"Trump's Angry White Folks:
Getting Beyond Reaction to Response"

When Hilary Clinton took a break from a debate stage during the Presidential campaign, reality TV show star and megarich real estate mogul turned politician Donald Trump trumpeted, "I know where she went. It's disgusting, I don't want to talk about it -- too disgusting, don't say it, it's disgusting." And I thought to myself, "What is this, a ten-year-old boy?"

Still, I think it's a mistake just to dismiss Trump as a vulgar jackass, tempting as he too often makes that. He didn't propel himself to the top 1% of the economic pyramid by being stupid, and I'm sure I'm not the first to suspect that he's just playing the rest of us for his own amusement. I imagine him deriving no end of hilarity in watching reaasonable people writhe in consternation at his latest outrageous Tweet. And as for his actual followers, it is, for me, one of the election's greatest ironies that they could believe he actually cares about them or their circumstances.

Despite the heat that Hillary Clinton took for implying that some of his supporters might be "deplorables," some of his adherents really are deplorably bigoted, intolerant and even fascist in their leanings, both in public and private. They represent the dark undercurrent of American culture, and it is dangerous to the health of a democracy for the rest of us not to pay attention. Their paranoid rage has been simmering for decades - and their numbers are expanding as the once merely disaffected have become increasingly radicalized in their beliefs. Trump didn't invent that rage; he's just tapping it, easy as tapping maple trees. Even if Trump ends up doing little else of value for his country, he has exposed the heretofore underestimated breadth and depth of this dark undercurrent in American society.

And we can't let it run the country. Whether dealing with the angry white adherents of "The Donald" or dealing with Isis recruits, the general response must be the same: depriving these toxic movements of oxygen, which means sincerely and effectively doing something positive to address whatever legitimate nuggets there may be among their grievances.

From "Take Back Vermont!" to "Make America Great"

Closer analysis of the signs themselves would have focused on where, specifically, they were posted. They could be found on the sides of dilapidated barns and the outbuildings of ramshackle trailers on the least traveled roads of the state. The signs were emblems of alienation for people who'd been left behind both economically and politically as the rest of the state surged forward.

So in 2010, when these signs still remained the sturdiest things on their distressed properties and Democratic then-governor Peter Schumlin managed to squeak out a re-election victory by the narrowest possible margin, it seemed to me the political pundits commenting on the surprisingly close election were missing the point. Meanwhile, I, as about as liberal a voter as one can find, was becoming increasingly frustrated by the state's political preoccupation with fluff such as whether or not to tax sugary drinks as a blow against obesity. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns!

Still Missing the Point

Donald Trump's campaign was the national equivalent of that Take Back Vermont campaign. Both campaigns were fueled by similar sentiments. Trump's campaign slogan was, after all, "Make America Great Again!" It's far too simplistic to say the people sporting these signs and bumper stickers were pining for an America that never was even back in the 1950s. We have to stop focusing so slavishly on what's getting better in culture and economy and spend some energy on those for whom things are not getting better.

Of course it's ridiculous to believe there's some kind of national war on Christianity! Of course, it's nonsense to claim that white men are losing ground economically because of some mythical hiring preference for women and/or people of color! But if the only response the rest of us can muster to the anger that fuels such dark fantasies is to leave that anger in the dust of its own disaffection, then terrorism from without will be the least of our national worries.

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