To be sure,
I am no fan of Donald Trump. I have
grave reservations about the prospect of his presidency. I’m deeply skeptical of his fitness to hold
the office of leader of the free world.
His lack of political experience, what looks quite often like a very
superficial grasp of what are complex policy issues and some of his policy
proposals are frankly alarming. And
while I don’t think he’s as racist or authoritarian he’s often made out to be,
his abrasive and boorish manner while campaigning make me wonder how he will
handle the high level diplomatic and trade relations he claims need to be
revisited in order to better insure American interests. People all over the world look at him with
considerable concern and skepticism, and while some of that is establishment
media spin and bias, Trump has quite knowingly, I think, contributed to the
establishment of a deeply polarizing public persona, and this will come back to
haunt him during his tenure as president.
What I do
not believe, however, is that most of Trump’s supporters had, well, deplorable
motivations, nor do I believe that Hillary Clinton was this paragon of liberal
inclusiveness that her supporters made her out to be. I will take both of these on in turn.
Firstly, a
vote for Trump was not likely to be a vote for white supremacy or misogyny,
though in some cases it could have been, and people with those kinds of
attitudes did express support for Trump.
But issues surrounding race, sex and immigration are more complex and
nuanced than a lot of media discourse makes them out to be, and the tendency of
a lot of public discussion to frame these issues – both literally and
figuratively – in such black and white terms is something that I frankly find
deeply troubling.
I’m not
convinced, as other articles and posts suggest, that Trump’s victory comes entirely
down to a protest vote against political correctness, I do see where the
frustration with the kinds of self-righteous militancy we’ve seen out of social
liberals concerned with identity politics comes from, and I completely
sympathize with it. When every unequal
outcome is attributable to “racism” and honest discussion of pathologies within
minority communities are thereby shut down, when real and legitimate concerns
with terrorism and immigration are brushed aside with accusations of
“islamophobia”, when college students who should be engaging in critical
thought and open debate are instead needing “safe spaces,” or else engaging in
violent and disruptive protests motivated by radical identitarian ideologies
that they’re being indoctrinated in on these same college campuses – at the
taxpayer’s expense, when Halloween costumes and hairstyles become “cultural
appropriation” and are considered a form of oppression, when innocent
flirtation or even just a polite and civil greeting of a woman by a man are
construed as “sexual harassment” and “stalking” – we have very deep and serious
structural problems in the body politic, and media, academia and government
have been displaying the utmost height of irresponsibility in pandering to and
promoting this.
Of course,
brazen displays of bigotry rightly warrant censure. Trump’s boorish comments about women are
indeed troubling, though I can’t help but think that at least some of the
hysteria over them is contrived and partisan.
It’s not like Bill Clinton was a paragon of feminist chivalry or
anything. But the kinds of petty,
manufactured grievances coming out of the supposedly liberal media are not only
contributing to what is likely to be irreversible deterioration of race and
gender relations, they are distracting us from looking seriously at where the
real axes of power and privilege lie and where the real abuses are taking place
– corporate and state power.
Which
brings me to my second concern, which is with this idealized perception of
Hillary Clinton. A more critical look at
the life and career of Hillary and her family reveals a different and more
disturbing picture. A picture that must be better understood in order to make
sense of the outcome of the recent electoral outcomes.
Unlike
Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton’s public persona is that of a polished career
politician and philanthropist concerned especially with the status of women and
girls both at home and abroad. But
behind this feminist persona is an individual who’s always been closely aligned
with the interests of corporate and state power, sometimes at the expense of
the very minority communities she professes to champion.
For
example, Hillary sat on the board of directors of Walmart from 1986 to 1992,
while the retail giant was actively involved in union suppression activities at
home and profiting from sweat labor abroad.
Despite claiming to want to use her position to help advance women and
girls, Walmart has been sued dozens of times over the years, for gender
discrimination, among other things.
And that’s
just the beginning. During her husband’s
tenure as President, Hillary was in favor of all kinds of regressive
legislation enacted by the administration, including welfare reform – which
doubled levels of absolute poverty in America, draconian anti-crime bills that
fell very heavily upon black inner city communities and the repeal of key
financial sector regulation such as the new deal era glass-steagall act; the
repeal of which paved the way for the eventual Lehman Brothers meltdown. Should I conclude from public reaction to the
election that the Clinton family also is too big to fail? How about too rich and powerful not to.
While in
the Senate during the Bush years, Clinton certainly did think the big banks
were too big to fail – she supported the TARP bailouts. They were not too big to be broken up,
however. One wonders how well girls and
women in Iraq, Syria, Libya and other mid-east hotspots have fared since
Senator Clinton voted in favor of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and as Secretary
of State for Obama has been among the most hawkish people in recent times to
hold that office. One wonders if this
was part of the reason the Clinton campaign was so heavily favored by the arms
industry.
Among other
things favored by Clinton, but opposed by Sanders while in the senate, were
NAFTA, the Patriot Act, the Trans Pacific Partnership, the Keystone Pipeline
and if you liked that, she also favored the 2006 border fence legislation for
the US Mexico border. A nice little head
start on the wall Clinton’s supporters freaked out and called Trump a racist over.
None of any
of this makes Trump a good candidate for president. He comes with ample historical baggage of his
own. People who look upon Trump as this
savior of western civilization against globalism or as a champion of the
forgotten American worker are in for a rude awakening, I suspect. It should not surprise us if the chief
beneficiary of a Trump administration ends up being, well, Trump, and
organizations he has ties to. If his
past is any indication of what his future will look like, I really doubt that
he will be any less willing to import immigrants and export jobs if that means
a healthy bottom line for his businesses or cronies.
America had
one chance at a populist president whose record demonstrates a commitment to
the interests of the working and middle classes, and he was screwed out of the
democratic nomination. It should be
observed that Trump was not responsible for this, and the kinds of salt were
seeing from the would-be populists now that Trump has won was notably absent
when corporate Hillary shafted the populist Sanders in their respective bids
for the White House.
What this
reveals to me is a very disturbing trend in US, and indeed western politics,
and that’s a growing obsession with identity politics. A deeper look at the facts shows how utterly
misguided the view is that Trump’s victory is entirely attributable to a white
backlash against an increasingly multicultural America, or evidence that
“America hates women more than it hates racists” or any of the other emotionally
charged identitarian rhetoric that has become so central on social media. Prejudice may have been a factor in some
cases, and I don’t condone that. But the
lack of criticism that the State Dept., that the Pentagon, that Wall Street,
that authoritarian foreign governments that the US has business dealings with,
and the other elements of the American “deep state” receive in favor of the blanket condemnations that “white America” receive from the so called
liberals and progressives in America is frankly very, very disturbing.
To
scapegoat the white male working class for America’s numerous social problems
and policy failures is no better than scapegoating immigrants or minorities for
those same problems. In both cases, this
serves the interests of corporate and state power and places the blame squarely
on the powerless and on the victim. This
does not mean that we cannot call out the sliver of racism in our neighbor’s
eye, but let’s be sure that we first remove the log of support for corporate
and state power from our own eye. We are
all under increasing pressure from the real bastions of power and privilege and
their shills in media and academia to see complex social issues entirely
through the lens of identity politics. I
urge you to resist this pressure and instead see people of different races,
genders and religious affiliations as potential allies in taking these bastions
of power and privilege to task and demanding a more just and accountable
polity.
(listen to it on Samizdat Broadcasts!)
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