A Becker-informed perspective on the 2016 election
Steve James
The New York Times on the Sunday after the 2016 election was
filled with articles about the surprising upset victory by Donald Trump.
Articles on the voting in Michigan and Ohio, Hillary’s conference call with her
big donors, and a long piece about Rudy Giuliani who had campaigned for
Trump. Buried in all these meandering articles were several off-hand
remarks that were very telling:
“Changing cultural and economic forces were threatening the once-proud white working class.”
“We are drowning right now,” a 34 year old woman bartender in Michigan said. “Our vets are homeless. There’s one out of every five American children starving right now.”
“The seeds of the biggest upset in American politics in recent memory were sewn here, in the Midwest, where decades of economic decay largely ignored by Democrats came back to haunt Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Trump's populist economic message electrified blue-collar workers.”
Angry Democrat donors “pointed to the campaign’s lack of a compelling message for white working-class voters. . . Donors conceded that ultimately, no amount of money could match Mr. Trump’s crisp pitch aimed at the economically down-trodden to ‘make America great again.’”
In this same issue of the Times were full-page, full-color ads for Manhattan condominiums priced at 4.5 and 6 million dollars each. It is inevitable that the Times would mention, but not focus on the blue-collar, the economically downtrodden off somewhere in the fly-over states. They are not Times readers, and not the Democrats’ constituents anymore. (Refer to Listen Liberal by Thomas Frank.) But at least the Times understands the economics of the situation – they get the money part. It is understood that the working class is under attack. They haven’t had a raise in thirty years. The unions have been busted. The jobs have gone away. But this is not the whole story
The Times mentioned “once-proud white working-class.” I am reminded of my father and his generation. For most of my life he worked in a warehouse in Baltimore. Yet he and my mother:
• Owned their own home outright
• Owned only new cars, usually paid for in cash
• Had health insurance
• Had no debts
• Their four kids all went to parochial school, private high schools, and private colleges
• They retired on pensions, social security and, my father, on disability
My father was:
• The man of the house – his home was his castle
• A member of the white race – believed to be the superior race
• A firm believer in the American Dream - economic rewards for hard work
• An American - citizen of the Superpower that was the savior of the world and victor in two world wars
• Religious, though not overtly
• A Republican with real political power – his choice won 70% of the time
• A proud working-class American
Look at today’s version of my father and his generation:
• Harder and harder to own one’s own home
• Massive credit card debts to purchase the “good life”
• The Obama Care fiasco –the high cost of health insurance
• The high cost of education. Grown offspring living at home with bleak futures
• Pensions and social security under attack - retirement out of reach for more and more Americans
• Men equal with women - no perceived male privilege.
• No perceived white privilege. “Minorities and lazy non-workers” receiving special treatment
• Immigrants supposedly taking away jobs
• America has not won a war since 1945
• A secular society - tepid religious observance
• Waning political power – Republicans have won a plurality in only one of the last seven national elections (counting this one) – Romney won 59 percent of the white vote and lost by almost 5 million votes
• Fearful, angry, outraged working-class Americans
From a Becker-informed perspective there is another side to this story, one that adds to the political, economic, and sociological analysis of voting trends, fiscal issues, and class divisions. The social psychological point of view looks at the human motivation underneath the surface, the non-rational forces at work that the election turned on. It is the non-rational that explains why 60 million Americans elected a misogynistic, xenophobic, lying game show host as president.
Robert Reich notes in his most recent book, Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few that the middle class is shrinking, a new oligarchy is rising, and the country faces its greatest wealth disparity in eighty years. And epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett demonstrate in their persuasive book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Society Stronger that high levels of inequality in a society result in shorter life expectancy, higher infant mortality, higher levels of stress and anxiety, and the psychological, social, and physical problems associated with them. In short, more unequal societies are bad for everyone within them - the rich and middle class as well as the poor.
But the current situation is not all economic. The American middle class, and even the poor, are materially better off than most of the world’s population. The source of stress and accompanying depression, anxiety, and outrage is the result of relative inequality, the psychological effects of being in an unfair, unjust, “rigged” system. The results are exacerbated by the American meritocracy that is now the operating system of our society. If you are struggling, if you are not a millionaire, it’s your fault.
All of this adds up to a large and growing deficit of self-esteem for the American working class, particularly white men. Self-esteem, as we know, is a primary defense against unconscious death anxiety. What American society has been offering is a life with less purpose and meaning, fewer opportunities for heroism and sources of self-esteem. What we have lost is being a part of something larger than ourselves, in this case, our perception of being a member of the greatest country on earth, being a member of a privileged race and gender, having real political power, experiencing the pride of ownership, the satisfaction that comes from the next generation’s success, a future filled with comforts and security, and the unassailable reassurance of religious righteousness and cosmic significance beyond the here and now.
The American culture has slipped, and with it, some of the symbolic immortality it once provided in abundance. “Make America Great Again” was a rallying cry to the working class, particularly to the white men. It meant that one leader took their plight seriously and promised to restore their unconscious defenses against death anxiety. He may have been seriously flawed, but that didn’t matter. He was not the logical candidate with the shiniest resume. His appeal was not a rational one, but an appeal to the non-rational, to the deep psychological forces overlooked or ignored by the political and media establishments.
The Republican and Democrat mainstream got it wrong. The pollsters’ and pundits’ predictions got it wrong. The establishment got it wrong. This is our Brexit – hopefully not our Kristallnacht. A Becker-informed perspective can help all of us understand what has happened and help guide our future.
Steve James
Doug Mounce
Gordon Shephard
Liechty, Daniel
This is good analysis, as far as it goes. However, to be complete, we also have to cast our Beckerian analytical eye on why it is that the Dems allowed their own rhetoric to escalate to apocalyptic levels, employing at least as much and perhaps more of the “fear” as persuasion element than the Trump campaign. It’s no wonder we have a collective anxiety collapse going on – we’ve been telling ourselves in ever-greater shrieks that a Trump victory equals the end of democracy and civilization as we know it. Bullshit. The simple fact is that Trump voters easily looked right through the transparent hypocrisy of the national Democratic establishment, the whole Wall Street/Hollywood/Silicon Valley triad, and just as easily understood that whatever their rhetoric about their willingness to “fight” for this and that, these people look down on them (the “lacking-college-degree” folks) and in practice don’t genuinely give a *** about them, and will use any power they gain from the election to line their own pockets first. I mean my gosh, have you ever seen a pair of greedier pigs than the post-administration Clintons? Forget the admirable example of Jimmy Carter, these Clintons make even Reagan, GHWB and GWB look like non-profit humanitarians in terms of cashing in on their status! (And Obama, I suspect, who willingly spent more political capital on pushing the TPP through than any other piece of legislation and has indicated his interest in becoming a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, may well out-do even the Clintons.) The very idea that the Dem establishment would be surprised that people here in “flyover country” would reject yet another go-round with the Clintons showcases the narcissism of that establishment so glaringly that one needs sunglasses just to look at it. Just look at the election map, blue on the two coasts along with Chicago (but definitely NOT the rest of Illinois) and that pretty much tells the story of who feels “included” in the Democratic vision and who feels excluded by it. Trump may have a genuinely clinical Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but his main slogan was “Make America Great Again.” Clinton’ was “I’m With Her.” Where, politically speaking, is REAL the narcissism, one might ask?
Again, please do read and learn from Steve’s analysis. But while in a Beckerian mode, also ask yourself what lies behind the highly elevated sense of astonishment, anger and betrayal we who are not Trump voters feel now, and how quickly we move toward bullet-pointing what is “wrong” with those who are Trump supporters, those goddam spoilers of everything good and right in this country...
Doug, I know that Girardian ideology suggests that maintaining the boundaries of difference is what keep society functioning, because it establishes with whom it is legitimate to compete and with whom it is not legitimate to compete. But I think you are exactly backwards in stating that we prefer lower standards with higher difference, rather than higher standards with lower difference. There is a sizable bibliography of studies showing just the opposite, that high difference creates dissatisfaction much more than actual standards. Just think of how many times you hear people say, well I guess we were poor back in the day, but we didn’t really feel poor because everyone else around us was the same. Maybe I have misunderstood what you mean here by standards and difference? Please elaborate.
Doug Mounce
Steve James
Liechty, Daniel
Steve, I feel exactly that same way. I suppose, especially as a parent of a young adult daughter, that I really wanted America to be further along in its development than this election obviously shows that it is. I am still sick of how my generation, the Boomers, were supposed to bring in the age of aquarius, and instead traded it in as soon as possible for wealth, neoliberalism, and religious fundamentalism. Ironically, George Wallace turned out in the end to be a man of more solid integrity than many of the "liberals" who jeered at him during the years he ran for President (as I recall, every election year between 1964 and 1976 - but only in 1968 did he run as an independent, and was, I think, the only third party candidate to actually win some votes in the electoral college.)
BTW, are you keeping in touch with that guy from South Africa? I am kind of dropping the ball on that one, at least for now, I am just too inundated with stuff here at school.
Peace and love,
Dan Liechty
Sent: Monday, November 14, 2016 6:08 PM
To: generative-death-anxiety-l
Liechty, Daniel
Folks, sorry about this message, esp. the last part. I thought this was going to Steve personally, not out over the list serv. I just started using a new email program and must have hit the wrong button. I have been such a scold over the years about not sending personal messages over the listserv that I feel the need to apologize now! Dan