Well now. Some week it’s been. I couldn’t spell Pennsylvania this time last week and now I’ve opinions on Maricopa County, Arizona. Lots of thoughts. Few of them original probably. And sure lookit, what do any of us know about America when America’s having trouble knowing itself?
I know a bit about here though, and if we think ourselves immune to what ails America we’re just flattering ourselves. I was definitely one of those hoping for a Biden blow-out, the beginning of the end of Trumpism. That hope assumed Trumpism to be a fluke or an aberration of 2016; a moment, not a movement. We now know differently.
But before I throw in my tuppence worth on American populism, and present myself as more even-handed than I am, lemme just say THANK GOD JOE BIDEN WON.
Inequality is at the heart of what ails America – and countries far beyond its shores. Really wealthy people not paying tax, hoarding inherited billions, disregarding the role of public roads and education in their success on the one hand. On the other, working families screwed if the washing machine breaks. The rules, unfairly applied.
That’s where the Hail Mary of putting a tick beside Trump’s name often comes from.
Seventy million people voted for him and they can’t all be Karens, spouting about a GDP they know nothing about and the patriotism they can’t define. Many are desperate and feel left behind. We are shown a lot less of them because sensationalism sells and articles about lunatics with guns in Minnesota get more clicks than thoughtful reportage.
As we busy ourselves flying off the handle on social media, we miss out on the incremental progress that long-lasting change is made of. Indeed, people in power often say outrageous things, knowing such utterances will distract us from what’s actually getting done.
Biden won’t fix inequality in four years. And without control of the Senate there will be no big-ticket game-changing legislation passed. I do however believe his administration will sow the seeds of structural change because they know that if inequality isn’t tackled, there’ll be a whole lot more of where Trump came from.
Seventy million is fourteen Irelands, a little over the population of France. Those who voted for Trump can’t all be the lunatics our media coverage suggests they are. Most of them probably have families, there’s likely many adored grandparents among them, beloved sisters, people who’d give you a lift if they saw you walking. Actual people. Like me. And you.
When we’re only shown caricatures of rural Americans – loudmouths called Chuck or Barb who carry handguns and have terrible bleached hair – we think they’re mad, that only mad people think like them and what they think doesn’t need to be taken seriously.
But that’s to overlook the sincerity with which their views are likely held. The ordinary Joe Soap who voted Republican probably isn’t a liar that would say anything for self-promotion. He probably genuinely believes Democrats would make a Venezuela of America if they got the chance, or that their policies will shut down his business. But his perspective is obscured or ignored by a media that needs our clicks to survive and thus shoves a microphone in front of someone with Trump’s face tattooed on their arm.
Also, whatever the left thinks of the right, the right likely thinks of the left. If Republicans are all Trump-heads then Democrats are all woke liberals hellbent on making America Communist or whatever. Radicals tend to have a higher profile – usually on social media – and thus, a powerful effect in shaping the conventional wisdom, even though their views bear little resemblance to the views of the Joe Soaps on either side.
And whatever insult I might hurl at a Trump supporter could likely be hurled back at me.
‘Read a newspaper Marge’. She probably does, just a different one from me.
‘Get your facts straight Chuck’. Well sure what are facts when each side gets a different set of them?
I sincerely believe Tony is deluded. Tony sincerely believe that I am deluded.
Both sides sincerely holding their views, believing it’s the other side that’s making stuff up.
It’d never happen here, would it? Well, we also go to polling booths. And we don’t vote as college-educated whites or rural voters or socially liberal voters, but as ourselves, probably thinking our little vote makes little difference. We’re not that different.
Isn’t half of this country getting its news off Facebook instead of throwing a tenner a month to a reputable news outlet? I’m a great one for Twitter myself.
Successive governments haven’t thrown the kitchen sink at fixing the health service because not enough people are appalled by a health system that allows – and even encourages – the moneyed to skip the queue. I abhor such a system. And yet I went private with a back problem when the alternative was a months-long wait.
In Roscommon, we’re solid on voting for the one who shouts loudest and does little else. Last February, enough individual voters overlooked the bits they didn’t like – Direct Provision, homelessness, the cervical cancer scandal – to return Fine Gael to government. Doesn’t Michael Lowry nearly always top the poll in Tipperary?
The 240,000+ COVID deaths didn’t dissuade those who voted Trump. But if there had been an Irish election last April or May, how central would COVID have been to rural voting when the virus was perceived more as a Dublin or urban problem?
And on and on it goes. Any excuse you’ve ever heard for the way travellers are treated in this country was probably used fifty years ago to deny African Americans their civil rights. People tried to deny others the right to marry in 2015 because they didn’t approve of the pace of change in this country.
Different from kids in cages and the assault on democracy, yes. But when the bluster and social media outrage is taken away, we’re probably not as different as we’re content to assume.
Maybe I’m wrong and all Trump voters are right-wing nuts, that there is no redemption for one who voted Trump twice. Or maybe, republican voters make their individual decision at the polling booth just like we do here – ignoring some policies, persuaded by others. And I don’t know how I would feel if I met one of those nice people who voted for Trump, who gave his contempt for democracy their stamp of approval.
I really wish they hadn’t voted for him, but they did. But they can’t all be bad people, can they? They’re voters voting. One after the other, each ticking a box. Just not the box I think they should’ve ticked.
Also, this from a protest march I was at last year…
doireann.ie 