We now have “two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts and feelings as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets.”
The quote was from Benjamin Disraeli, the nineteenth century British statesman, and I read it today in an article by John Cassidy, who covers politics for the New Yorker magazine.
Disraeli was not writing about America, but about the rapidly industrializing England of the 1840’s, and the two nations he was writing about were the rich and the poor. The United States is not precisely comparable to eighteenth century England, our differences are not only economic but racial, ethnic, and cultural.
Forty per cent of American voters have a favorable impression of Donald Trump. And I am struggling to understand them, like so many other people. As a former political writer, I find this humbling as well as fascinating. I never saw it coming and I live all around it.
The followers of Donald Trump believe he is speaking for them, and that he stands for the same things they stand for: nationalism, nativism, and fury at what they believe to be a dishonest and self-serving elite that has nothing but contempt for them.
Trump has attracted millions of enthusiastic followers, but he has also driven millions of people into the waiting arms of his opponent. He has not only shot himself in the foot, he has chopped it off. Political analysts say he was one of the very few Republican candidates who could not have easily beaten her in the election, she is so mistrusted and disliked.
Trump’s supporters have no use for what they call the mainstream media, even though, in so many ways, their candidate was a complete creation of the maintstream media, trackers have found he was given 60 per cent more coverage than any of his primary challengers. It turns out the media is much more corrupted by corporate greed and ratings than it is ideological, they will be happy to be irresponsible for anyone who gets good ratings. Corporations have no ideology, they just do what they have to do to make the greatest amount of money.
If it threatens the very idea of democracy and civility, too bad..
Donald Trump’s idea of truth and facts are utterly different from mine, or the culture of journalism and politics in which I was raised and worked. They live in a completely different reality, with different standards, ethics and goals.
The divisions Disraeli wrote of are timeless, they have emerged throughout human history and are surely not new to America. Discord among people seems to be the norm in democratic cultures, it is common purpose that is rare. Reading Disraeli, I couldn’t help but think of our country now and how unsettling these past few months have been. If nothing else, we are all awake and paying attention now.
In the campaign, there is no discourse or interaction, there is no sympathy or empathy for the other side, we are as ignorant of each other’s habits and motives and feelings as if they were alien, dropping in out the sky, from different planets. Donald Trump has been unsparing and unforgiving, he has projected a kind of hatred and vengeance that is not recognizable to me in mainstream politics.
Trump has repeatedly expressed his rage and disgust at the more liberal, diverse – and wealthier – culture on the other side, from army generals to judges to federal workers. While Clinton is more measured, she doesn’t seem to have much respect for him or his followers. She has labeled them”deplorables,” hardly an olive branch.
Our two nations no longer speak to one another, share the same sources of truth and information, or have the same ideas about governance. The only way Trump makes sense to me is if I accept the idea that his followers don’t much care for him either, but are desperate for the kind of change he promises. For them, government is a long string of failed promises.
We talk over and around one another, on cable news channels and social media. We talk only to ourselves. I admit that I don’t really know much about those 40 per cent, and they know nothing about me.
The Trump movement, wrote John Cassidy in the New Yorker today, “like the Tea Party movement it supplanted, is a reaction to the socially liberal, polyglot America that is emerging as the dominant demographic and political force in twenty-first century America. Each nation wants the other one to go away. Each nation is dreaming.
It will be a long slog in this century if somebody on one side or the other doesn’t start speaking to one another. Hillary Clinton says she will do that, I hope that is so.
The Trump movement represents an older, whiter, angrier and entrenched tradition, a way of looking at power and the world. It frequently evokes and perhaps romanticizes the lost Valhalla, the simpler and more coherent America, a place of deep religious values, good and plentiful jobs, continuously rising living standards, law and order, a coherent white male power structure, conservative political and social values.
Woman and blacks and gays and transgender people and immigrants were not in charge and, in many cases, lived out of sight and away from power.
I can imagine that these men – Trump in particular – are only shaking their heads at the rise of women, especially a President woman, trans people using their bathrooms, refugees wanting to come to America in the age of Isis, factories moving overseas. They seem to me to have bought the trap of nostalgia, they want the old days and they love anyone who promises to bring them back, even though it seems an impossibility for them to come back.
For many of the forebears of the new America, America was not always so great back then. Before it can be great again, say the new Americans, it has to be great in the first place.
The new America has a different view, it sees this perfect idea of America as a myth, at least for people who are not white, conservative and older and usually male. If you read much history, you will know that America has always been a rough and discordant place, roiled by racial conflicts, including a bloody Civil War. The oldest story in America, and the world, an editor once told me is the rich screwing the poor.
Blacks, Native-Americans, immigrants and many women recall a different America, one with racism, oppression, constant technological change, huge migrations sparked by economic troubles, blood conflicts and riots, depressions and recessions, poverty and ethic and religious tensions, hunger and poverty, as bad or worse than those we see today.
Like him or not, Donald Trump has let a lot of genies out of the bottle, including many he did not anticipate and does not like. Hispanics are about to become a seminal political force in America, not likely to be ignored again. Women have arisen in great numbers, they seem transformed, determined to drive the angry old white men from their thrones and cable news desks.
And yes, he has unleashed the other nation as well and they are not going to melt away again either. After darkness, light, the two nations are out in the open, transparent and aroused. They might even want to talk.