The continental divide

by | Jan 23, 2017 | Editor's Blog | 23 comments

The two events held back-to-back on the National Mall spoke to the division in America. President Donald Trump took the oath of office and delivered an inaugural address targeted to the same people who elected him, not the country as a whole. The next day, 500,000 or so of the people who rejected Trump showed up to protest his election.

Trump gave a dark speech that drew a picture of a country in decline with too many people left behind. He laid the blame on a political establishment that’s rewarded itself at the expense of average Americans. Trump proclaimed a new day in Washington. From now on, it’s “going to be America First.” He laid out a nationalistic vision that protects our borders with both tariffs and walls. It’s supported by unquestioning patriotism or as he says, “total allegiance to the United States of America.”

Trump’s speech echoes FDR’s “Forgotten Man” speech during his campaign in 1932. Roosevelt described the “emergency” facing the country during the Great Depression. Like Trump, he blames Washington for failing to help the little people. Unlike Trump, he advocates opening up trade by reducing tariffs. He criticizes money Hoover gave to “the big banks, the railroads and the corporations” to spur the economy, and instead advocates for more direct aid to farmers, who made up half the population, and home-owners to protect their homes.

Trump’s reference to America First is no accident. The America First Committee was a nationalist group that opposed entering World War II.  It was the antithesis of Roosevelt’s internationalist approach to trade and foreign policy. With the Forgotten Man reference, he used the imagery to describe a country similar to America at the height of the Great Depression but offers the solution that Roosevelt rejected. Trump seems ready to restructure the alliances and policies that have guided America since the New Deal, offering an alternative reality for the future.

The people who want to keep the social contract of the New Deal and the alliances of the post-war era intact showed up on the Mall the next day. Most of them have recovered from the Great Recession and applaud the social changes like marriage equality that have defined the past decade or so. They’re welcoming to foreigners and embrace the diversity that’s changing the demographic landscape of the country. For them, patriotism is as much about defending rights as it is about defending borders.

The two sides largely talked past each other. While much of the country might not recognize the America Trump described, his target audience was the minority of Americans from small towns and rural areas who have seen their worlds turned upside down over the last 20 years. They’re people who felt the brunt of globalization as manufacturing jobs moved overseas. They’ve lost their livelihoods as natural gas and clean energy replaces coal. To them, gay rights, abortion rights, and marijuana legalization threaten their traditional cultural values. They see the government offering DREAMers a place to call home while they have to leave theirs to find employment and security.

In contrast, the Women’s March was a celebration of diversity and a show of strength among people who want a more open and welcoming society. Even if it’s participants appeared to be predominantly middle class white women, the march’s principle organizers were African-American, Hispanic, and Muslim. Across the country, solidarity marches were held in urban centers, not farming communities.

Over two days, the division in our country were laid bare. Trump’s sparsely attended inauguration reflected the dwindling population to whom he appeals. His dark vision is real for people living in dying manufacturing and mining towns. He’s the champion they’ve been waiting for and they’ll forgive his political incorrectness if he can save their fading way of life.

The women at the march felt empowered not by the support of strong man, but by their own ability to organize and protest. They believe they are ascendant, representing the future of our country, not its past. They’ve vowed that the march was just the beginning of a more progressive force in American politics.

It’s a clash that’s just beginning.

23 Comments

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  2. Tamara Brogan

    Great article, Thomas. Very accurate. Good job with pointing out the similarities and differences between the FDR speech from 1932 and Trump speech and the differences in their views of fixing the issues. Another similarity that I find scary is Trump words and Hitler’s words. During the 1920’s Germany was in economic crisis due to WWI. As Hitler spoke around Germany in the late 20’s and 30’s he blamed the current government for the nation’s problems. He promised to protect Germany and make it powerful again and promoted a strong nationalist view. He would make Germany great again, solve their unemployment crises and economic depression. He appealed to the common people’s emotions and suffering to promote extreme solutions. What he did was cause the destruction of Germany and most of Europe. I remember last year during the campaign, a survivor of the Holocaust, said that the hateful climate, aggressiveness, and Trump’s words reminded him of Germany in the 30’s. And that is from someone who lived it..and experienced it first Hand!
    America deserves solutions that are based on facts and not emotion. Yes, there is a divide as you pointed out. How do we fix that divide? You are correct that it is just the beginning of the clash between the two groups. I hope we can come together to bridge the divide in a positive way. We will have to wait and see.

    • Jay Ligon

      Enjoyed your comment, Tamara. I don’t have a clue how Americans will close the gap. It is almost as if we live in two separate worlds. It is an important question and I have not read or heard anyone discuss realistic solutions.

      • Tamara Brogan

        You are correct. I am not hearing any real solutions either. I know that the people in the rural areas and small town areas are not recovering economically like the urban areas and I understand their frustrations. However, the jobs that Trump is promising to bring back are not coming back. The manufacturing jobs that we remember from 30..40 years ago are gone. Technology has improved greatly since then and manufacturing is a different world now. What our national and state governments need to focus on is how do we retrain our workers for the new changing technology so the can get jobs in modern companies. One way is to invest greatly in local community colleges to train and teach workers for the new economy needs. As the workers are trained, work with businesses to invest in and get established in more rural and small towns. If the new workforce meets the businesses needs then businesses are more willing to make an investment.

  3. Adam

    I agree this is a problem. Let’s think of ways to reduce the amount of power politicians can wield so there is less incentive for the wealthy to purchase said power. Who thinks that’s a good idea?

    • Progressive Wing

      “Let’s think of ways to reduce the amount of power politicians can wield so there is less incentive for the wealthy to purchase said power.

      A naive, goofy idea brought to us (once again) by your libertarian yearning to eliminate government while expanding a laissez-faire, anarchic state.

      If you haven’t noticed, we live in an increasingly complex and risky world, and, as such, we need a critical mass of effective elected leadership (i.e., politicians) to carry out myriad duties (once elected) to benefit, advance, and protect our nation and the common good.

      Only a libertarian would advocate eliminating the positions and responsibilities of publicly-elected officials —and thus undermining/weakening government— in order to address a problem caused by the very rich and exacerbated by Citizens United.

      • Adam

        So for you, the problem isn’t government intrusiveness into people’s lives, it’s just a matter of granting vast power to the RIGHT people, who will never misuse it. That sum it up?

        • Progressive Wing

          Once again, I won’t bite on responding to leading questions that are full of your own dogma and biases painted as facts. All I’ll say is that you have made it quite clear that you think that government is the problem, while I feel that government must be part of the solution.

          And BTW, in the future, feel free to troll out your loaded questions in response to any of my posts. Just understand that I won’t respond to those tactics. Open minds I like; mind games I don’t.

        • Anonagain

          Can you give us an example of something that you would call “government intrusiveness “?

        • TY Thompson

          You might save your reasoning for the reasonable.

        • Apply Liberally

          Dg: Me thinx “government intrusion” is right there—underlined, bolded, and capitalized—in the political bible that Adam The Libertarian reads everyday.

  4. Troy

    First of all, I find it odd that you have a friend writing a political treatise on Facebook as one professing being a Tea Partier on the one hand and then bemoaning the fact that our lives have become too politicized. Nothing moves without politics. Be it informal, formal, officially recognized, or not. In the work place or as part of a political party; it’s in everything. Nothing Adam, nothing at all is absolved or devoid of some sort of political process.

    Being a professed naysayer of both Trump and Clinton and the beguiling political aspects of our lives, I likewise find it odd your friend found it necessary to participate in, albeit as a witness, the time honored tradition and epitome of our political process; the Presidential Inauguration.

    I don’t find it odd that political opponents were shouting each other down. If you watch the Sunday political shows, the pundits just keep talking in order to make their point and to answer the question they want to answer; not necessarily the one posed. They have no interest in answering questions, only in getting their message out.

    Next, how did we get from majoritarian whims of politics to free market? The majoritarian whims of which your friend speaks have flowed from both sides, liberal and conservative; loathe as I am to use those terms, but those seem to be the ones in which your friend seems entrenched. And I’m sorry, but “inherently self-interested individuals…serving one another yields positive benefits…” lacks any cohesion of thought whatsoever. Self-interested individuals serve themselves.

    I know not how your friend’s friends were “…gone after through politics….” If that is to be worthy of consideration, it needs further elucidation.

    There may not be any good reason for those on opposing sides to stand combative opposition to each other. But it does exist. We have lost the ability to converse and disagree and yet be civil. I can think of quite a few people who I like but vehemently disagree with their politics. The consequence of that is, we rarely discuss it. Your friend is right though; it is a “if you’re not for me, you’re against me” mentality. There are many speakers and many opinions and no one is willing to concede that they are wrong in their views. No one is willing to entertain the notion that perhaps they might not be the most wide-eyed viewing issues. Nope, its “I’m right, you’re wrong.”

    Am I right? From my point of view and the things that I feel passionately about, I believe I am. I try to view society and government as providing the greatest good for the most people. Is that right for everyone? No, it’s not. Does Government overstep and overreach itself? Most assuredly it does. Do individuals take advantage when government isn’t there as well? It does. Where is the median? I’m not sure. I do know it doesn’t lie completely within the confines of one camp over another. It does reside from a perspective of denying equal protection for one group of citizens because another group thinks it’s wrong, or immoral, or any other adjective you care to interject. There is no ambiguity in the words “equal protection.”

    But that is America isn’t it? Some are more equal than others. Some have more opportunity than others. So in that analysis, we should strive to ensure that the playing field is level. That it is never tilted, that the same opportunity is available to all. Then and only then can this mythological concept of free market be explored for potential.

    The point is moot however; the field will never be level and there has never been such a thing as a totally “free market.”

  5. Adam

    A FB friend of mine wrote the following, which speaks to the divisions in the country. She’s a woman, a millennial, and was part of the crowd at the inauguration. She opposed both Trump and Clinton. I think her points are very well-taken.

    “Many people seem to be wondering why the nation is so divided, why there’s so much antagonism, why there’s so much hate. The answer is simple: It’s because too many parts of our lives have become politicized.

    When I was standing outside of the Capitol during Trump’s swearing in, I felt a sense of dread around both the rabidly pro-Trump and rabidly anti-Trump individuals surrounding me. They were shouting each other down. They were filled with a palpable “us versus them” attitude. It saddens me, because in a free society, it shouldn’t be this way.

    But this is the end result of making more and more parts of daily life subject to the majoritarian whims of politics rather than the endless choices provided in a truly free market. When inherently self-interested individuals are in an environment where serving one another yields positive benefits, which is what happens when people are free to organize absent government coercion, society blossoms.

    Given this historically clear reality, I simply wish my well-meaning liberal friends would consider that what they often hail as “democracy” is actually nothing more than majoritarian rule under which they will inevitably find themselves subjugated. If what you want is choice, autonomy, and tolerance, you’re not going to find it when you attempt to subject everybody around you to a 50% +1 political mandate. You know what that gets you? Donald Trump. If you politicize absolutely everything while you’re in power, expect an equally forceful reaction.

    In the ten years that I have been deeply involved in politics – and this includes intimate organizing within the Tea Party movement – I have met countless conservatives who truly wanted to limit government. Sure, there were also many hypocrites who simply wanted “their guy” in power. But I know a lot of people who eventually acquiesced to Trump not because they agreed with him on policy, but because they were sick of being denigrated and essentially said, “screw it, if they’re gonna go after me through politics, I’m gonna do the same damn thing to them.” It became a proxy culture war.

    And as for me, though it may seem counter-intuitive, I moved to the center of it all not to empower one authoritarian side over the other, but specifically to break down the incredibly dangerous monopoly a too-powerful government has over everyone’s lives. To me, it doesn’t matter who’s at the helm if the end result is either side of one totalitarian coin.

    There is no good reason that the people who participated in the Women’s March and the people who celebrated Trump’s swearing-in should be enemies, absent both sides trying to force each other into their preferred molds. Want real democracy? Limit government and allow for the abundance of endless choice that comes with true freedom. Only then will we be released from the division and antagonism that currently permeates American life.”

    • Progressive Wing

      That’s nice. But it’s not a centrist viewpoint, as your friend, a Tea Party organizer, wants to believe and claim. She denigrates liberals, advances conservative notions, and ascribes Trump’s ascension to a reaction against altruism, intellectualism and popular voting. She bangs the drum for “limited government” and believes that the magic of the marketplace will resolve our major issues. Sorry, but hers is the typically naive libertarian view that fails to see the importance of government in ensuring rights and providing services and resources for the common good.

      • Adam

        And what’re your thoughts on growing government power, only to have that power wind up in the hands of someone like Trump? Does that still seem like a good idea?

        • Progressive Wing

          Rather, what are YOUR thoughts on your fellow Americans being disadvantaged —economically, in their healthcare, and in their civil rights— only to have a callous autocrat like Trump threatening programs (or program cuts) that will leave them even further behind?

          • Adam

            I’ll answer your questions if you’ll answer mine, as I asked you first.

          • Progressive Wing

            I responded to your question with a question of my own to show that two can play your game. I’ll not fall for that typical trolling tactic of asking leading questions that are adorned with biased notions stated as facts. I’ve stated my opinion of her essay. ‘Nough said.

          • TJ THOMPSON

            There’s no need to be disadvantaged when one can simply travel to the nearest blue state and have all their needs taken care of. 🙂

          • Progressive Wing

            Yes, I know. I’ve learned that their gaslighting is not worth my time nor effort.

            And yes, I know that they only hear the term “common good” as “communism” or “collectivism” or “socialism.” Sometimes, I use the term just to get a rise out of them. But really, what a sad state of affairs when that term–the common good–is received with such disdain by such a large part of the electorate. .

            And along those lines, the term common good and the term commonwealth reflect the very same concept. We have at 4 states –VA, MA, PA, and KY– that are officially, by name, “commonwealths,” meaning a political state formed to advance the common good. I wonder if the very red Kentucky’s citizens understand that.

            And Merriam-Webster defines commonwealth as a “country or community that is a democratic republic,” “one founded on law and united by compact or tacit agreement of the people for the common good” and “one in which supreme authority is vested in the people.” As such, the USA is a commonwealth — and thus established to benefit the common good.

  6. Apply Liberally

    Very accurate, balanced, and insightful blog, Thomas.

    • Jay ligon

      I agree. It was an excellent summary of the divisions in the United States.

      The unusual circumstance of such a poorly-attended inauguration followed by a massive world-wide womens’ protest of the new American president illustrates the fundamental predicament of our political system – the over-representation of a minority party and the under-representation of the majority party. The Republican Party has expanded its reach beyond its numbers through voter suppression, gerrymandering and deployment of vast sums of money unleashed by Citizens United.

      The majority does not rule and the minority party is extreme. We are not negotiating minor tweaks in centrist legislation. We are caught up in black or white solutions: either the people will get medical care or they will get sick and die; either the environment will be protected or it will be destroyed; either jobs will be protected or they will be sent to slave-wage nations. These are not minor adjustments to our way of life. Extremes pull at the fabric of our society and threaten to ruin large numbers of our people. The center cannot hold.

      “Turning and turning in the widening gyre
      The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
      Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
      Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
      The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
      The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
      The best lack all conviction, while the worst
      Are full of passionate intensity…” – W. B. Yeats

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