A Rough Draft of the Times:
A Short Essay on Post-Democratic America in the Times of Trump
When we wake up on Wednesday, Friday, or Monday morning, the country may say ‘You’re Fired!’ or ‘Let’s Make America Great Again!’ It will not matter if we are looking at our 45th or our 46th President. Four years of Trump will have seismically changed the course of our country and politics. Trump will have done in 4 years what many in the Republican Party of a frailer constitution have wanted to do, and that which would have taken them 30 years to achieve. It is a sign of greatness.
He will have put 3 Supreme court justices on the bench, which will have a powerful effect on our country more than one man or presidency. Our grandchildren’s lives will be influenced by the Trump Supreme Court. He will have also changed the dynamics of politics and the office of the presidency more so than Reagan, Clinton, or Obama. No longer will we look at the office as a stage and pinnacle of the hero’s journey but a celebrity rostrum. Donald J. Trump will have made each American, Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, and party stand in the mirror and look into their souls.
President Trump should be applauded, for that. He marketed himself by observing, orienting, deciding, and acting. A Trump presidency gave the country what it needed and wanted. We should not be caught up in the idea that he lost the popular election in 2016 to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who outside of many louder white women and some out of touch Black Democratic leaders that were gung-ho for her. Independents also had challenges with Secretary Clinton for a variety of reasons, notwithstanding her campaign wreaked of a decaying privilege and gender identity politics. Presidents are not institutions within themselves. They are a reflection of who we are as a nation, people, and who we are at that moment. That’s not something we want to think about or be sometimes.
We need to understand that the Trump election of 2016 was about the angst and grief of a dying America and way of life. What people were witnessing was the different stages of post-democratic grief whether by individuals or political parties and how they were choosing to deal with grief. Sedimentary to this was the 2000 Presidential election, 9/11, the 2007 financial depression, 2010 Citizens United ruling, and many people’s disappointment in the Obama years.
The backlash and disappointment from the 8 years of the Obama presidency gave us Senator Bernie Sanders on the left and celebrity/business mogul Donald Trump on the right. In the middle stood Secretary Hillary Clinton who was perceived as pedantic, bureaucratic, power-hungry, a social climber, whose constituents felt Obama had snatched that which was hers and theirs in 2007.
Whether the Clinton machine in 2016 had moved past that loss is something that is up for debate. What is not up for debate is that the campaign had an undercurrent of “it’s her turn” and that a vote for Hillary was four more years of Obama. Not only did not it resonate with many voters, but many people also did not want for more years of Obama and the vitriol that surrounded him.
At the same time, the Democratic bellwethers and political elites had spent 8 years yelling the Rortian rhetoric of ‘move away from identity politics’. When they began embracing a version of identity politics that promoted gender identity politics, it set a platform for hypocrisy at worse and at best inconsistent messaging in a party whose lead candidate had a likeability and authenticity dilemma. This only got worse after pundit after pundit seemed to tell America how great Hillary was and bad of a person Trump was.
What the national media missed was America was still looking for the Change and Hope that an Obama administration had promised and the very issues of race that Obama had pushed down the line and tried to avoid through beer summits Trump ran straight to. In so many words the Dems created the circumstances that gave the country Trump. It was they who had been in power for 16 of the last 24 years. They had relied on the charismatic leadership of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to win their elections and now we’re losing at their own game.
Mrs. Clinton for all of her steadfastness like Obama was predictable and sterile. She was a known commodity. She promised a continued way of life. Trump was messy and always on the attack. People didn’t want 4 more Obama years, their lives and beliefs were failing. They wanted someone to shake things up. They wanted someone who would make the political establishment uncomfortable and to feel like they felt. This is what Sanders and Trump were in 2016. That’s what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was to the Progressives in New York in 2018 on the left and that’s now what Lauren Boebert is to conservatives in Colorado in her Trump-style of no holds bar of politics in 2020.
The Trump years will leave a mark on America in the way the Reich influenced Germany, Churchill neglected India or Pinochet changed Argentina. We will all have been touched and have to account for our actions and behavior.
