The 2016 presidential race in the United States has been a really bizarre sight, representing a larger social fracturing that can be felt in daily life in the United States. The fracturing is at its worst on the right end of the spectrum – in which the divide has been sharply divided between the like of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and the juggernaut candidacy of real estate mogul and reality television star Donald Trump. Is this the point where America finally breaks?
One friend of mine who lives abroad messaged me recently and asked “What is happening in the United States? Trump can’t win.” I had been telling this friend that things had been getting weird in the U.S., with a string of shootings, in addition to the Ferguson protests (which spilled over throughout the country) and the Malheur standoff, over the period of Obama’s second term that amounted to something close to a small scale civil war. I had told my friend about this before and gotten deaf ears, being told that I “still have a lot of opportunities” in the US and am rich in comparison with other developing countries. The bizarre spectacle of the 2016 race may make the American fracturing undeniable to outside observers.
The best analysis, in my personal view, of the 2016 race has been from Robert Reich, a veteran of three presidential administrations who served as Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton. Reich is known for his biting political commentary and spearheaded a great documentary film called Inequality For All, which followed several Americans around in their day to day lives, revealing the financial instability that prevails in their lives. In one of his Facebook commentaries, Reich said that America “could be on the verge of a fundamental political realignment.”
Reich further elaborated that the 2016 presidential race is distinct in not sharing a variety of candidates that represented liberal and conservative camps but, rather, four different camps which all had fundamental differences with one another. These camps comprise, on the left, of the Democratic establishment (which Reich sees as being “suburban professionals, Democratic political insiders, liberal-leaning business executives, political centrists”), which favors Hillary Clinton, along with the Democratic anti-establishment (which Reich sees as being “worried most about widening inequality, concentrated wealth and power at the top, corporate control of our democracy, Wall Street’s excesses”), which favors Bernie Sanders, and, on the right, of the Republican anti-establishment (which Reich sees as being made up of “evangelicals and abortion foes, Tea Partiers, climate-change deniers, federal-government haters, and Fox News addicts”), which favors Ted Cruz, and “anti-establishment bigots” (which he sees as made up of “evangelicals and abortion foes, Tea Partiers, climate-change deniers, federal-government haters, and Fox News addicts”), who favor Donald Trump.
Into the Republican rabbit hole
Things got even more complicated after Reich wrote that. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee who lost to Barack Obama in 2012, came out resoundingly against Donald Trump’s candidacy, delivering a speech with zingers such as “his promises are as useless as a degree from Trump University,” citing the infamous scam “university” that has led to several class action lawsuits and accusations of fraud, in addition to citing Trump’s apparent fondness for Vladimir Putin and other developing world dictators. Some reports have shown that Mitt Romney has filed paperwork to run for president, which he initially denied. This leads in to the chaotic possibility of a brokered convention, in which substantial parts of the Republican party won’t get behind the party’s prospective nominee.
Even if one isn’t a conservative, the final disruption of conservative ideology has a dramatic impact for us all. Like any effective political ideology, American conservatism was founded on ideas. Americans aren’t known for intellectuals but post-WW2 conservatives did have their own – William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review (which has played a significant role in the “Never Trump” movement with an entire issue they dedicated in opposition to the presidential candidate), Russell Kirk, Robert Nisbet and others helped form ideas that powered what eventually became the Reagan revolution.
These ideas had staying power or they never would have been popular for half a century. One of American conservatism’s greatest books was Robert Nisbet’s Quest for Community, a book that looked at the ascent of both fascism and communism around the world, arguing that totalitarianism took off in answer to the human need for community and the collapse of less lethal institutions in the countries that embraced totalitarianism.
The ideas of thinkers like him are still valid, maybe more so than ever for Americans, but that shouldn’t be confused with conservatism. Conservatives still, even today, have their intellectuals. Talk show hosts Glenn Beck and Michael Medved are serious scholars who are great to read, especially when talking history. However, the reality is that a great deal of Republican voters have obviously voted for Donald Trump and he has enjoyed the support of people like Jerry Falwell Jr. and Mike Huckabee. Even if the Never Trump movement succeeded in sending him back toward whatever scam or prostitute he has to work on next, conservatives can’t ignore that a message of zero substance or ideas, peppered with ugly misogyny, hate aimed in no real coherent direction and white male power worship got a great deal of GOP voters excited in a way that a Romney, George W. Bush or John McCain never did. They picked Trump over over a dozen candidates who didn’t have a serious personality disorder. That’s just the reality and, as conservative columnist Michael Medved said when writing in National Review’s “Against Trump,” it does confirm the absolute worst suspicions of the Left.
And Donald Trump is the most dangerous man to ever run for president. His life and career would initially make one liken him to Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, a wealthy media mogul known for his own outrageous statements, but those comparisons end as Trump has taken on the tone and appearance of a genuine fascist. Rounding up people, be they Muslim or Mexican or whoever, has been a constant in his rhetoric, as have inciting violence at his rallies, with several episodes of people being escorted out or attacked. He has even taken on a menacing tone with other politicians, with one scary moment being his saying that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan would “pay the price” if he disagreed with him.
Bombastic threats, but real dangers
He behaves so much like a dictator that almost everyone has noticed it – Glenn Beck, in an appearance on George Stephanopoulos’s show, pulled out a ballot from the 1929 Germany election while stating that Trump reflected things we have seen in history before. Beck brilliantly said, “We all look at Adolf Hitler in 1940. We should look at Adolf Hitler in 1929. He was a funny kind of character who said the things that people were thinking.” Retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling even said in an interview that “the military is not his palace guards” in response to Trump’s comments that he would expand torture as a policy and that military “wouldn’t refuse” such orders.
Politics isn’t an abstraction – it is daily life. The societal fracture represents how things really are in the United States. Those four groups of people that Reich cited really do exist and this election could be the test of whether or not they can exist with one another. And, as someone who lives in the United States, I can say that the Trump freaks are real – mostly white, hateful, scared and intolerant. The best case scenario is some sort of unification and rejection of hate, with the GOP embracing Cruz, Romney, Rubio or some other normal candidate – the worst case scenario is a catastrophe that would make the United States have to re-assess itself culturally as much as Europe did after WWII.
Photo: Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons
The U.S., needs to crash economically, so can restart better. The bubble is bursting, but this is ultimately good!
WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US!