The Legacy of the Trump Campaign

When I tried to start this blog entry several weeks ago, it began as one of my typical rants about the importance of voting. However, as I began to compose my thoughts, I saw more and more postings on social media and elsewhere encouraging everyone to vote. My own plea to get out and vote would be redundant to say the least. I thought I would make my own election prediction. Not of the election outcome, but of the enduring legacy of the Trump campaign.

During the 2016 Presidential campaign we have seen some of the worst political lies since William Henry Harrison convinced the electorate that he—a Virginia plantation born, highly-educated member of a political family—was a simple, Ohio frontiersman, a man of the people. We have also witnessed the worst name-calling and mudslinging in any campaign since the Lincoln/Douglas debates when Stephen Douglas accused his opponent of being “two-faced.” Abraham Lincoln reportedly responded to this accusation by saying, “I leave it to my audience. If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?”

As bad as the political sparring and negative campaigning have been, it seems to me that this political season has brought about something even worse. Something worse in all of us that goes beyond the inevitable comparisons to Adolf Hitler, cartoon depictions of candidates, manipulated statistical “proofs,” and exaggerated talking points. It has brought our own prejudices and bigotry to the surface.

Prejudice and bigotry are, in my humble opinion, two very different but related things. Let me begin by saying that we all have prejudices. They come from who we are, where we were raised, and a myriad of other factors such as parental values, education, religious affiliation, social circles, societal influences, and personal wealth. We have prejudices against people who are different from ourselves. It is when we act on these prejudices—becoming intolerant of these differences, and acting or reacting according to those intolerances—that we become bigots.

Prejudice and bigotry have been a part of the American population since we first became a nation. Gang wars from America’s colonial period through the industrial age and even into today were and are often along ethnic lines. Recent headlines and the Black Lives Matter movement have shed further light on how racially divided and bigoted our country remains. A few examples of how bigotry helped form national policy were discussed in a previous blog entry titled Refugees: What is wrong with us? (http://kent-kvetches.blogspot.com/2015/11/refugees-what-is-wrong-with-us.html). But not since the television sitcom All in the Family made comedic fodder of bigotry have so many people expressed their intolerance so openly and with such pride.

Is this the fault of the Trump campaign? No. But Trump has made use of our bigotry and encouraged its expression for his own political gain. Ask a Trump supporter why they support “The Donald” and you will hear phrases like, “He says it like it is” or similar expressions. As a campaign, the Trump phenomenon is feeding upon and therefore validating our own intolerance. By broadly proclaiming Mexicans are rapists and Muslims are terrorists, he is using our fears and prejudices as his political base.

So what is the legacy of the Trump campaign? It isn’t the use of our own fears for the sake of political gain, which has been done before (too often). It is that Trump has made bigotry, hate, and intolerance not only acceptable, but fashionable.

-- Food for Thought