Why Donald Trump Should Be Missed
Don’t shoot the messenger
Ecstatic choruses of congratulatory celebrations are flooding my social media and news feeds as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are widely acknowledged to have emerged victorious after one of America’s most bitterly fraught elections. President Trump’s ongoing attempts at garnering support for legal actions to overturn some of the states’ vote counts on the largely unfounded basis of fraud are met with sneers and jeers that drown out his usually raucous supporters. Euphoric Democratic voters (and armies of enthusiastic non-Americans from seemingly every part of the world) are eager to trumpet their triumph and vengefully rub their victories in the faces of Trump and his supporters, just like they nastily did to them four years ago. This is the Avengers. Biden (Captain America) has rallied the forces of good to mount a comeback and defeat the ultimate evil, Trump (Thanos). The Biden/Harris voters are the “heroes” who have assembled to save America and the world. Good has triumphed, and evil has been dispelled at last. It truly reads like a superhero movie fit for America, the greatest nation in the history of the world. Roll the credits.
Were it so easy
While many are understandably keen to forget about the years of the Trump presidency (and 2020 in particular), hurtling headlong into the next four as if the past four did not exist risks undoing some of the most important lessons we should have learned during this time. Trump’s time in the White House was no mere aberration in the history of the United States. Trump was a constant reminder of the things that have gone wrong and why both sides of the political divide should be fixing them instead of playing superheroes and villains. Over the past decades, America’s remarkable progress masked deeply-rooted socioeconomic issues that festered unnoticed or uncared for far outside the metropolitan bubbles of the political and economic elite.
Trump capitalized on those grievances, galvanized mass support, and empowered the neglected blue-collar workers of the American heartlands, unfortunately alongside many of the darker and more unsavory corners of American society. Millions of honest, hardworking people were willing to take a chance, any chance, with someone not from the establishment that has for so many years enriched itself at the expense of their interests, even if it was to be a braggadocious former reality TV billionaire from Manhattan with a questionable business record and no political experience. Trump feels like a down-to-earth listener who acts and speaks like them, is someone who vindicates how they think and behave while listening to and offering quick fixes for the perceived problems that have plagued their communities and country for decades — unemployment from globalization and automation, rising income and wealth inequality, the opioid and drug crises, skyrocketing healthcare costs and illegal immigration, to name a few. Generations of politicians from both sides, especially in a Democratic Party that is visibly being pulled to the ideological left, have failed to channel that familiar feeling and speak the language of this particular group, all while stressing their moral high ground on cultural instead of practical issues and preaching how people should behave and what they should value.
While it is debatable as to how effectively Trump was able to practically address his voters' grievances, he continues to wield sustained appeal, as demonstrated by his unexpectedly strong showing in the 2020 elections despite the COVID-19 mess. His support level is a clear litmus test that highlights all the things that are still very fundamentally broken in many parts of America. This should not be news, but Trumpism is here to stay. It is in the interest of both sensible liberals and conservatives at all levels of power to acknowledge and understand why, so there can at least be some inkling of a collaborative effort to address the nation's fundamental problems. Both sides would do well to start by rising beyond calling each other “snowflakes” and “deplorables.”
In his first speech as President-elect, Biden struck a reassuringly conciliatory tone, urging unity and an end to an “era of demonization.” While his administration will likely pursue a more orthodox and collaborative approach to policy (unless the more radically progressive elements of his party came to dominate affairs), the same cannot be said for the raucous mobs on either side of the great divide. This conflict has evolved beyond the influence of the politicians in charge. It is as close to an ideological (or physical) civil war as we can get on the streets, in literally every comments section on every social media post, and even within families.
Worse than COVID
Donald Trump is not the cause of all of our problems, and we are making a mistake when we act like he is. He is a symptom of a disease that has been building up in our communities for years and decades. It is our job to get to the harder work of actually curing the disease. — Andrew Yang
While universal basic income has some ways to go as a feasible policy with mainstream appeal, Andrew Yang is spot on in this perspective. He is one of the only candidates on either side who has directly addressed some of those “diseases” and proposed viable solutions for them, regardless of whether they can realistically get through the legislature.
For four years, Democrats and the mainstream media, along with the world, have painted Trump as the one responsible for all of America’s ills. He is effectively blamed for the virus, even though it is pretty much a combined failure of the federal, state, and local governments, the healthcare system, and the behavior of many Americans in general. He is branded as the dictator, the racist, the fascist, the sexist, the villain, the nemesis, the final boss to defeat in this election. Indeed, in being the slick, narcissistic television personality he is, he managed to direct all of the world’s attention to himself. The media (and Joe Biden, inadvertently) played directly into that trap by focusing on his character and personality, and the presidential election was portrayed to be a one-on-one superhero showdown of good versus evil, instead of a sensible debate of positions and policy. While presidents are consequential, they are not panaceas. Too busy with being endlessly outraged and offended, much of the world forgot about the root problems that gave rise to the man’s popularity in the first place.
There is no clearer illustration of how Trump’s platform (and the Republican platform of the last four years in general) has strong staying power than how the pollsters have got it so wrong yet again. Yes, Americans turned out in record numbers to vote, and they handed Biden the presidency both in terms of the popular vote and the Electoral College. That does not change the fact that over 73 million individuals voted for Trump, which handily exceeded the number in 2016. That does not change the fact that the Senate is likely to stay Republican pending the upcoming Georgia runoffs. That does not change the fact that Republicans gained a significant number of seats in the House, far exceeding the expectations of pollsters and Democrats, even compared to Trump’s showing in the presidential race.
The outcomes decided by the voters and the electoral system are more sledgehammer than scalpel. Still, it could be some kind of indication that while the presidential election was a referendum on the character and values of the president, which obviously do not favor Trump, state and local elections for the legislature reflected a desire for relatively conservative policies, or rather, a rejection of the Democrats’ leftward shift towards ideas that fall under the umbrella of perceived “socialism,” still a dirty word for many in the country. The rift between moderate and progressive Democrats will be one of the problems that Joe Biden and his party will have to contend with in the years ahead. Unity, it seems, will remain scarce even within the party that called for it.
Medical drama
Sitting within the impenetrable ivory towers of London and Washington D.C. and strolling about the comfortable intellectual bubbles in New York and California, it is easy to forget about the East Midlands and the West Virginias of the world. For a brief moment in history, Trump shattered that bubble and brought what he calls the “silent majority” and their endemic problems into sharp relief. As he fades, kicking and screaming into the night, the bubbles will inevitably start forming themselves again.
The two Americas are critically sick patients. Contrary to what the media may like to imply, this is not something a president can single-handedly solve. We need many good doctors, and those doctors have to be each and every politician and citizen who has a stake in the country's future. Good doctors do not simply address the symptoms and wave it off — they understand and cure the underlying conditions. Trump was no doctor, but he was a messenger and a very effective one at that.
The messenger may have been fired, but America has not confronted the true enemies eating away at the country's core. Without the constant presence of a loud and obnoxious reminder, it is easy for both sides to forget that the country has been slowly rotting away socially, culturally, and economically for decades while they have been sitting comfortably unaware (or uncaring) inside their ideological and intellectual echo chambers. Many are hailing a return to a post-Trump era, but that status quo is arguably even more insidious, as it quietly led to the rise of Trumpism in the first place.
Remember that Trump is eligible to run for President again. If the Divided States do not work hard to come together and “heal,” we could easily be looking at Trump 2024: Make America Great Again II.
