I’m not here to try to excuse people for making a horrible choice and possibly setting this country back 50 years. I’m not here to tell anyone that we need to come together behind our new president. I am not here to excuse racists at all, people who promote hate and saw this election as a chance to strike a blow for white rights. I’m not here to support misogynists, or anyone else that saw this election as a chance to regain male privilege. I’m not for a minute going to give anyone a pass that saw this as an opportunity to deny any LGBT people their rights.
I am here to try to find the reasons for making that choice and to try to figure out what we can do to make sure it doesn’t keep happening. As several friends and family have pointed out, hate is never the answer. Name calling isn’t going to help anyone. Civil war will hurt more than it will help. There’s no need to burn everything to the ground when there are a few simple(and hard) things we can do to fix what we already have.
So let’s see just what we’re dealing with here.
First off, we can’t just decide that half of the population is stupid.
We all call other people stupid, most often when we don't agree with them. I'm guilty of it as much as anybody. I'll grant you, people don't always make the best decisions, and they shoot themselves in the foot on a regular basis, but that doesn't necessarily make them stupid. It makes them human.
Now people have faults, sometimes horrible ones. They have warped ideologies, and sometimes those ideologies are shaped by fear more than hate. Some very good people are driven by fear and uncertainty to make bad choices, and that's nothing new. That doesn't necessarily make them stupid. It also makes them human.
There is an anti intellectual sentiment running through this country. There is a big portion of the population that feels like they are at the mercy of know-it-alls. They are defensive about it, and maybe feel left out or excluded.
Maybe some of that is the fault of the intellectuals. Maybe intellectuals are just as insecure as the anti intellectuals. I know many “smart” people that love to rub their knowledge in others faces. They seem to like to point out that they are more informed, more well read, more cultured than average folk.
I know I'm pretty intelligent. I have spent a lot of my life trying to pretend I'm not. I always downplayed it, because I never fit in. It wasn't until I got older that I felt comfortable about being who I am, without feeling the need to apologize for it.
I was still always careful not to come off as a jerk. I never tried to lord it over anyone, or make anyone else feel small. I try to remind myself everyday that I'm no better than anyone else, and I believe that in many ways I'm not.
Am I better in some areas? Yes. Are others better than me in other areas? Yes.
It is a natural instinct to tell our kids to be humble. We remind them constantly that others have it worse than them in the world, and we trivialize their problems. We tell them that there is always someone better than them, so don't think you're all that. We basically tell them that they are nothing special, and as children, and later adults, we believe it.
Then there is the push in the other direction, to treat them like everything they do is wonderful and amazing. The whole getting a trophy for participating thing people scream about. Maybe neither way is helpful.
On one hand we have a whole segment of the population that believes we are nothing special and are wrong to think so, and on the other, we have people that think they are the best at everything.
What you end up with is a world made up of defensive people and dismissive people. I have lived as both, and neither is the right way to go about your business.
This election has made me angry, and has made me feel like part of the population is a bunch of morons that elected a horrible person to the highest office in the world. That wasn’t right.
The point is, most people aren't stupid, not by a long shot, and making them feel that way, whether we intend to or not, is just going to make them push back.
People are smart, but we all aren't smart in the same way. There are people that don't like reading, but that doesn't make them stupid, it may just mean they don't like to read. Learning to read and learning comprehension skills are two different things, and if you've never trained yourself to visualize what you're reading and extrapolate what you're reading into personal experience, you're not going to get a lot out of it.
Again, this doesn't mean that people that don't like reading old dusty books are any less intelligent, it just means that they don't get what you get out of reading. Or maybe they do comprehend it all, but just find reading tedious all the same. I waffle back and forth between periods when I devour books like crazy and when reading a book feels like a slog and I just watch TV instead.
There are also a lot of people that have difficult and stress filled lives and just want some mindless entertainment to take their mind off of things. TV is a distraction, and some people resent shows that make them think when they are looking to it for just the opposite reason. When a generation is raised on television, and now the internet, they develop shorter attention spans. They want information delivered to them in quick, concise soundbites. A population getting their news like this is a recipe for disaster, but this is what we’ve become, like it or not.
There are a million things like this that divide us. Some people find classical music boring, and that's not because they don't understand it, it's because they just don't like classical music. Everyone has genres of music they don't like, but for some reason classical music is held over people's heads, like jazz. People love to hold shit over other people's heads to make them feel superior.
Then they wonder why there's an anti intellectual sentiment running through this country.
So back to being stupid. For years I worked for a concrete pumping company. Concrete pumps are huge, complicated machines mounted on big trucks, and they can cost over a million dollars. I am a hydraulic mechanic, and over the years I developed a complete understanding of how hydraulics worked, and how they worked in conjunction with the electrical and pneumatic systems that controlled them. I was one of the top pump mechanics in the industry, no small feat, if I do say so myself.
There was some resentment from some of the concrete pump operators, who saw me at “one of them”, whatever “them” was.
So, I'm pretty smart then, right? After all, if a pump broke down, I was needed to fix it. No one else could, so I must be better than the idiots that simply drove the pump to the job and pushed a few buttons to place the concrete.
Here's the thing. Even though I understood how every aspect of that machine worked, even though I know all about the ratios of cement to aggregate and water that makes concrete pumpable and in essence, concrete… well I sucked at driving the trucks to the job. I ground gears, I couldn't make corners sometimes, I am just really bad at driving big rigs.
The same applies for the pumping part. When I had to go do a pour, I sucked at setting the pump up at the right place, I sucked at operating it and maintaining a steady delivery rate for the concrete, of judging how much I needed or if the load of concrete was mixed right or had the right slump. I sucked at guiding the boom along as the concrete was placed, I sucked at cleaning up at the end of the day.
Basically, I sucked at the “stupid” end of the industry. Maybe if I did it everyday I would have gotten better, but I did it enough over ten years, and I was worse at it than people that only did it for a few weeks.
Because concrete pump operators aren't stupid. Truck drivers aren't stupid. Janitors aren't stupid. Athletes aren't stupid. Manual laborers aren't stupid. If you think you're such a fucking genius, go try to drive and operate a garbage truck for a day, and that will set you straight.
Now maybe anti intellectuals need to try harder. Maybe they are intimidated, and maybe some of that's on them to get over and expand their horizons.
But some of them never got the tools, or encouragement, or the opportunity, and that's not their fault. Sometimes hard work isn't enough if you're not even sure what you're working at. If you grew up in a society where hard work meant you were always guaranteed a job and a living wage, but now those jobs are gone, what do you do? What do you do when the world your father lived in and the world he readied you for doesn't exist any more?
How do you live feeling that the world left you behind and there's no way to make it right again, no matter how much effort you expend? The only option you have is to try to return the world to the way it was. Even if that isn't even an option anymore, even if it means that others will get screwed, what do you have to lose?
Maybe that's wrong, and maybe the people in that situation should try a different route. It's easy to say that when you're not in their position. Ironically, that's the same situation many minorities on the low end of the economic spectrum feel, which is why desperation turns to crime and poverty feeds poverty.
And while liberals love to champion the minorities and the poor and their plight, they seem to hold white people dealing with the same things with contempt. They love metropolitan, forward thinking people, but dismiss the rural population that makes up half of this country. Is it any wonder why a whole segment of the population thinks Trump is a good idea? Is it any wonder that they feel slighted when they feel that a whole other segment of the population is getting what they feel are handouts and they are expected to just get over it and stop complaining?
We liberals love to scream about white privilege, but aren’t we guilty of it too? Don’t we dismiss other people’s plight if they are white? Sure, being white comes with certain advantages, but aren’t we assuming rural, working class whites have the same advantages of the more affluent ones? Aren’t we guilty of marginalizing them and their troubles and obstacles?
And the Republicans are right there to exploit their feelings and encourage their discontent and rage.
So I think that the responsibility to include them and listen to them and try to help them is ours. When we dismiss their feelings and ignore what they are going through, isn't that just as bad as what we accuse them of? They are being left behind, and that's just wrong and the opposite of what all us “enlightened” folk are supposed to be about.
Maybe some of the things they think are tinged with racism, but someone can say something racist without being racist themselves. We are so quick to label. That’s the problem with things like racism, they are insidious and work their way into our minds unnoticed. While we might occasionally slip up here and there, the bigger danger is when we don’t recognize it and correct our way of thinking. Before you know it, you go from having a few half formed ideas based on race to being a full blown racist.
I don’t think that the majority of Trump voters are racists per se, but I think many of them hold one or two racist ideals that they don’t actually recognize as racist. That’s much more common than you think, and anyone that thinks that they never had a thought cross their minds that is rooted in some kind of racism, no matter how small, is kidding themselves.
It is our responsibility to monitor those thoughts and constantly question what they mean and how they reflect on us and influence our actions.
Now I'm not saying we don't fight against ignorance, but ignorance isn't the same as stupidity. We can't excuse a whole part of the country because of their disadvantages but ignore another whole part because we deem their disadvantages as invalid.
The system failed them too. What if high school funneled you into vocational tech and prepared you for a lifetime in an industry that doesn't exist anymore? What if they made you feel that academia wasn't for you, rather than try harder to reach you? What if you grew up in a family where there was no expectation or even a way for you to attend college?
What if there are no free resources or even helpful agencies to retrain you for something different? Even if you get all this wonderful training for a new job, will the area you live in be able to support those new workers? What if there are no protections left for the working class, and the only jobs that exist don't even pay a living wage while the rich business owners get richer? Maybe the right is simply paying them lip service to get them to vote against their own best interests, but at least they are making them feel included. Maybe the left needs to give them something to vote for.
Suppose you grew up watching your father support his family simply by going to work in a factory and working hard. You prepared for your adult life assuming you were going to go do the same thing. Now those jobs are gone, those factories have closed. You live in your childhood home, but now that home is in a bad neighborhood, but you can’t afford to move and you feel like you shouldn’t have to. After all, you were here first. So you see your neighborhood going badly, and who do you blame but the new people that are living there? It makes sense because you have seen it happen right before your eyes. You haven’t changed, but someone closed the factories, someone is committing crimes, someone is driving the property values down, someone is taking your whole lifestyle away, and your means to support yourself in the process.
Most people don’t have the time or the means to work out the socioeconomic reasons all this is taking place. They don’t have the resources to see it on a state or country wide scale. They just know what they are seeing right in front of them, are they not supposed to believe their own eyes.
So now we are even more divided.
Liberals often talk about how we need to have empathy, to understand what these poor minorities are dealing with. Those problems are real. The thing is, why can’t we extend that empathy to the working class that has no more work? Why are we so understanding when immigrants want to just work and support their families but so angry when third and fourth generation immigrants want the exact same thing?
That’s why voting for Trump empowers them. It makes them feel like they have some say in the process. Maybe they feel like fucking up the whole system because they feel that they are getting nothing out of the system at all. The fault isn’t just on the people that voted for him, it’s on us for making them feel like they had nowhere else to turn.
Even if Democrats are working for those people, are we showing them that we are? Are they getting what they need, is there help available, and if there is, why do they not see it? Are we doing a good enough job implementing any programs to help?
Obviously, no. No wonder this segment of the population feels left behind and abandoned. No wonder they feel marginalized and can't see the point of “Black Lives Matter”, or worry about gay rights, or if women are treated with respect. No wonder they can't concern themselves with the plight of immigrants.
No wonder they feel backed into a corner. To them, the competition is minorities, and immigrants, and anyone else they see being fretted over while they are ignored.
Many of these people were raised to feel that handouts like welfare are bad, and you have failed if you collect benefits. People in this nation are raised to believe that if they work hard enough, they can support themselves and have a family and a life. That is the American dream, but that dream has been over for a long time for a whole segment of the population. Many minorities are in their second or third generation of receiving welfare, so why would they see it as a bad thing? To them, that’s how it works. That’s not their fault. That system failed them and needs to be overhauled also.
If you are part of the working class and have been raised thinking it is your birthright to work and now that is taken from you, what should you do? What would you do? Seriously, if you were in that situation right now, what would you do? What answers would you come up with?
Tell them to work harder, to pull themselves up, to get over it and get themselves an education and a better job? Don’t we get angry when Trump voters say the same things about minorities? Why are those answers good enough for us about the working class, but horrible when the working class says it about minorities?
We are all aghast that women would vote for Trump, seeing how he acts towards them, but do you understand that for most working class women, he seems just like any other man? Most women in America don’t work in a corporate setting, in a white collar world where sexism is not tolerated. They don’t have an HR department, they don’t have the means to report and fight sexual harassment. They have long since resigned themselves to the fact that it’s just part of life. They are waitresses, or warehouse workers, retail workers,or a counter person or secretaries for a small business. They either turn a blind eye to it or get fired. This is the reality of rural life.
So they see their husbands dealing with all the aforementioned problems and they think “so Donald Trump is just like my boss, or the police officers or landlord, so what? My husband, and in turn my family and I are suffering, so why not see if a Trump presidency is any different?”
Now all this doesn't excuse the racism, or misogyny, or homophobia, or xenophobia, but it does make it easier to understand. It doesn't mean we should tolerate it, but it should make us see that simply screaming that it is wrong and people should be ashamed isn't going to fix it.
Maybe it means inclusion. Maybe it means loving people instead of belittling them. Maybe it means listening to why they feel abandoned and marginalized and trying to find answers. Maybe it means that we shouldn't just expect people to think like us just because they are white and middle class, and not to demonize them when they don't.
Maybe it's time we start listening. Maybe we should view this election as a cry for help, not a confirmation that people are evil. Perhaps we should wonder why these people would see Trump as their best bet, rather than berate them for arriving at that conclusion. Perhaps this travesty is the catalyst to start working together against all our common enemies.
And maybe it's time to start acting like the people we claim to be and start helping.
That said, I am still going to fight the Trump presidency at every turn. I will not just sit by and let him and his cronies run roughshod over people’s rights, and the environment, and a hundred other things that need protecting. In doing so, we must provide an option, or we are just as bad as the obstructionists that hampered President Obama for eight years.
I am just as disgusted in a bunch of liberals that believed a lot of lies about Hillary Clinton. I still don’t see her as this crook and horrible person that the Republican narrative painted her as, and that so many liberals took the bait is very disheartening. I’m annoyed at millennials that didn’t show up at the voting booths again. I said from the very beginning that if Trump wins we have ourselves to blame. So many of us didn’t even bother to exercise our right to vote, and that’s just pathetic.
I also know enough not to cut off my nose to spite my face. While I see Hillary’s loss more as a fault of the electorate than hers personally, I also recognize that people don’t want such an establishment choice. We need new blood. To those people though, I have to reiterate what I’ve been saying forever: change doesn’t start at the top, it starts at the foundation. If you want progressives in your party, you have to start on all levels. Local and state elections are crucial. You can’t just show up every four years and hope a presidential candidate will make a difference.
You can sit around and blame others, you can decide you hate a bunch of people, you can try to alienate people further and make it about us against them, or you can be inclusive and try to understand what went wrong and we can fix it together.
As always, we all have a choice, and as always, we often make the wrong one before we arrive at the right one.
That’s as always, that doesn’t make us stupid. It makes us human.
