Both of Us Were Wrong and the Result Is Hurting All of Us
Russell Brand turned my head around and made me realize both sides of this political divide created the mess we’re in right now. In his video perspective of why Trump was elected, Brand makes the following comments.
“With Donald Trump, it is no longer possible to ignore that real change is required.
This had to happen. We had to reach some kind of climax.
We have to create a world where Donald Trump isn’t necessary.
We have to change the way we treat each other.”
A friend of mine who has always been a liberal, informed me a couple of days ago that he has crossed over and accused me of being one of the liberal elite. Several others have echoed that opinion, accusing me of drinking the Koolaid. It’s hard for me to think of myself as part of the “liberal elite” since I live on Social Security aided by a small cushion created by the life insurance left when my husband died. Two years later I lost my my consulting income and my home in the 2008 crisis.
However, I was luckier than a lot of women I know who spent more time raising their children than building up their Social Security account. Living frugally, I can squeeze by most months and I’m extremely healthy and have Medicare. Many women I’ve met live on the razor’s edge of financial disaster, as if their work raising the next generation of citizens was less valuable than working in the corporate world. So, it bothers me a lot when our leaders seem to be bent on reducing Social Security (money that we paid into the system) and tampering with Medicare and our health insurance system that has just offered new protection to 20 million people.
As a life-long progressive, I have continued to support the financial network meant to catch the weakest members of our society. Even in my reduced circumstances, I am “making it” and I want a world where everyone has a chance, regardless of who they are or where they came from. What I neglected to remember was how many millions of people had been chewed up and spit out far more viciously than I had been by the financial meltdown. Many of my fellow progressives made the same mistake. We fought for causes, righteous causes, while our neighbors with no champions were suffering in silence.
This problem didn’t happen two years ago when the elections began. Brand reminds us that this started 30 or more years ago as change began to escalate. Globalization shifted jobs around the world, financial markets began to invent and reinvent the rules at a dizzying pace, and the average person couldn’t possibly dodge the oncoming financial tsunami. Products, departments, whole companies left the US for cheaper labor markets. Layoffs of 10, 15, 20 thousand or more workers became common place. Families were displaced. Neighborhoods evaporated. Communities became ghost towns. Even if you had a job, you didn’t know if you would have it long.
Pride was replaced with fear; tradition with anger. Rap replaced rock and the movie, Koyaanisqatsi, gave us an 86-minute experience of life out of balance which we recognized as our own. Anxiety, fear, depression and anger have created a global form of post traumatic stress syndrome … except we’re not “post” yet. Our society is shell-shocked and the normal reaction when we, or any animal, is cornered and threatened is to look first for a safe place, and, if that is not available, to fight. In that petri dish, revolutions are born.
When the “Occupy Wall Street” protests happened a few years ago, I thought we might be on the brink of making a great change. We recognized that the greed of the 1% was exacerbating the problem, leaving the 99% to free fall over the financial brink. Unfortunately, that powerful movement didn’t have the leadership needed to create significant change.
Fast forward to the election cycle and who shows up: Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, both calling for change, both energizing huge segments of the population, both painting a picture of a safer place. We should have been able to look at those two vectors and read between the lines: most of the people want change. We who followed Bernie wanted a broad swash of re-equalization, a strengthening of the critically important middle class … at the expense of the 1%. Those who lined up behind Trump wanted to turn back the clock.
They wanted to go back to the times when a person could work hard and earn enough on one income to support a family, buy a house, see the kids through school and retire in grace. They wanted the simpler time when all their neighbors looked like them with names they could pronounce, went to the same schools and churches, spoke the same language, watched the same sports and barbecued hamburgers in their backyards without worrying about cholesterol or gluten. They wanted to feel like they were in control of their lives again. They wanted America to be great again.
To the Trump folks, the Bernie folks looked irresponsible with their heads in la la land clouds. To the Bernie folks, the Trump folks looked like they had their heads stuck in the sands of 1950. Hillary, probably the smartest, most experienced candidate to run for the presidency in decades, came along carrying the baggage of the status quo and the 1%, as well as 30 years of legal wrangling and attacks, and sucked up the middle ground energy while further inflaming the outskirts of the Bernie followers and the Trump loyalists.
So the pot was simmering, fueled by lost or inferior jobs, astronomical health care costs, lost savings and retirement accounts, home foreclosures, ever increasing regulations on small businesses, spiraling college costs, and a hockey stick forecast on climate change. The pot boiled over on November 8th, when the idiosyncrasies of the Electoral College fell to Trump while the majority of votes fell to Hillary. Adding one more metaphor to the mix: the firestorm began.
That’s how we got here. What Russell Brand asks us to think about is: how can we create a world where Donald Trump isn’t needed as a catalyst to change? How can we change the way we treat each other? How can we learn to talk to each other again? How do all of us regain our sanity?
I believe a great first step would be to try to avoid name calling and give each other some respect. I don’t think anyone believes that the 63 million people who voted for Trump are evil, greedy racists any more than I hope that those voters do not believe that the 66 million people who voted for Hillary are corporate shills. Amazingly enough, I think we all want basically the same things: peace, prosperity, good jobs and good pay, and healthy families.
The two things that get in our way are greed and power. If we, the 99%, refused to be bullied by the 1%, it really wouldn’t matter who our leaders were because we would have the power to remind them of their jobs. I think this is part of what Russell Brand is trying to tell us. All of us let this situation get to this point. It’s now time to take back the power, come together to focus on the things that matter and make life better for all of us rather than just the few, who already control too much money and power.
I’m reminded of what 1%er Bill Gates said: “I can understand wanting a million dollars, but once you get much beyond that, I have to tell you — it’s the same hamburger.” Of course, it’s always easy to talk about a million dollars when you have it. We do have to remember though that he has given away $30 Billion and plans to eradicate polio from the planet. (There are actually a lot of 1%ers who know that they have too much money and are perfectly willing to be taxed a bit more for the general good.)
What do you think we could do to be kinder to each other and start conversations that would lift all of us up rather than just the folks who already have passed the point where they can appreciate a hamburger?
