeare, etc. Harold Bloom said it was “remarkable” and “charming but disturbing.”)
