Half America
The general weakness of Democratic downvotes illustrates the Huge magnitude of the problem that needs to be solved if we are to survive: how do we function in a nation together with the Trump base, which constitutes nearly half the population? This was truly an historic election, not only in our lifetimes; it may have been the most critical in American history. Nine million more people voted for Donald Trump than last time, which was not a landslide victory only because the wave crested even higher for Joe Biden. He got the most votes of any candidate in American history, but Trump received the second most.
To cut to the chase, I decided some time ago that there is in fact no way to co-exist. To try to put it neutrally for a moment--a neutrality I have no intention of maintaining--we live in completely separate universes, have unrelated thought and value systems, and do not understand each other's words, or believe them when we do.
I find the Titanic, Kitschy as it has bcome, a useful thought experiment which I return to often. For example, you can test public discourse about solving problems by assigning it to one of the following "Titanic Zones": are we Reformists debating how to build better, safer Titanics with stronger compartments and more lifeboats? Or are we Revolutionaries asking the question most people have never considered since it sank: why build the damn thing at all?
In Titanic World, few of the Trump base are even trying to reach a lifeboat. They are raptly listening to their revered Captain, who is completely unqualified for the position, tell them that there was no iceberg.
On the actual Titanic,a wide spectrum of human nature and behavior was in evidence. There were passengers who refused to board a lifeboat until everyone else had. There were men who dressed in women's clothes and snuck on the first boat available. There were the courageous and the despairing, the resourceful and those without resources, the selfish and the self-sacrificing. But, as far as I know, there was not a single person on board who believed the ship wasn't sinking. That is a twenty-first century pathology.
If I had been aboard, I would like to think I would have been ethical but resourceful, trying to help other people in the time remaining before I thought of saving myself. But if I confronted a group in the lounge who insisted there was no iceberg, I would not have given my life for them. I would have given up on them after about three minutes of conversation.
How do I give up on the Trump base? Given the arbitrariness of national borders, and the fact that the United States might not exist in many alternate universes, or be much smaller or differently positioned or five related countries Or Or Or, it was tempting to say, "I want a divorce". I have written that we made a tactical error forcing the South to return to the union, which we have been paying for these last four years (we have paid for it in many other ways for much longer as well). It was also a moral error (how can you say a country is based on the "consent of the governed" when you won't let anyone leave?). Yes, I have worked all the permutations (Should we have allowed slavery to continue? We could have invaded the South,ended slavery, then left with a warning we'd be back if they reinstituted it.) Frankly, if there was a movement afoot to partition the U.S., like India in 1948 (but with less murder), I'd probably support it. But what do we do if the United States of Trump institutes human slavery? Allows Russian bases next door? Insists in the negotiations of separation that it share the nukes? Sinks into such want that starving refugees are coming across the borders? Invades us?
My own experiment in talking to rather educated members of the Trump base about Obamacare, on the "Ethics Alarms" website, some years before Trump, illustrated the polarization. I literally suggested we reason together, and was told I must be a paid Obama operative, then was insulted, bullied, threatened and banned from the site. No actual dialog was possible. A couple weeks back, I was intrigued by a Muslim American's op ed in the Times. He had had a rather different experience with the same result: deciding to do a speaking tour of America after the 2016 election, and visiting red states to talk to the Trump base, he was treated respectfully, as I was not, but nobody actually listened. Some folks gave him little gentle but Dreadly Certain lectures; others told him they were uncomfortable with some elements of the President's personality but would vote for him for the rest of time because of his views on abortion, or because he would protect their guns. I was similarly struck by a union leader's statement a few weeks earlier, that his members were perfectly aware that Trump was killing the union, but voted for him anyway to make sure no Democrat could take their guns.
There is so much going on, such an information overload, that anything I write these days feel like a gross oversimplification. I have been talking about the Trump Base as an abstraction, in terms only of one set of behaviors, their inaccessibility to dialog. That is similar to discussing a court proceeding procedurally without ever revealing the substance--what the case is really about. I haven't mentioned the two most important reasons I no longer even have a vestigial desire to have a conversation with Trump voters: they voted for an empty, stupid, cruel man without any Presidential qualities, thinking he was god-like. And they accepted his values (or already had similar ones) of bigotry, lies, and violence. Taking the longer historical view, I see the Trump Base as essentially similar to other American constituencies, such as the poor whites who couldn't afford a slave but died for slavery in the Civil War; the Know Nothing Party; the screaming moms with contorted faces surrounding small African American children you see in photographs from the Civil Rights era.
I think the Trump voter is perfectly insulated against discourse and compromise--and as a result will believe that the Titanic never hit an iceberg, if that is the message they are hearing from their President and Fox News. I thus discount entirely any advice that we have to do a better job reaching out to the Trump folks. It is possible that someday their children or grandchildren may see a clearer reality. Otherwise, if we cannot divorce them, the only answer is in the numbers and the demographics. We will for the rest of our lives, in order to be safe and not sink with the Titanic, have to deliver more votes than they do, as we did in this election.