12 Lessons We Can Learn from the Time of Trump
At the risk of sounding so optimistic as to be out of touch with reality, I propose that there are some gifts we can receive from the Trump presidency. And why not accept them? We have to live through the destruction he causes. Why not get something constructive out of this period in history?
Some of these are lessons that some of us have begun to see. In other cases, most people are clueless. I’ll just touch on these here and will write more about some of them later.
Most of these are difficult lessons. So please keep in mind the wise words of a former American president, cited below the next paragraph.
We are better off facing our problems than pretending they don’t exist. Also, not everyone needs to focus on all 12 lessons. If you can increase your understanding of one area and/or can start thinking of possible ways to address one problem, that’s more than most people are doing. If you act in one area, you can be pleased with yourself for taking on a challenge.
1. War is a habit.
We can clearly see that, no matter who the president is, no matter how different s/he is from the last one, the U.S. is always involved in multiple wars or war-like actions. If we think some of these wars are unnecessary, we have to interrupt that habit & substitute a different habit, such as a peace making, conflict resolution process or economic development projects in war prone areas.
2. Trump shows us some ugly aspects of our culture that we may want to change. For example, many in our culture blindly worship the rich, even if their actions show that they don’t deserve respect.
The mainstream part of our culture is excessively money focused and tends to devalue people and pursuits that don’t involve money.
3. By deconstructing the administrative state, Trump shows us why we set up the administrative state — what its purposes are.
This shows us what parts of it we want to keep, which parts we do want to deconstruct, and which parts we want to change to make them fulfill their intended purposes.
He shows us that the electoral college is deeply flawed and should be ended. Our current campaign finance system is another system that should change. The organization Move to Amend is working to reverse the Citizens United Ruling.
Trump reminds us how dictatorial and abusive some corporation owners and managers are, e.g. by not paying their contractors.
He runs the government as if it’s his personal corporation. His labeling of Democrats as treasonous because they didn’t applaud at his State of the Union address, highlights how much slavish behavior some CEOs can demand and expect of their employees.
We need government to protect employees, consumers, and people who live on earth. We need to be protected against workplace abuse, financial and other frauds, nonpayment of contracts or wages and pollution of our air, water, food etc.
Trump has also been one of the influences who has led us to greater awareness of the problems of sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace.
He’s teaching us an overarching lesson that applies to many situations: We need to get away from thinking of ourselves solely as individuals. We can benefit from noticing how the systems we live and work in are functioning — or not — and how we may have to change them to keep them from destroying us.
4. Trump shows us that we are so immersed in Right Wing propaganda, that we elected a repeater of lies and conspiracy theories for our president.
Trump challenges us to find effective ways of safeguarding the truth and spreading it to as many people as will accept it. He makes us aware that we need to create new ways to spread truth to people who may be enclosed in a tribal media bubble of lies.
Mobile billboards are one way to get the truth out to people who enclose themselves in a Right Wing media bubble. They can see the truth and hear about the issues facing the nation, while they are driving around in their cars. Here’s an example.
Here’s another innovative way to get the truth out: placing thousands of empty children’s shoes on the White House lawn
and having a national school walk out to protest gun violence.
Another way to get the truth out is to have local in-person discussion groups, open to the public, where people can discuss politics and/or economics, with a focus on mutual understanding and/or looking for solutions, in an atmosphere of respect.
See the first two paragraphs of this next article below, for evidence of how voters often vote for GOP candidates based on what they hear — or don’t hear — on Right Wing media, rather than voting for GOP candidates based on their actual policies.
Trump teaches us that we’ve been fed propaganda that taught us to hate our government and our public officials.
Here is an article about conservative political scientist Norm Ornstein’s account of how our current destructive style of politics began decades ago.
Hating our government doesn’t help us to improve it. In fact it helps corrupt people to take control, using political outsider candidates to bash experienced political candidates as “the establishment” or “the swamp.” Labeling all experienced politicians as evil, regardless of achievements or dedication to public service, opens up doors to ignorant political candidates whose only skills are con artistry, such as emotional manipulation of crowds.
What we need, instead of government bashing, is appreciating of the potential of government to protect people — from pollution, financial fraud, contaminated food etc. We also need to ask for what we want from government and to hold government officials accountable.
This is the difference between improving or renovating your house vs. smashing it to the ground. Smashing is easy. Building or renovating is difficult. You can get angry about what’s wrong & feel like smashing what bothers you, as if it’s an animal you can kill and eat. That’s easy. Fixing what’s wrong is more challenging and requires more planning.
I’ve written a number of essays on Medium about propaganda on Right Wing media, social media, and mainstream media. For example,
Here is another one, which is mostly about mainstream media being complicit with the Right Wing.
5. Trump shows us how polarized and fractured we are, making it easy for groups inside or outside the country to Divide and Conquer us.
This is related to our problem with lies in media. If people believe lying Right Wing media, and denounce mainstream media as “fake news”, then it is hard to solve our common problems.
Here is my essay on how Democrats can get keep themselves from being Divided and Conquered, and can unite.
6. Trump gets us thinking about how not to be like him in ways that are dysfunctional. For example, we may think about how to become community focused rather than only self-centered, and about how to notice influences from systems instead of only from individuals.
Trump is in many ways a role model of what not to be. That’s not as useful as a constructive role model, but it does have its uses.
7. Trump, his administration, and many of his supporters in Congress, teach us about con artists, malignant narcissists and psychopaths.
Below is a good book on psychopaths. Everyone in media or politics should read this, including politically involved citizens. This is only the first book everyone should read. The study of how our society can deal with con artists of all types, should become a focus of concentrated attention. Our very survival depends on it. Our skill at stopping the forces of corruption will determine our future. This book is about psychopaths. Although most con artists are not psychopaths, the behaviors are similar. So the book will get you thinking about how con artists behave and how to deal with them.
We are learning that the Golden Rule, while it may work with most people, won’t work with con artists. Trump teaches us the limits of speaking truth to power. Although it’s useful in some situations, it doesn’t stop abuse. If you speak the the truth to abusers or con artists, it doesn’t stop them if they experience no consequences. However, it may cause others who are listening to or reading your words, to become aware of the con artistry. Some people are afraid of the truth, however, and will remain in denial.
Trump teaches us the limits of empathy.
New York Times, Washington Post and other mainstream media organizations can interview and empathize with every Trump supporter, Nazi and white supremacist in the nation, and it still may not not change a single one of them in any constructive way. Empathy usually won’t change true believers, people committed to tribalism, authoritarian followers, or highly self-centered individuals. Here is a description of authoritarian followers.
Progressives tend to use Nurturant Parent morality, which values compassion. Like the person who has a hammer and thinks everything is a nail, many progressives mistakenly think that everyone will respond constructively to compassion and empathy. That’s not so.
Trump is teaching us how to deal with Internet troll types of people.
These are people who insult us and do not have discussions in good faith, but instead try to manipulate us, hurt us, or frustrate us. Speaking truth to such people has no impact. Many of them know they are lying. Some of them are paid well to lie.
If people are only pretending to have a discussion, as a way of manipulating us, there’s no sense in going along with their pretense and trying to have a discussion. Someone knew this a long time ago. One of the quote sources I saw claims it was George Bernard Shaw. But it may have been someone else who originally said it. At any rate, it rings true.
You can’t talk a con artist out of conning people, or a habitual abuser out of abusing people.
Tweeting to insulting people, or trying to have discussions with them, is wasting time that would be better spent on political action, such as getting out the vote and/or having discussions with people who are acting in good faith.
Here is a Twitter thread on why one shouldn’t attempt to have discussions with Nazis.
There are other people who are not con artists, and who think they are trying to have a fair discussion, but they can not, because they rigidly view only their own tribe as virtuous, and other tribes as evil. Not all Trump supporters are this way, but this does describe most of the ones I have run across. This led me to write the essay below, on that subject.
Here is another interesting essay, from an insider in a tribe of people who view their own tribe as virtuous and other tribes as evil, and thus can’t have a real discussion.
8. Trump makes us aware of the ways in which our media, including mainstream media, are highly dysfunctional.
Media cater to the powerful, in order to attain and maintain access to power. They “cover both sides” even if one side is lies. They rush to give billions in free air time to an entertaining politician who they expect will attract viewers, even if he destroys the nation.
They do “horse race”election coverage, where they try to make elections into close races so that they’ll be more exciting, even if one candidate is far too unqualified to deserve to be a close contender. Such mainstream media habits open the door widely for fascism to enter. Most mainstream media owners and managers, however, are clueless about what they’re doing. Most of them seem not to give it a moment’s thought, believing that their customary habits of journalism will work, even in previously uncharted territory.
Mainstream media actually have a Right Wing bias.
There are a number of reasons for this, one of them being the fear of being labeled Left Wing biased by the Right Wing media and politicians who comprise the GOP outrage machine, which I’ll say more about later.
Perhaps there should be large demonstrations outside of mainstream media offices, to protest particularly bad Right Wing biased coverage. That’s one kind of demonstration that, so far, the Resistance has yet to organize.
9. The time of Trump teaches us the importance of being politically active, maybe even running for office.
Trump shows us that almost all of us were wrong to think we were not qualified to run for public office. Most of us are more qualified for public office than the president of the United States.
Trump teaches us the importance of voting, of making it easy to vote, of giving people rides to the polls, and of safeguarding the integrity of our voting systems. Where voting processes could have been compromised, they need to be fixed so that it can’t happen again in the future.
10. Trump teaches us the importance of messaging and of having a positive constructive vision of what we want from government.
The person who most seems to have his finger right on the pulse of Trump/Republican messaging, and of Democratic messaging, or lack thereof, is getting sued by a Trump associate. That makes me wonder if this messaging expert is even more on target than I thought. It’s possible that he’s getting sued because his knowledge, and his teaching to others, may be a threat to Trump’s power. He’s written much interesting material on messaging.
11. Trump teaches us that, although a positive message is also necessary, negative campaigning does work quite well. Democrats should not be afraid to call out injustice.
Democrats need to respond quickly, strongly and effectively if our candidates or our issues are being swift boated by Republican cons and lies. Despite their many good points, the Obamas were mistaken to not fight back. That doesn’t work.
Some Democrats are becoming tougher.
The rest of the Democrats need to wake up, learn power politics, and stop being played by Republicans.
The Golden Rule does not work with Give-em-an-inch-they-take-a-mile Republicans, who are not acting in good faith. Those Democrats who have not yet learned to be tough can learn martial arts, go to therapy to become comfortable competing for and exercising power, or do whatever it takes to stand up for themselves and the nation.
Negative campaigning is how Trump won the election, with the “Crooked Hillary” meme and constant bashing of her. After the Kerry campaign, you might expect Democrats would have learned how to respond effectively to swift boating, but we still need to work on this.
In 2016, Steve Bannon, using the Mercers’ money, played mainstream media (including the New York Times and Washington Post), Right Wing media and social media like fiddles. He immersed media in propaganda that bashed Hillary Clinton, persuading many likely Democratic voters to not vote for Clinton.
12. Some of us are learning about the Republican outrage machine, which everyone has been bending to — including Comey, Obama, all government officials, Congress members of both parties and mainstream media.
Democrats don’t have an outrage machine, so they often can’t defend themselves or the nation, or even get fair media coverage from the supposedly Left Wing biased mainstream media.
I hope other writers will add your own ideas about what we can learn from the time of Trump. Perhaps you would like to use the method I use, to discover these lessons. Feel free to use other methods too.
How do I think of these lessons from the time of Trump? I do it by assuming that Trump is not as unusual as many people claim. I assume he is not simply acting as an individual, but is acting in ways that are typical or are considered desirable by many. I assume there are reasons why a large percentage of Americans voted for him.
I ask: How is he acting as a member of American culture? How is he doing the actions or showing the qualities for which Americans reward one another with approval or favors? If such behaviors are not rewarded, I ask if they are at least tolerated by many.
I ask: How is he acting like a CEO of an American company? How is he acting like a member of his political party? How is he acting as people in government, or people in competitive businesses, act throughout the world.
For example, the GOP acts like a Strict Father Model macho type of political party. Trump fits in well with that, as a blustery president, full of macho pomposity.
I also ask: How does Trump act as a member of a culture that mistakenly believes in a quasi-religious fantasy about the “free market”, leading to our rampant inequality? The book Don’t Buy It, by Anat Shenker-Osorio, has a good discussion of myths about the “free market”, with its imaginary ability to automatically make fair decisions, and to assign values to individuals and commodities.
I look forward to hearing in the Comments section, what you think of these lessons. I also look forward to reading about lessons that other writers believe Trump is teaching us. I hope we can all try to stretch our minds, so that we can look at new areas that are not already being endlessly covered by media, or by the talking points of tribal groups on social media.
