There are no easy answers at a time like this.
The (not entirely surprising, post-Brexit) win of Donald Trump in the US presidential election is one of the more seismic events of what could reasonably classed as "quite a lively year". There's going to be a lot of bollocks talked about it over the coming weeks and months, so I thought I'd get my half-baked theorising in early, in order to bugger off birdwatching, or listening to the cricket or something, anything, less distressing than the thought of a Trump Presidency.
And no, there aren't any easy answers. But there are a few things worth noting.
After the EU referendum, it was easy for those of us on the Remain side to point and say "racism". But anyone capable of a little reflective thought will have gone "Well no, not all of them. That's not possible, there must be other reasons." So it is with Trump.
I do not doubt for a fraction of a second that race played a part, or, for that matter gender. It is a truth that white men will always vote for white men. But it's also true that Trump won states which, for the past two elections, voted for a black man. So it can't all be about race. But does race play a part? Sure. Trump was endorsed by the KKK. It's galling to see the Klan's leader tweeting #Make AmericaGreat and #LockHerUp. It's galling to imagine the leader of the Klan having anything other than a painful urinary tract infection, I grant you, but to imagine the fucker happy? Well, that's a bit much. I do not doubt that some of Trump's supporters are racist. But I'm not stupid enough to imagine they all are.
How about Misogyny? A definite contender for sure. The thought of a woman as president is just too much for men who have no problem with a man who "grabs them by the pussy". Yep, there are definitely a bunch of woman-haters in the trump vote. And not even the overt ones, there are the ones who just shrug off his outrageous statements on abortion, his objectification, even his acts of sexual assault and, lest we forget, rape. Yep there are plenty of people willing to overlook all that (including, and I'll stick this bit in bold 52% of white women). But are all Trump voters by definition misogynist? I doubt it.
So, to recap, not all racist, not all misogynist.
Then we get to the working class argument, beloved of George Galloway and the Brexiteers. The vote to leave the EU and the vote for trump are of the same cast, a howl of working class outrage, the "left-behind". Those who've seen their livelihoods destroyed by the remorseless forces of globalisation (or foreigners, depending on which paper you read). Yeah, not bad, this one might have some legs with anyone who's ever drawn a link between the destruction of manufacturing bases and a general decline of living standards amongst working class communities. Which would be anyone who was awake in the eighties. Yes, this one's a little more plausible. But the ethnic minority working class vote was solidly Clinton, so, not all the working class...
Which is a bit of a tricky one, anyway. the Brexit vote revealed the vast gulf between the traditional Labour vote and what the modern Labour party stands for. Likewise, the republican Party, the friend of Wall St and Asset-strippers everywhere is the one that's talking about coal-mining and bringing industrial jobs back. the democrats are suddenly, shockingly, in the position of finding themselves spun as the party that's AGAINST the working man. Quite a neat trick to pull off, and largely what Osborne was trying to do to Labour prior to May's night of the long knives (normal Tory service was resumed when May started banging on about grammar schools, not a massive vote-winner in industrial heartlands).
None of these factors alone led to a Trump victory, but it was a toxic brew of all of them, combined with a general distaste for Hillary herself, which did the trick, I suspect. Sitting here in the aftermath I'm trying to work out where on Earth we go next.
What seems clear is that society is more polarised than ever before. I'm a left-leaning, highly-educated liberal. So you'd expect me to be spitting bile about the result, but frankly, I don't see the point. As far as I can see, it's the left and centre's inability to engage with traditional bases which has caused this (and, for that matter, Brexit). I'm figuratively laughing my tits off at some of the tripe being spouted by the Labour far-left this morning about how "Establishment politics is dead" and that this is somehow going to lead to the anointing of Corbyn as PM.
It isn't.
What it is is the rise of a xenophobic populism which appeals to the scared and disenfranchised, with a few racists and swivel-eyed loons hiding behind the vast mass of pissed-off, let-down people. What it is is a vote for "anything's better than this", just as Brexit was. And for as long as those of us on the left refuse to engage with the vast majority of reasonable people who've done an unreasonable thing, this situation will only worsen. And we will become less and less relevant to the national debate, easier and easier to characterise as the "liberal elite."
It's incumbent upon all of us to call out any form of discrimination wherever we see it, true. What it is not in our gift to do is to sneer at the spouters of this bollocks. Engage, argue, win. One voter at a time. It's all we can do.
The (not entirely surprising, post-Brexit) win of Donald Trump in the US presidential election is one of the more seismic events of what could reasonably classed as "quite a lively year". There's going to be a lot of bollocks talked about it over the coming weeks and months, so I thought I'd get my half-baked theorising in early, in order to bugger off birdwatching, or listening to the cricket or something, anything, less distressing than the thought of a Trump Presidency.
And no, there aren't any easy answers. But there are a few things worth noting.
After the EU referendum, it was easy for those of us on the Remain side to point and say "racism". But anyone capable of a little reflective thought will have gone "Well no, not all of them. That's not possible, there must be other reasons." So it is with Trump.
I do not doubt for a fraction of a second that race played a part, or, for that matter gender. It is a truth that white men will always vote for white men. But it's also true that Trump won states which, for the past two elections, voted for a black man. So it can't all be about race. But does race play a part? Sure. Trump was endorsed by the KKK. It's galling to see the Klan's leader tweeting #Make AmericaGreat and #LockHerUp. It's galling to imagine the leader of the Klan having anything other than a painful urinary tract infection, I grant you, but to imagine the fucker happy? Well, that's a bit much. I do not doubt that some of Trump's supporters are racist. But I'm not stupid enough to imagine they all are.
How about Misogyny? A definite contender for sure. The thought of a woman as president is just too much for men who have no problem with a man who "grabs them by the pussy". Yep, there are definitely a bunch of woman-haters in the trump vote. And not even the overt ones, there are the ones who just shrug off his outrageous statements on abortion, his objectification, even his acts of sexual assault and, lest we forget, rape. Yep there are plenty of people willing to overlook all that (including, and I'll stick this bit in bold 52% of white women). But are all Trump voters by definition misogynist? I doubt it.
So, to recap, not all racist, not all misogynist.
Then we get to the working class argument, beloved of George Galloway and the Brexiteers. The vote to leave the EU and the vote for trump are of the same cast, a howl of working class outrage, the "left-behind". Those who've seen their livelihoods destroyed by the remorseless forces of globalisation (or foreigners, depending on which paper you read). Yeah, not bad, this one might have some legs with anyone who's ever drawn a link between the destruction of manufacturing bases and a general decline of living standards amongst working class communities. Which would be anyone who was awake in the eighties. Yes, this one's a little more plausible. But the ethnic minority working class vote was solidly Clinton, so, not all the working class...
Which is a bit of a tricky one, anyway. the Brexit vote revealed the vast gulf between the traditional Labour vote and what the modern Labour party stands for. Likewise, the republican Party, the friend of Wall St and Asset-strippers everywhere is the one that's talking about coal-mining and bringing industrial jobs back. the democrats are suddenly, shockingly, in the position of finding themselves spun as the party that's AGAINST the working man. Quite a neat trick to pull off, and largely what Osborne was trying to do to Labour prior to May's night of the long knives (normal Tory service was resumed when May started banging on about grammar schools, not a massive vote-winner in industrial heartlands).
None of these factors alone led to a Trump victory, but it was a toxic brew of all of them, combined with a general distaste for Hillary herself, which did the trick, I suspect. Sitting here in the aftermath I'm trying to work out where on Earth we go next.
What seems clear is that society is more polarised than ever before. I'm a left-leaning, highly-educated liberal. So you'd expect me to be spitting bile about the result, but frankly, I don't see the point. As far as I can see, it's the left and centre's inability to engage with traditional bases which has caused this (and, for that matter, Brexit). I'm figuratively laughing my tits off at some of the tripe being spouted by the Labour far-left this morning about how "Establishment politics is dead" and that this is somehow going to lead to the anointing of Corbyn as PM.
It isn't.
What it is is the rise of a xenophobic populism which appeals to the scared and disenfranchised, with a few racists and swivel-eyed loons hiding behind the vast mass of pissed-off, let-down people. What it is is a vote for "anything's better than this", just as Brexit was. And for as long as those of us on the left refuse to engage with the vast majority of reasonable people who've done an unreasonable thing, this situation will only worsen. And we will become less and less relevant to the national debate, easier and easier to characterise as the "liberal elite."
It's incumbent upon all of us to call out any form of discrimination wherever we see it, true. What it is not in our gift to do is to sneer at the spouters of this bollocks. Engage, argue, win. One voter at a time. It's all we can do.
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