Some things to Keep in Mind about the
Trump Election
Everyone (including the
victor, his supporters and sympathisers) is in some degree of shock following
the victory of Trump. Many who are both shocked and dismayed are in the UK (and
may most include most in the UK, but who really knows). How, we ask, did this
happen? By which we mean, how did a man of
such views and of such a character get the support of so many? A
conservative victor running on an isolationist political ticket and a
protectionist economic ticket might have been a cause for great regret, but not
for the reaction, bordering on revulsion, which Trump has summoned forth.
The anti-Trump bastions in
the US are mainly on the East or West Coasts (including Trump’s home state of
New York, which overwhelmingly rejected him). Those regions are also the places
most visited by tourists, and whose industries, especially media, project the
accepted international image of the US. Those regions, in addition, may provide
the majority of US expats, students and tourists. US travellers are a tiny
percentage of the population and drawn from the reasonably affluent part.
We judge the temperament of
the US on the basis of our encounters we are most likely to have with its
citizens at our peril.
Perhaps one thing we fail to
realise is that conservatism in the US is a very different beast to what mainly
goes under that label in the UK. Indeed, before I note two important particular
strands in US conservatism, one should understand that overt and fervent patriotism
is a far greater feature of the US than the UK, across all party lines. It
particularly manifests itself in a vocal allegiance to “the Flag” and in an
admiration, almost reverence, for the US military.
My mother was American, from
a military family. For some years I held dual nationality, and was even gifted
a Draft Card for the war in Vietnam (see blog January 2015). I remember my Big
Faux Pas very vividly. On my gap year, I stayed with my aunt and uncle (also a
military man). At one meal, he remarked (apropos of something or other):
“There’s a saying – that ‘God looks after fools, drunkards and the United
States’”. I, being a snotty clever young man, quipped: “Perhaps the last
category is redundant”. Instead of chuckles, there was an immediate and very frosty
silence. Then a rebuke: “That is not an acceptable thing to say about the
country that is your host”. Uncomfortable blushes ensued.
Also- I don’t go near guns.
No doubt part of the Trump vote was delivered by those suspicious of the
Democrats’ advocacy of some form of control on gun ownership. Republicans have
generally lined up behind a pretty uncompromising, and open-ended,
interpretation of the Constitutional right to bear muskets. Another aspect of
the US we find difficult to understand.
The Base
What has come to be known as
the Republican “Base” has two elements that are not paralleled in their reach
and intensity on this side of the Atlantic.
· The
conservative evangelical religious
These are
the folks who wage incessant war on abortion rights, gay rights, and defend the
Bible against science. This tradition is pervasive and very powerful. For
example, certain southern States had laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution
in schools until the 1960s. There are still political and legal skirmishes
around the issue of giving equal educational time to creationism and evolution.
White conservative evangelical Christians voted overwhelmingly for Trump, not
(one assumes) because they admired his religiosity or moral character, but
because he represented the better hope of furthering of furthering their social
agenda, or parts of it.
(The early
20th century threw up one of the great cultural battles, when the
Tennessee teacher Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution. One of the
great populists politicians of the age, William Jennings Bryan, and ardent
conservative Christian, joined the prosecution team. In a pre-echo of East
Coast liberal contempt for Trump, Time magazine
commented: “The populace, Bryan’s to a
moron, yowled a welcome”.)
· Those who to
a greater or less extent racists, or harbour some racists attitudes
As Gary
Younge reminds us in a perspicacious Guardian
article (16 November) the US is a country which fought a bloody civil war over
the institution of slavery in modern historical times (1860s). The Southern
states, having lost the war, set about erecting a system of discriminatory
racial apartheid for most of the C20. In the 1960s, Georg Wallace, a former
(Democrat) governor of Alabama stood as an independent presidential candidate on
a white supremacist ticket. He won the presidential vote (ie the electoral
college votes) in several Southern states.
That success
was a white response to the Civil Rights legislation (and enforcement) brought
in by Lyndon Johnson (a Southern Democrat). The Democrats, once the dominant
party of the South, fell out of favour with white voters. Sensing an
opportunity, the Republican politician and president to be, Richard Nixon,
devised the Republicans’ “Southern Strategy”. Gary Younge describes it thus:
“[The strategy] deployed a coded racial message that
could bind together a formidable coalition of southern states and suburban
white voters. “You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the
blacks”, Nixon told his chief of staff… . “The key is devise a system that
recognises that while not appearing to.”
As Younge
comments, Trump (or some very close supporters) made explicit what had been
implicit, and many people either liked what they heard or didn’t care much.
There was
never a great chance that the conservative religious or the little-or-big-bit
racist would have voted for a social liberal, pluralist, candidate from the
same side as a black president. On the contrary, they would have voted for
anyone, or anything, in the Republican corner. Perhaps even a silverback
gorilla (as the ghastly Brexiteer, Nigel Farage, admiringly described Trump).
There’s
another thing: as with the Brexit vote, those many who have been, or feel,
“left behind” by the skewed economics of globalisation were willing to roll the
electoral dice and “shake things up” (a phrase often used by Trump voters). For
them, the unpredictable maverick can’t do much more harm domestically, and most
don’t spare sympathy for far away countries they know little about, except as
sites of inconclusive but costly US military interventions.
The real
divide is between those that are disgusted by Trump and are appalled at the
prospect of such a character in the White House, and those that actually admire
him or are indifferent to what he’s like.
Lastly,
there’s the Clinton factor. She seems to elicit political emotions similar to
those directed at Tony Blair. Like Blair, the Clintons have made a fortune as a
result of holding high office. Not a good look.
No comments:
Post a Comment