We Got the D

I just finished an essay for a class on the political history in the United States from the 1960's to the present. Our final essay was to pick any candidate from the 2016 presidential cycle and analyze where their ideas came from, their political genealogy. It's still a little raw because I am too busy to commit the type of time it would take to fill gaps and clean it up, but this is what I turned in. I hope it's stimulating.

Donald J. Trump has been elected president of the United States. There are many possible outcomes from our collective decision, Donald Trump is not like any president we’ve had before in many ways. Donald is out to change the political environment forever. Whether he follows through on his promises or not, Trump has opened the realm of politics to whole groups of people who wouldn’t make it in before him. He ran on many issues, but his rhetoric and policies centered on two themes; America First, and Break the Establishment. Donald plans to change the guiding principles behind our national government so that the needs of the citizen are accounted for above all else, and that no political tricks will get in the way of that goal anymore. The American people reached a critical point where we could not abide by the direction of progress any longer. We wanted a different course. We want the power dynamics to change. Donald J. Trump’s ascension in political power stems from the growth of American anxiety which has been tied to the concentration and diffusion of national and global power.
In some ways, the power contained within America has dispersed itself in a way which seems like a loss of control to citizens. One example of this power dispersion is the welfare system. The welfare system was established in the 1960’s as a continuation of New Deal liberalism. The guiding principle behind the program, to help the worst off people in America, has been twisted and prodded for years by dissenters and advocates alike. To dissenters, the program gives handouts to the undeserving poor and builds up the dependent class. For the advocates, it has been a continuous battle to construct policies which build the community and reconcile the majority’s resistance to change. The sensitivity around welfare issues started early on as programs such as Community Action Programs and the Job Corps flopped due to bad implementation. The Great Society was reformed to care more about poor families if there was no father around. This policy had valid purpose, helping the more vulnerable single mother families, but lack of foresight led to the program incentivizing the division of poor families. ‘Welfare Queens’ have become a symbol of the corruption of the welfare state. Prejudice about the broken structure of poor communities, especially black ones, perseveres today even though we gave them nothing except a broken opportunity system. Another legacy of the Great Society which angers Americans today is health care reform. The programs of the Great Society, Medicare and Medicaid, have solidified into our social structure yet the new outcropping, the Affordable Care Act, has caused further breakdown in political consensus. Even though tens of millions of Americans have health insurance who didn’t before and the consumers have more control of the market, many people have been hurt by the new system. An easy interpretation to the wounds inflicted by Obamacare is that they are a negative consequence of a step toward socialism. Even though Donald Trump takes this approach to calm his followers, his policy proposals lean toward reforming Obamacare rather than repealing it as he says. Donald mainly wants to change the implementation of Obamacare so that the market is more competitive and consumer focused. Even though the dispersal of social power has negative implications to some Americans loyal to Trump, the growth of the information age is something they have benefitted from as everyone else has.
While some Americans feel as if they are sitting back while the world keeps changing, others, namely the Tea Party members, have taken initiative with the tools of the internet to change the course of American history. The Tea Party sprouted up as a response to the alienation of politicians and the wealthy donors who had manipulated the party system for a long time, “Suspicious of decadent élites and concerned about a central government whose ambitions had grown unmanageably large.” The resistance against party elites in the post war era has been evolving ever since the breakdown of the liberal consensus in the 1960’s. The party elites, taking their middle ground for granted, started appealing to their nearest margin to the left in order to build unity. The problem was that the politicians felt their base would come with them, assuming their job was more focused on leading rather than following the people. In a handful of years the country went from supporting the social reform movement to rejecting its legitimacy. However; the competitive nature of our political process and the effect of money on the success of campaigns has widened the gap between the politicians and the people over the years. Part of the anti-establishment culture stems from the growth of the media over the years. The media is an essential structure within our society for the spread of information yet the media has grown corrupt to many Americans as they realize their news sources are strategically biased by the owners. The information era has opened up whole new possibilities for activists such as the Tea Party, Occupy, and BlackLivesMatter; however, the internet has also provided some people the tools to pollute the social environment with radical, anti-intellectualism ideas. “The eggheads don’t know about reality” rhetoric has been used to disarm groups before, such as the Conservative’s donor fueled denial of climate change science, but the magnitude of deception and post-truth idealism trumps that of the past. The resistance against the political establishment, which has been evolving for half a century now, has changed the political environment to encourage outsiders to redirect the course of the country.
The desire for outsiders who want to change the political game has been growing for decades as Americans feel alienated from the supposed elitism of the people governing their lives. The modern mistrust of Americans toward their politicians did begin with the breakdown of the liberal consensus, but it didn’t really manifest itself until the Watergate scandal revealed how dirty the politicians are. There has been a parade of outsiders into Washington ever since then yet it somehow has not been enough. Jimmy Carter was a pioneer in foreign land. Ronald Reagan struck gold with his economic and foreign policy ideals, drawing the country solidly right for a generation. One of the problems outsiders faced over the next couple decades has been following in Reagan’s footsteps. Since Reagan discovered how to succeed as an outsider, other outsiders have applied his methods to their own ideals. Bill Clinton shot for the center with his message, following his Democrats rightward by focusing on the economy and crime. Finally, President Obama seized the opportunity to do what Reagan had done by steering us, dissenters and all, incrementally to the left. Obama didn’t try very hard though, he disappointed many people who imbued the change they wanted in the world onto him. When the country was offered the choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the clearest distinction between them was their choice of how to approach the flaws in our system. Hillary is an adapter, she knows the rules, and she has played the game so she has a deep understanding of how to work within conventions. The problem here is that the underlying conventions and assumptions about how to govern won’t work anymore. Donald Trump is the ultimate outsider, he will be an innovator precisely because he doesn’t understand the system well. He will question our habits, good and bad. He’s not yet confined to the box we’ve built up. Americans wanted to say no to the stale way of running the country so we elected Donald Trump, a man of the corruption itself, the too-wealthy class.
America wanted a person who understood the games of the competitive, corruption-breeding financial world so that person could disrupt the flow of misguided federal decisions. “When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. And that’s a broken system.” Americans want to feel like their values matter, that they can drive forth change with their willpower and a solid belief system. Political favors for money have always been a thing. When favors go from a marginal policy change to a pervasive, systematic characteristic, the actions become more noticeable. The final straw is when the thematic principles behind reform become destructive to the people affected. Interest groups and lobbying have grown in an attempt to keep up with the expanding system, to make sure their group benefits from action; however, the corruption that lobbying breeds is atrocious to the citizens. The political game is too unfair. Our system reeks of oligarchy. Part of it is our fault, the way we measure success is more related to the product of an action, money, rather than the action itself. The value of money even in the political sphere, has given some individuals the power to buy out the political influence market, taking the power of bidding away from the people. Donald Trump comes from this very class of people yet he plays it off as an advantage. Since he is the corruption, he knows the corruption, he cannot be corrupted. If money has no place in the influence market, people will resort to what our nation values eschew, speech, press, assembly, and petition. This plan could work wonders for the country because money not spent to buy a politician might flow back into the economy and patron something. An Anti-corruption movement, meant to incentivize honest individuals to pursue the good of the people, is sweeping the country now. Donald Trump could be the symbol of a shift toward thoughtful, fair government in America. This movement could mend the perceived divide between the different ideologies and build a consensus between diverse groups. By disrupting the actions of groups bent on fracturing America into factions against each other, Donald Trump hopes to unify the country under values which we have ascribed to all along.
Donald Trump is building unity in a strategic way by planting the seeds of division into the structures which have grown to exploit the splintered, diverse American system. Breaking apart the national political structures in order to rebuild has been a prominent political philosophy since the expansion of the government in the 1960’s. A huge part of Ronald Reagan’s legacy was showing that government could fulfill its purpose, arguably better, while being lean and mean rather than bloated. While bureaucracy has the potential to handle national scale systems efficiently and fairly, bad bureaucracy can hamper social interactions and leave space for loophole exploitation. An example of bad bureaucracy in action is how polling workers used to give unreasonable tests to black voters to bar them from voting. One of the most potent criticisms of our federal structure is that it has been designed to run inefficiently. The decision makers at the top try to use all the resources in the best manner, but the way they decide to allocate funds creates negative incentives. Programs which do their job well and end the year under budget get smaller budgets the next year while programs which need more and more in order to stay alive get whatever they want. There is no triage for government programs. It is difficult to know when to let a program die, when it cannot hold its own anymore. The government takes up a few social tasks because no one else will; education, infrastructure, and the military are examples of this. The free market knows those undertakings would not sustain themselves. Even though the government has to fill some difficult roles, not all of its roles have to be as wasteful. With a simple change in guiding principles, such as incentivizing community value and efficiency, the federal government could change from being a parasite on Americans. By seeking to rupture the supposedly broken systems of American democracy, Donald Trump wants to give the American people the power as well as the responsibility to build a new political environment.
In order to motivate America into rethinking our ideals and methodology, Donald Trump spotlights the perception of America in the eyes of the globe. We’ve made the assumption that we’re the leaders of the world, the last hope for humanity, for a century now. The idea might have been inspiring for a while, when America was a producer and an essential actor in the defeat of tyrannous fascism, but it’s not cute anymore. Being in the big chair for so long has made us anxious and paranoid, we need to relax and allow things to take their own course sometimes. If we don’t like being told how to live our lives, why do we patronize the rest of the world? There are a few examples of this going well, such as when people ask for our help specifically; Korea, West Berlin, and Kuwait. There are far more examples of this approach to foreign policy going wrong; Vietnam, Iran-Contra, and Iraq are the notable ones. It’s like we’re some self-righteous child going around telling all the other kids they don’t play right. That’s the thing about play though, it’s meant to be freeform. Being too strict about the rules and bullying the others into letting us win breaks our image in the group. They’ll make their own game, we won’t be invited to play their game. Americans see this process as it has been evolving, and it has been making us nervous. Whether we double down or question our purpose is an essential question as we proceed. If we double down as if everyone’s against us and we need to keep them in line, we won’t last long. A historical example of this concept is the Vietnam war, we went in thinking we were doing the right thing. Then when we figured out we were part of the problem, we blinded our horse and kicked it forward. If we turn inward to question our values and habits, we will refine our goals and find better paths to them. To Donald Trump, the rest of the world understands our vulnerabilities, especially in the certain realms such as international trade, and is exploiting our weakness in a way which we have the power to stop.
Donald Trump believes Americans are suffering most viscerally from the competitive space of international trade so he has taken up that ideal and used it to challenge our habits with regard to foreign relations. For a long time America was a producer, we created helpful ideas and products which returned value to us by their own merit. Being the producer is a large reason we inherited the big chair in the mid 20th century, we fueled the fight against the fascists and helped the world rebuild itself afterwards. Over the years we’ve lost our competitive edge, we’ve gotten complacent. Creativity arises when someone is constrained by their situation, the only way forward is to deal with what is given. We’ve been so pampered compared to the rest of the world that they’ve done a lot of growing, and we’re trapped by our own restraints. An insightful example of this is our tactics versus the communists in Vietnam. We were so blinded by our ego that we fought them like a modern nation state rather than the guerillas they were. We bombed the shit out of them, we almost nuked them, we did not break them. We didn’t use our minds, we tried to use our muscle. The North Vietnamese adapted to their situation, they learned how to live under siege. We still haven’t learned our lesson. Our education system is a joke. We try to throw resources at it hoping to solve the problem without analyzing what is working and what is failing. Why are teachers so undervalued? The finest people in our society should be teaching the children. Education is the foundation of our prosperity yet it is not the only place we’ve been undercutting ourselves. We spent decades shipping out our labor tasks to others for a dime, and now we’re kicking ourselves for it. Now we’re in a panicked effort to get off our butts and get things turned around. We’re supposedly going to cash in on all the favors we’ve been doling out over the years and rethinking our trade agreements to bone the other guy instead of ourselves. By tipping the scales of resource flow back into America, Donald Trump wishes to reverse, or simply delay, the dispersion of global power away from our control.
Donald Trump’s immigration policy has many parallels with his trade ideals as he seeks to summon power into America and drive out people who leech from the system. Immigrants supposedly take jobs by doing a simple task for less money than us. There’s probably many solutions to this problem, but there’s a few that arise immediately; do the job for as cheap as they do, or make yourself more valuable so you’re worth it. Our currently discussed solutions are idiotic. “We should deport ‘em all!” “Let’s build a big wall, that’ll keep ‘em out!” These solutions reek of panic and thoughtlessness, they don’t float when you test them for leaks. Walls don’t work, we can fly now. Borders don’t mean anything anymore, we’re not that special. We would waste more energy trying to keep them out than the value they pump into our system. Why are we trying to keep our national identity homogenous with a history like ours? We abolished the quota system for a reason, diversity and openness are very positive things for growth. We are the experiment of whether a multicultural democracy can work so we need to rediscover that element of our identity and run with it. This turn away from ourselves is a consequence of entertaining ideas without really probing them for merit. Politicians should give in sometimes when they know they’re being unfair, but other times they need to be stern. A perfect example is when Reagan enacted his economic reform; supporters jumped ship when they felt the boat rock, but Reagan stayed consistent. We don’t need blind self-righteousness, we need awareness and confidence. We’ve let ourselves get distracted by the worst of the immigration situation without seeing the whole good it brings. At a time when many people across the world want to come to America for many different reasons, with special regards to refugees of war, our attitude toward welcoming others into our home will define the future of our nation.
Donald Trump has ridden a wave of fear and paranoia about our supposed enemies abroad in order to raise himself up amongst some Americans by pushing for prejudiced policies against Muslims and increases in our national defense structure. The irony of our lack of self-awareness on this issue is stunning. If the Middle East is unstable, we are somewhat responsible for their problems. We’ve had our hands in their pants ever since we won the war. The Middle East today is a lasting monument to the consequences of our national egoism and selfishness. Not to say the people in the region are not responsible for their own lives, that’s where our assumptions faltered in the first place. We fueled their fight against the Russians before trying to control their resources and trade. Our democracy was friendly with their tyrants instead of supporting the people. No wonder they’re pissed. Our fear of Muslims has deep roots in soft ground such as the idea that we’re the only victims. They have attacked our core belief system and challenged our legitimacy as the leaders we claim to be. Our fears are valid, but for all the wrong reasons. We bomb their leaders, killing innocents in the process. That strategy inspires far more terrorists than it destroys. They have given us a lesson in humility and we have rejected it; we are the only thing we have to fear. There are as many extremists in our midst as in theirs. We are so caught in our tribalism that we have forgotten that they are human. We have the ultimate opportunity to allow understanding and empathy guide us by welcoming in the Syrian Refugees. If we gave them a new place to call home, we could change the state of the feud. They are not an invading force, they have no home. Don’t even get started on the military, there is a reason Germany and Japan are economic superpowers now. By choosing to reject an attitude of understanding and diplomacy, Donald Trump is preserving America’s ephemeral power with the threat of violence to any who would oppose our will.
Donald Trump is leading much of America by breaking apart our own system in order to rebuild a future where we stay relevant for a little longer. Donald used certain ideas in order to summon followers around him while rejecting conventions in order to break new ground and redefine the political game. Donald put all of his energy into spotlighting the flaws and dissonance within our government. He could have done this simply to make the masters of that system powerless against him or to truly give America the chance to mend and repurpose our energy. Donald Trump might destroy the two party system. He has opened the political field to whole new ideologies. No politicians are safe anymore. Donald Trump might be misguided at times, but his zeal has fulfilled a lesson we have been learning for a long time, question everything. No idea is valid until it has been tested and shown to be resilient. This critical eye is just what America needs to analyze our system and restructure; however, it might leave us without any trust for ourselves if taken too far. The growth of anti-intellectualism and post-truthism could cripple our ability to convince anyone what is right or wrong anymore. There is good, that’s what we’re trying to find. A few questions will permeate the discussion. What do we really believe in? How do we find the truth to follow? Who do we want to be?

ps. my footnotes didn't paste well so here's some of my sources in order
Gareth Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas 1996), 236
Davies, Entitlement, 34-35
Donald J. Trump, Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America (New York: Threshold, 2015), 75
“The Movement: The Rise of Tea Party Activism,” The New Yorker, accessed November 27, 2016, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/02/01/the-movement?currentPage=all
Davies, Entitlement, 3
Davies, Entitlement, 128-129
Frances Goldin, Debby Smith, Michael Smith (2014). Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA. Harper Perennial. ISBN 0062305573 p. 189:
Maurice Isserman, Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960’s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 284-288
John Ehrman & Michael W. Flamm, Debating the Reagan Presidency (Lanham, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 61
“Why America is Moving Left,” The Atlantic, December 4, 2016, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/01/why-america-is-moving-left/419112/
Eddie S. Glaude Jr. Democracy in Black (New York: Crown Publishers, 2016), 145
“The Great Republican Revolt” The Atlantic, accessed December 4, 2016, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/01/the-great-republican-revolt/419118/
Ehrman & Flamm, Reagan, 24
Isserman & Kazin, Divided, 63
Trump, Great Again, 49-50
Trump, Again, 39-40
“Immigration” Donald Trump website policies, accessed November 7, 2016, https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies/immigration/
“Why a Wall Won’t Stop Immigration” truTV, accessed October 14, 2016,

These aren't the only things I read and discussed in my class, there's a ton of primary source material and implication pieces out there. I feel capable to hold my own as a citizen in conversations after reading and discussing the last half century.