gracchusdixit

Since the largely unexpected—and to some, still shocking—outcome of the 2016 presidential election, many of the country’s leading liberal thinkers have been asking a question that is now emblazoned on the title page of Hillary Clinton’s new book:  What Happened?  Not content with trying to answer that question, liberals have gone on to flagellate themselves for failing to see it coming.

Leading the chorus of self-recrimination is Michael Moore, comedian, documentary film maker, and political activist.  It was Moore who (by his account at least) all but begged Hillary Clinton’s campaign to pay more attention to Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, three formerly Democratic swing states that, by the thinnest of margins, tossed the electoral college to Trump.  Moore’s theory of the case—his answer to the question: what happened?—has largely been accepted by those who are now torturing themselves.

Moore’s theory of the case involves two claims:

The first is that voters in “the heartland,” feeling ignored or patronized by “coastal” political, financial, and media elites, turned to Trump as a voice and a champion, as a man who wasn’t afraid to speak their language and “tell it like it is,” who was willing to take on the establishment and “drain the swamp”.  In this account, the racism, misogyny, and economic selfishness of Trump voters played a minor role.  They felt neglected; therefore, we must take them at their word and accept that they truly were.

The second claim is that these voters, whatever may be said about their crude and sometimes vicious behavior at Trump rallies and their embrace of the even cruder and more vicious presidential candidate, were in some fundamental sense right, that those who dwell on the two coasts do live in a “bubble,” detached from the real Americans who populate “the heartland”.  These “bubble dwellers” are therefore called upon to empathize with, and to some extent excuse, those who dwell elsewhere.  By implication, they are also called upon to concede the proposition that Trump supporters are more authentically American than the rest of us.

This is the narrative that now dominates nearly every account of the 2016 election. Scarcely a day goes by that some version of this narrative doesn’t appear on television or in one or more of our leading newspapers or magazines.  It is a narrative that not only attempts to explain the outcome of the election but demands a confession of guilt and penitence from the “bubble dwellers” who failed to foresee it.   According to this narrative, it is they who must open their eyes to what’s going on in the “real America;” it is they who must change their thinking and expiate their sins.

We shouldn’t be surprised by this twisted thinking.  When something goes wrong in our public life, the first instinct of liberals is to blame themselves.  The first instinct of conservatives, on the other hand, is to blame their enemies.  While liberals are forever insecure about their own own motives, conservatives are forever certain that they, and they alone, are in the right—because a sense of righteous condemnation lies at the heart of conservative thought.  This divide between two opposing political temperaments has a long history, and it isn’t likely to dissipate any time soon.  To quote the Book of Common Prayer:  As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be.

Or maybe not.

It’s time to put a stop to the nonsensical proposition that those who live in the so-called heartland have any claim to being uniquely and authentically American.  It is time to ignore their caterwauling about out-of-touch coastal elites.  It isn’t the coastal elites who inhabit a social, cultural, and economic bubble; it’s the idiots who voted for Donald Trump.  They are the ones who are out of touch with the real world.  They are the ones who prefer self-pity over self-knowledge.  They are the ones who demand that the rest of us “feel their pain” rather than facing up to the painful realities of the world as it actually is.  They are the minority of Americans who dwell in a bubble of ignorance.

The 20, largely coastal, states that voted for Hillary Clinton constitute a majority of the country’s population and are responsible for two-thirds of our GDP.  The number of college graduates in those states is 48 percent; in the states that voted for Trump, the number is 36 percent.  Massachusetts and Connecticut, two states that voted overwhelmingly for Clinton, have the highest SAT scores in the nation.  Alabama and West Virginia, two states that voted overwhelmingly for Trump, have the lowest.  This does not mean that Trump voters are unintelligent.  But it does mean that they are ignorant.  The correlation between education and knowledge is indisputable.  There is no escaping the reality that voters in Alabama and West Virginia simply know less, about nearly everything, than voters in Massachusetts and Connecticut.   It may be impolite to say so, but that doesn’t make it untrue.

There is, of course, a difference between accidental and willful ignorance.  It may be possible to excuse the ignorance of those who don’t know any better because they have never had an alternative.  It is not possible, however, to excuse those who embrace ignorance deliberately and with fervor, as if ignorance were itself a sign of virtue.

No group of willfully ignorant Americans has embraced Donald Trump with more fervor than White Evangelical Christians.  A majority of White Evangelicals deny evolution and climate change; many of them believe that the sun revolves around the earth, that astrology has a scientific basis, and that homosexuality causes hurricanes.  If such people had a scintilla of self-reflection, they could look up the facts and choose facts over fiction.  They have decided to choose otherwise.

These are the people who live in the real “bubble”— a bubble of delusion, medieval ignorance, and prejudice.  To feel sorry for them, to excuse their behavior, to pretend that they are more authentically American than the rest of us, is a travesty.

It’s time for liberals to stop blaming themselves for living in a bubble.  The real blame lies elsewhere—with the bubble-dwellers who voted for Donald Trump.