gracchusdixit

In less than two weeks, the nightmare that is the 2016 presidential election will be over.  Depending upon the outcome, a large part of the electorate will breathe a long, loud sigh of relief or hang their heads in despair.  In the meantime, the suspense is killing all of us.  Dozens of public opinion surveys reveal that millions of Americans are fundamentally fearful of the results.

Thus it is that not a day goes by when anyone with a shred of sense or common decency doesn’t ask:  How did we come to this?  How did it happen that a bully and a buffoon like Donald Trump became the presidential nominee of one of our two major political parties, let alone the party of Abraham Lincoln?  How did we, as a nation, walk into this dark, disreputable, and dangerous place?

Trump himself requires little analysis or explication.  Long ago, it became abundantly clear that he is little more than a narcissist, a braggart, and a demagogue, who will use any tactic, technique, or dirty trick to advance his own self-interest and to shore up his precarious self-esteem.  There is nothing mysterious about the temperament of such a man.  Every time he opens his mouth, a bottomless well of insecurity comes gurgling out, like pent-up sludge hidden under a manhole cover.

What is far more mystifying, however, and also terrifying is that millions of Americans have fallen for Trump’s malicious malarkey and seem hell-bent on following him to the bitter end.  We can only hope that the end, if and when it truly comes, will be bitter for Donald Trump and no one else.

There have been many theories attempting to explain the furious anger of Trump’s supporters, their utter rejection of facts, evidence, and expertise, and their eagerness to embrace a man who seems determined to tear up our history and blow up our political institutions.  The various theories range from racist rage against Barack Obama, to sexist rage against Hillary Clinton, to an economic insecurity that requires the scapegoating of immigrants, to a resentment against remote political and media “elites,” to a cultural backlash by social and religious conservatives against any form of sexual or marital identification that isn’t sanctioned by the Book of Genesis.  The theorizing goes on and on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

All these theories and explanations undoubtedly play some part in accounting for the phenomena of Trump and Trumpism.  But there is a different—and, I believe, far more convincing—theory of the case.  It is that support for Donald Trump is rooted in fundamental anxieties about status and social class.  In a country that prides itself on being “classless,” where, as the old saying goes, “anyone can grow up and become President,” the candidacy of Donald Trump has revealed quite the opposite.  Not only are we not the “classless” nation we imagine ourselves to be, we are a nation defined by social class and riven by class divisions.

To that point, Trump’s most ardent supporters can be defined quite precisely in demographic and social terms:  they are heterosexual white men without a college education.  All four components of that description—heterosexual, white, male, no college—are essential to understanding the Trump phenomenon.

For three hundred years, the people who fit that description have been a singularly “entitled” social class in our nation, in every sense of the word “entitled.”   Regardless of their actual skills or accomplishments, they have been paid more, deferred to, and respected—simply because of their gender, race, and sexual orientation.

For a variety of historical, demographic and social reasons, their day in the sun is, to quote the old Paul Simon song, “slip slidin’ away”.  Indeed, for many members of this entitled class, it is already gone.  In the world of technocratic global capitalism, it is no longer sufficient to be white, male, or even heterosexual.  Social status now depends upon some combination of education, professional skill, and affluence.

Lacking one or all of these qualities, many Trump supporters are staring personal and social humiliation in the face.  The women in their lives are no longer subservient, their children are no longer obedient, and people of color refuse any longer to defer.  Even their once normative sexual identity no longer buys Trump supporters an ounce of preferential respect, let alone social entitlement.  Gay, lesbian, and transgender Americans are, with increasing success, asserting their right to define themselves as they choose.  As a result, the “macho American male” of myth and the movies has become, not a revered icon, but a rather ridiculous caricature.  Figures like John Wayne, once lionized, now seem ludicrous.

In Donald Trump, these insecure white men have found their perfect paladin.  Like them, he is consumed by his own insecurities.  Like them, he desperately wants to be accepted by a social and financial “elite” that has always looked down upon him as a crass and pretentious vulgarian.  Like them, he knows, down deep, that he is—in that most brutal of all American words—a “loser.”

The election of Barack Obama was an especially humiliating blow for Trump’s insecure constituency.  Not only was the president an “uppity” black man who didn’t defer to their once privileged place in society, he was undeniably superior by every objective measure—eloquent, intelligent, well educated, and professionally accomplished.  The very fact that his accomplishments could not be denied made his election all the more galling.

Now, of course, Trump and his worshippers are staring another humiliation in the face: the possible election of a woman as our next president.  If that occurs, as I truly hope it will, it will sound the death knell of white, male hegemony and entitlement.  It is a moment that cannot come too soon.