Introduction
I stopped at the local gas station on the way home from working out on Tuesday, November 8th, 2016, to pick up snacks for the small Election Night party we were having at my house. The guy in front of me was dressed in dusty work clothes, the baseball cap and the easy half-grin as he chatted with the lady behind the counter making him look like he belonged on a recruitment poster for tough men who build things with their hands, take care of their families as best they can, and spend weekends with a six-pack and a fishing rod. He was paying for a variety of alcoholic beverages, and the cashier made some friendly remark about it. “Yeah, just voted for Trump, gotta have something to wash the taste outta my mouth,” he joked.
I thought about this man the following morning, as I woke up to the news that Donald Trump — a misogynist, racist, xenophobic, ignorant, petty reality TV star — was going to be the 45th President of the United States. How had this happened? How could this many people vote for a man that was, to me, clearly and unequivocally unqualified for the office? How could we see the world so differently? West Virginia, I later learned, had the strongest support for Trump of any state in the nation. Why am I such an outlier?
* * *
I grew up in rural West Virginia, in a county with one high school, two stop lights, and a three-hour round trip to the nearest movie theater. Its mountains have a quiet, old strength. It is a place where the air is invigorating, the forests inviting, the rivers refreshing, a place where the night sky is endlessly deep. It is a place of quiet and isolation.
The people that live here are almost exclusively white and working class; men and women that work hard and take care of each other as they scrape together a living as best they can. These are people that always wave when you drive by, even if they don’t know you. It’s the kind of place where, if you ask for directions, you are as likely to get someone’s grandma’s house as a point of reference as you are to be given a street name. People take care of each other here; neighbors plow your driveway in the winter without being asked or even stopping for thanks before going off to help someone else. And if you take them a plate of cookies later to thank them for all the work, the plate comes back in a few days full of cupcakes and small toys for your children.
In 2016, both the Democrats and the Republicans nominated a candidate that most people in my community and across the country simply did not like, and then forced us all to choose between them. Some people, myself included, couldn’t abide the thought of voting for someone we saw as clearly unqualified — a man with so many obvious character flaws, a cultivated hostility toward expertise and knowledge, and a complete inability to tell you what he had for breakfast without lying about it clearly didn’t belong in the Oval Office. Of course, I had huge disagreements with Hillary Clinton’s positions on foreign policy and mass surveillance. I found her unwillingness to fight against Wall Street disappointing. But I found those complaints could be overlooked when the alternative was someone who claimed climate change was a Chinese hoax and bragged about sexual assault.
But that guy at the gas station who voted for Trump? I imagine he weighed things differently. He probably found Trump’s behavior with women distasteful, but decided it was better than voting for someone who cozied up to the investment bankers and hedge fund managers responsible for almost burning the global economy to the ground — a crisis still being felt by working people all over the country, whether or not it is reflected in unemployment statistics or stock market. He might have been as turned off by the perception of Hillary Clinton as an elitist insider as I was turned off by Trump’s lack of mental stamina — and both, I think, are valid complaints. But where I have a secure IT job and a resume with major Silicon Valley firms on it, this hard-working man may well spend many nights wondering if he’s about to be laid off, or how he’s going to scratch together enough for the car insurance payment that’s due this month, or worrying how the hell he’s ever going to make it better for his kids. I have the luxury of time to read books about public policy and write long-winded diatribes on my blog — something that’s hard to do when you’re working a second job to make ends meet.
I think it is vital to our nation that Trump’s presidency be opposed, that his behavior not be normalized, that the Republican plans for destruction of healthcare, the environment, and the economy be resisted in every way possible. I think the policies Trump has proposed, and the way he is going about implementing them, will hurt his supporters more than anyone else. I also think we need to work against the division that continues to build in this country, to not sequester ourselves in echo chambers of our own making, and to remember that the United States is defined as much a shared set of beliefs as it is a border on a map.
To that end, I’ve reached out to a former high school classmate of mine for an email interview about current politics. He's someone who grew up in the same rural community, but who has come to some sharply different conclusions about politics and the direction we should be going. We have some things in common — support for environmentalism and combatting climate change, for example — but we have deeply contrasting opinions when it comes to liberalism and multiculturalism, among other things. Below are a series of questions I posed to him, and his unedited responses. Note that I sent my questions to him before the inauguration, and his answers came back before anyone had uttered the phrase “alternative facts” with a straight face. I imagine we’ll come back to both of those issues, and many others, in the follow-up we’ve agreed on after the conclusion of Trump’s first 100 days in office.
How We Got Here
In the wake of the election, thousands of columns, poll analysis, blog entries, and commentaries were spent trying to figure out how this improbable result happened. Was it rural voters that pushed Trump over the threshold? Did Clinton not do enough to appeal to white, working-class voters in key states? Were economic concerns what drove most voters, or was education level the biggest predictor for the election? You can find analysis and data to support any one of these ideas; to me, that suggests it was probably combination or interplay between all of these factors, and many more. I’m most swayed by the data that suggests education level was the biggest factor, but all factors are interrelated. If you had to pick the single, most important factor that motivated people to support Trump’s campaign, what would it be?
I'd say the single, most important factor that motivated people to support Trump's campaign was utter dissatisfaction with business-as-usual in Washington DC and the general direction of the country. When you look at Trump and Obama, they seem like total opposites, and yet this is not so. Obama was the outsider with the simple, powerful message of change. Trump's message "Make America Great Again" was also a powerful message of change. (Plus Trump and Obama are both brilliant communicators and orators, in their own very different ways.) I never hear anyone comment how remarkable it was that after two centuries of men with names like Adams, Johnson and Bush, America elected a man named Barack Hussein Obama - less than a decade after 9/11. I don't think this was as due to increased multiculturalism or whatever as many people believe. I think it was total disgust with the way the country was going, the economy, failed wars etc and a willingness to make a radical break with the status quo. The big element which flipped the White House for the other party this year were the white working class voters in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania who previously voted for Obama in 2008, and this time voted for Trump. These people were disappointed with the change they got with Obama, they were angry, so they went with an even more radical change. I think Bernie Sanders might have defeated Trump, but the fact that both of them seemingly came out of nowhere shows what was the driving force behind this election.
The "alt-right" movement has had much greater visibility since Trump became a candidate — the phrase didn’t seem to be in the public lexicon until 2016. What do you think of this movement, and of people like Richard Spencer that lead it? Everything I’ve read and seen from people that self-identify as “alt-right” leads me to the conclusion that it is little more than shorthand for “white nationalist”. How would you, personally, define it? How much influence do you think the movement had on the election? To what extent do you think the goals of the alt-right align with the goals Trump administration?
I think the Alt Right movement is an inevitable backlash against the excesses of liberalism, and to a lesser extent globalism, within the millennial generation. I don't think it is simply white nationalism, as many figures within the Alt Right stand for a kind of civic nationalism without a racial component (see the recent "Deploraball" for examples - Milo Yiannopoulos, Mike Cernovich, Gavin McInnes and so on). Certainly Richard Spencer is a white nationalist, but interestingly, he coined the term "Alt Right" as an alternative to George W. Bush-era conservatism, i.e. neoconservative. He is very anti-war and pro-environment. As for white nationalism, as the United States becomes more diverse, I think racial nationalism will inevitably increase as a result of simple tribalism. I don't believe any nation-state can sustain itself as a patchwork of different races and nationalities, in fact, this is what old imperialist powers used to do when they wanted to create a dysfunctional state: throw a bunch of different ethnic groups together in the same border without giving clear power to any one of them (for example Iraq or the former Czechoslovakia). I think the Alt Right movement had a very large impact on the election in terms of the meme wars of 2016, for once the right seemed to have the initiative and the left seemed to be reacting to it. So there was a strong cultural influence which was channeled through message boards, the video gaming community and social media. As for what extent the goals of the Alt Right align with the goals of the Trump administration, I'd say pretty closely, but it depends on which strain of the Alt Right you're talking about. I don't believe Trump is a true white nationalist in any sense, although his platform implicitly benefits white America - or at least, does not harm it, which I believe the Hillary Clinton platform was designed to do.
Trump’s campaign was often openly antagonistic to the Republican Party, and his transition to the White House seems to be continuing in that vein, with the President-Elect often saying things at odds with his own party. How do you think Trump's election has impacted the GOP? Do you think there will be any long-term changes in the party as a result of his election, such as placing less emphasis on social issues such as abortion and embracing a more populist platform? The GOP’s base of support has often baffled me, as I’ve seen in election after election people voting directly against their economic self-interest because of social issues such as abortion. Is the “big tent” of social conservatism combined with what is basically a small-government, trickle-down economic platform finally coming apart?
I absolutely believe Trump's election changed the GOP for the better. The old small-government Reagan philosophy of conservatism was badly out of date, and neoconservativism was just a complete abomination. I think it will certainly result in long-term changes in the party, although social issues will still be important, they will have more to do with issues of white tribalism such as "law and order" rather than explicitly religious issues like gay marriage and abortion. What you have here is the decline of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, and a decline in the influence of evangelical Christianity in general, as the youth are becoming more secular and the issues of the day are more determined by fallout from globalization and multiculturalism. The social conservatism combined with small-government, trickle-down economics has finally cracked apart (thank goodness!) and it has given way to nationalism and populism, basically the platform of Pat Buchanan from the 1990s with some elements of Ross Perot. I think both men correctly predicted the problems of our current time, but the public wasn't yet ready for their message because we were still enjoying such a period of prosperity. Now we're paying the price for the prosperity we enjoyed then, both culturally and economically, so suddenly these issues have become important.
I continue to believe that if Bernie Sanders had won the Democratic nomination, the final outcome of the election would have been different. Do you think the Democrats learned anything from this?
As I said, I think Bernie Sanders would've stood a very good chance of defeating Trump - although not if Trump was a little less sloppy with his messaging. A more serious Trump, without "pussy grabbing" and other unnecessary controversies, could have defeated Sanders taking the same electoral path he took, on the strength of the "white tribalist" social issues I mentioned. And obviously Trump would've run a very different campaign against Sanders. But Sanders still probably would've beaten him, because Trump could not hit Sanders on all the points where he was able to destroy Hillary Clinton. So far, I don't think the Democrats learned a damned thing from this election. I don't think Sanders was serious about winning, first of all, as his first debate performance proved. (Also his subsequent ringing endorsement of Hillary Clinton showed me he had always intended to be a mere protest candidate and possibly drive the issues closer to what he believed was important.) I think the Democratic Party continues to seriously underestimate Trump, and also how much of the election results were impacted by liberal snark and condescension towards "flyover America" and the puritanical moralism of political correctness. Their tendency since yesterday has been to double down on the social liberalism which can only be described as hostility to tradition, hostility to white tribal interests, which is further alienating the rest of America. They can't go fully populist without casting out the Chuck Schumers from their ranks, which they will never do. By the same token, I think the newfound populism of the Republican Party is going to run into serious problems as long as people like Paul Ryan hold leadership positions.
Future Expectations
What, in your mind, is the greatest threat to the world right now? What do you think is the most appropriate response?
Personally I would say the ravaging power of global capitalism (neoliberalism) is the biggest threat to the world right now. We have a system where large multinational corporations are destroying everything in the self-devouring quest for profit: not only the environment, but international peace, culture, tradition, the family, national sovereignty, justice, personal freedom, everything. Yes, it does seem odd that I would say this while supporting a billionaire businessman for president, especially since he has named so many "captains of industry" to his cabinet. But I believe Trump's nationalism is a major check on runaway globalism, and so is his populism. His stated environmental policies are pretty bad, but I don't believe Hillary Clinton would have been much better, and I also think it is a huge mistake to tie environmentalism to issues such as multiculturalism which are really part of capitalist globalization. Multiculturalism, to me, is the breakdown of homogeneous, deeply-rooted tribes of people and their traditional patterns of life in order to make them more malleable, interchangeable and at the disposal of global capital. I don't see what other benefit multiculturalism serves. In America, the unprecedented wave of immigration we've suffered in the past two decades has not pulled apart the social fabric of the country, but has further fragmented and weakened the labor force. Trump's drive to stop illegal immigration, at least, has huge implications for maintaining the labor standards, national integrity and social cohesion of the country - it even has environmental implications when it comes to issues such as pollution and urban sprawl. As for what I believe the appropriate response to neoliberalism should be... in an ideal world I'd like to see a much more muscular version of Trumpism minus the Goldman Sachs appointees and with environmentalism as a key component. Unfortunately we live in the real world and you have to take the bad with the good.
What are you hoping for in the first one hundred days of the Trump presidency?
Four big things I'd like to see from Trump in the first one hundred days: one, construction started on the wall with Mexico; two, talks under way for revision or scrapping of globalist trade agreements such as NAFTA; three, a major infrastructure bill being prepared; four, a major dialing down of tensions with Russia and less foreign interventionism abroad. As for Obamacare, I hope Trump sticks to his guns and refuses to give in to any Republican plan to cut Medicaid or Social Security. I know Trump once spoke in favor of single payer, and my dream would be for him to come up with a single payer type program to replace Obamacare - I think he could get it passed simply by bullying enough Republicans into submission and then getting the rest of the votes from the Democrats in Congress. But I think this is very unlikely to happen, for political reasons. Oh, and I would like to see him appoint someone to the Supreme Court who will not touch the Second Amendment.
Anyone following politics quickly sees that many promises made in a campaign are left unfulfilled -- I note that Guantanamo Bay is still open, for example, something that continues to be a bitter disappointment for me and many other people that voted for Obama. However, Trump has appeared to not only go against promises even before taking office, but has openly mocked his supporters at rallies for being enthusiastic about issues and goals that were hallmarks of his campaign. After months of rhetoric about "draining the swamp", decrying insiders, and railing against Goldman Sachs, he has made the former head of the RNC his chief of staff and nominated a host of billionaires — some of which are long-time Goldman Sachs insiders — for cabinet positions. His cabinet nominees have said things that contradict his own stated positions. What should we make of all of this?
I trust Donald Trump to not just hand the country over Exxon or Goldman Sachs. We've had decades of trickle-down bullshit from Republicans and it always makes everything worse. Trump isn't owned or controlled by these people so I see no reason why he would just cave into their wish lists, especially since the results would inevitably hurt the very working class people who elected him and his popularity would collapse. Trump is a man very concerned with his popularity among his own supporters and I see no reason why he would want to sacrifice it at the alter of somebody else's profits. Also, as a billionaire, he is perhaps the least likely person in American politics to be influenced by campaign finance concerns or the interests of big donors. So why has he appointed so many of these people? I must say it has left me scratching my head. Obviously, I worry about another betrayal such as what I felt with Obama. I think a lot of Trump supporters worry about the same thing, but we are hesitant to say anything about it because they don't want to give the obnoxious, self-righteous hate-filled left any ammunition against their guy. The only answer I can come up with is that Trump needed capable people, smart and results-driven people, to do these jobs - and his very comfortable hiring business executives. Who else was he going to get? It's not like there are dozens of influential populist, nationalist lawmakers or political operatives throughout the country. Almost everyone in the Republican establishment is an insider and a hack, and he couldn't rely on those people. The other type of appointee he seems to favor, besides businessmen, are generals - and that is an indication to me that he wants smart, tough, capable people in these roles to carry out his agenda. There also might be an element of "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer" to some of these appointments, although that might just be wishful thinking on my part. Only time will tell.
What do you think the results might be if Trump fails to deliver on promises or expectations of his supporters?
I really think that depends. If the left continues to throw temper tantrums, riot in the streets, unfriend everyone who disagrees with them on social media and belittle and attack Trump voters at every opportunity, then a failure to deliver results by Trump might be forgiven by his supporters because it will be blamed on his opponents. This will be less of a factor in these first two years, because of the powerful Republican majorities in Congress, but it might still be a factor if the media is constantly attacking him and if characters like John McCain and Lindsey Graham conspire to block his agenda. In that case the anger and frustration would be turned against establishment Republicans and we might get a very interesting wave of "Alt Right," or at least populist, nationalist young challengers in the primaries. Now if Trump just sells out completely, the anger will turn on Trump himself. I don't think any of his supporters elected him because they like his hair, but because they want that radical break with the status quo. But based on his inaugural address alone, I don't think Trump is planning to take a conciliatory posture with the establishment as Obama did. Even if he wanted to, it would be politically stupid beyond belief, and regardless of his personal motives, Trump is a lot craftier than that.
Do you think voters that supported Trump in 2016 would support a Democratic candidate that advocated policies such as investment in infrastructure, working to reduce the income inequality gap, or a health care public option?
Not if these culture wars continue to heat up. And by culture wars, I mean what I said earlier, issues of racial tribalism and demographic-social conflict. The left is becoming so radically liberal on some issues, they are completely alienating the people they will need to win back from Trump to take back the presidency. They talk about changing demographics as the solution to this problem, but really, that only implies future ethnic conflict down the line and it doesn't settle any of these problems. The best chance the Democrats would have in 2020 is to nominate a man like Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, but I think their hysterical neo-Marxist madness will prevent them from doing so. Also, if Trump partially or substantially addresses any of these problems himself, the Democrats won't get the opening they need to attack him. This is another reason why it would be politically stupid to the point of suicidal for Trump to just hand over the country to Goldman Sachs.
I think that Trump's continued refusal to divest or place his business interests in an actual blind trust -- as opposed to simply being managed by his children -- creates a Constitutional level conflict of interest on day one, so much so that he may well be impeached before the conclusion of his term. In addition, he has shown himself to be remarkably thin-skinned, lashing out at reporters, actors, and anyone else that impacts his ego. He first made headlines in politics by championing birtherism, and continued to do that for years even in the face of overwhelming evidence. He has stated — publicly — his belief that climate change is a Chinese hoax. He seems to agree with intelligence agencies when they support his position, and attack them as incompetent when they don’t. He’s stubbornly resisted to do even basic things that would silence (or at least subdue) many of these potential issues — such as releasing his tax returns or supporting an investigation into allegations of Russian influence on the election. He’s coming into office with one of the lowest approval ratings in the history of the presidency. Given all of that, do you think he can actually be an effective President?
It's really useful to study Trump's business career if you want to understand how he operates. And I don't mean put it under a partisan microscope and throw a fit over every time he had a dispute with a contractor, every time he declared bankruptcy or every time he tried to force a tenant out of a building - I mean really see how he was so effective as a businessman in the ultra-high stakes, cut-throat Manhattan real estate market. Trump is a master of public relations and how to manipulate the media. There is a Zen-level of method to his madness, and liberals and the media astoundingly continue to be blindsided by it, and dangerously underestimate it, over and over again. I don't think any of these controversies will hurt him in the least, and I think most of them are deliberate to some extent. Regardless of who ghost-wrote "The Art of the Deal," there is a short chapter in that book where he basically spells out all the tricks he uses to get what he wants. He genuinely does have a grasp of deal-making which is far, far above the level of the lawyers who typically rise to the level of senators, governors and presidents. He understands leverage and how to use it ruthlessly to get what he wants. He also has a driven, obsessed, workaholic personality when it comes to achieving his goals, and he can be extremely persuasive and charming when he wants to be. I think there will be a constant tumult of bluster and controversy around the Trump administration, it won't have the appearance of smooth sailing, but I think he will be an extremely effective president in the same way he was a shockingly effective presidential candidate.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Only that I don't think Trump will ultimately be successful. I think he's up against forces that are too powerful for him to handle, and he has neither the will or the capability to overthrow them. I do think there is a very real chance of impeachment, not because of Trump's ineffectiveness, but precisely because of his effectiveness. He is going against some very powerful interests that have ruled the world for a very long time, and I don't see them giving up without a fight. Either he massively compromises with him, or they try to get rid of him. In spite of this, I think Trump is a YUGE step in the right direction, I do think he has had an extremely good effect on the Republican Party and I sincerely hope I'm wrong about the Democratic Party not learning anything. I hope they dump their Wall Street plutocratic wing and embrace a Bernie Sanders platform, without going off the deep end on the "social justice warrior" virtue signaling, (to borrow a phrase from the Alt Right). I think Trump's election will lead to the rise of more populist, nationalist leaders all across the globe and especially in Europe, which will be a very good thing for the people of that continent and all of humanity. And I think Trump represents a necessary stepping stone towards the kind of massive structural changes we're going to need if our country and our civilization is going to survive. One thing is for certain: we are headed into uncharted waters from here on.
Thanks for your questions! I look forward to following up.
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