The Girl is tough. I don’t mean that she’s resilient, that she can take a metaphorical beating and get up from it. I mean she’s stubborn, so very set in her ways that she looks at me sometimes with a glint in her eye when she’s resisting and I think that if we could just get that stubbornness off of petty things, get it away from food and her obstinate refusal to try anything new, get it away from her irritation with the Boy and her stubborn insistence that everything go her way, get it away from her frustration with little failures and her insistence that the original solution to the problem (the solution that is obviously anything but) is the only solution to the problem — if we could just redirect it, steer it just a bit, give it just the slightest nudge, she would have the resilience of a diamond.
Last night, we sat the table, fighting about food. I insisted that she eat some of the veggies that went alone with the stir fry we had for dinner. I insisted. I insisted. I insisted. And she fought. “I won’t” became “I can’t” became tears of frustration and anger.
I sat thinking whether it was necessary. Am I ruining her culinary tastes, creating a stubbornness for life, by doing this? Is it really a big deal that she doesn’t eat something? Am I making something of nothing?
And then there was the question of disobedience. I can’t have that — it’s pathological. I get it enough from students at school. And yet, who really wants to submit?
And then there was the question of resilience: if I let her get by with not tackling this meager challenge — in the end, it turned out to be five, five bites — what kind of a child am I raising? I want someone who will slay dragons, and she can’t even eat five damn bites of vegetables.
The other day in school, I had a quiet conversation with a very bright young lady who wanted to leave my class because she was so frustrated. She wasn’t frustrated with me, or with my class, or with anyone in the class. But someone had said something, and she was on the warpath. She was ready to swing, as she said.
“But you don’t have to. You can control that.”
“No, I can’t,” she replied. Her tone wasn’t argumentative or plaintive — it was matter-of-fact. “I can’t.”
Of course she can, and I told her that, but to someone who has such a very fatalistic worldview, suggesting that she can control something she’s always been convinced she can’t control was like me suggesting that she could control her digestive system like those tabloid gurus who the tabloid writers excitedly proclaim haven’t had a bowel movement in decades. It makes sense: if you can control your heart rate and breathing, why can’t you control every aspect of your body, including bowel movements and aging. Yet on a practical level, it’s ridiculous to me. That’s likely how this young lady viewed my suggestion that she could simply not fight, that she could unclinch her fists, take a deep breath, and let people say whatever the hell they want to about her.
I don’t think the Girl will ever become anything like that. But perhaps I’m so concerned that she might, even with the little things, that I worry I overreact.
“Tomorrow,” I decided, “I must make better decisions.”
The Democratic party, now, seems to me to be a little like the Girl. It stuck by principles that seemed so important at the time, but in the end, one principle in particular cost them dearly. The principle? That as progressives, they are on the “right side of history,” and to be on the right side of history means to be the party that has the first black president, and what could put them more firmly on the right side of history than to elect the first woman president. And so the party put forward a candidate that was seen by Republicans and many Democrats alike as untrustworthy.
In her hubris, Clinton assumed she would be the Democratic nominee, because that would put the Democrats once again on the “right side of history.” Sanders was not supposed to fight. Sanders was supposed to be on the “right side of history” as well. He got in the way, but the email leak scandal shows that the Democratic party machinery conspired to make sure he got put in his place, white male that he is. When the general election cycle began, Clinton, as the freshly minted historic nominee, knew she and her party were on the “right side of history,” and given Trump’s ridiculous and offensive behavior, it almost seemed poetic that he was the candidate, the perfect ying for her yang. Slate, an openly left-leaning magazine, can finish the argument better than I:
The party establishment made a grievous mistake rallying around Hillary Clinton. It wasn’t just a lack of recent political seasoning. She was a bad candidate, with no message beyond heckling the opposite sideline. She was a total misfit for both the politics of 2016 and the energy of the Democratic Party as currently constituted. She could not escape her baggage, and she must own that failure herself.
Theoretically smart people in the Democratic Party should have known that. And yet they worked giddily to clear the field for her. Every power-hungry young Democrat fresh out of law school, every rising lawmaker, every old friend of the Clintons wanted a piece of the action. This was their ride up the power chain. The whole edifice was hollow, built atop the same unearned sense of inevitability that surrounded Clinton in 2008, and it collapsed, just as it collapsed in 2008, only a little later in the calendar. The voters of the party got taken for a ride by the people who controlled it, the ones who promised they had everything figured out and sneeringly dismissed anyone who suggested otherwise. They promised that Hillary Clinton had a lock on the Electoral College. These people didn’t know what they were talking about, and too many of us in the media thought they did. (Slate)
There are other things at work there, I realize. And this all says nothing about what the political right accomplished in this election. National Review sums that up well:
This is a direct rebuke to progressive hubris. It turns out that the progressive elite’s preoccupations with identity politics, social shaming, and radical sexual change don’t motivate their “coalition of the ascendant.” In the past eight years, the progressive movement has doubled down its attacks on churches and in recent years directly confronted American law enforcement. It has attacked free speech, the free exercise of religion, and gun rights — secure in the belief that history was, as they put it, on their “side.”
The result was clear: The Democratic party lost ground with America’s poorest voters. Citizens making less than $50,000 per year propelled Obama to victory over Romney. Exit polling shows that Trump improved the GOP showing by 16 points with voters making less than $30,000 per year and by six points with voters making between $30,000 and $50,000, which more than offset Democrat gains with the middle class. (National Review)
For the right, this was not about choosing a man over a woman; it was about choosing one ideology over another. The New Republic recognized this as well:
This brings us to the problem of how the Democratic Party—and America as a whole—can recover from this calamity. There is sure to be a civil war among Democrats, with leftists arguing that a purer, less compromised version of liberalism will have a better chance of appealing to those very voters who put Trump over the top. There will be a push to expand the Democratic message beyond the identity politics that has increasingly defined the party in recent years—to welcome with open arms those blue-collar and middle-class whites who have been culturally alienated by newly assertive blue-collar and middle-class workers of brown skin. And there will be a backlash to this, an argument that the Democratic Party’s function is to redress the wrongs that have been done to minorities and make white America atone for its sins—“to force our brothers to see themselves as they are,” as James Baldwin put it, “to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.” (New Republic)
In that vein, some liberals suggest that this is just a sign of the latent misogyny and racism in America, but that kind of talk seems to indicate that they haven’t yet learned much from this earthquake. What should they talk away from it? Back to the National Review:
The presidential candidate that voters believe less, like less, and think less qualified won the election. In other words, rather than endure four more years of elite progressive rule, the American people chose to gamble on a reality-television star with well-known and openly notorious character flaws. That’s how much they were ready for change.
It was all about change, Trump supporters say.
In that sense, though, Trump’s supporters are a little like the Girl as well. The Girl tends to see every setback as a complete disaster. So many little things blow up into the end of the world for her. The veggies were an impossible task. We’d asked her to do the impossible, and she just couldn’t do it, couldn’t imagine it. In the same way, many on the right saw the election of Clinton as the end of the country. Obama began the transformation into a socialist republic, they saw, and Clinton would finish it.
Change can be good. It can be scary. These are merely truisms. Yet, change often does work, and so tonight, I changed tactics with the Girl: I put her veggies on a plate and told her that she needed to scarf them down before the Boy, who was napping, and napping hard, woke up. “Then for dinner, all you’ll have is chicken and rice.” She jumped at the chance. A little reframing, a little rewording, and we got reached the same conclusion.
Eventually, the left will realize this and act on it. Frustrated Americans will vote the right out and the left in, until the cycle repeats again.
I cannot agree. I understand your analysis, really I do. But I cringe at the words “progressive elites” because they look down on knowledge, facts, reason in favor of something abstract and unknowable. Decisions at home can be random, chancy, emotional. At the political level? Wow, you’re risking a lot.
Too, I think hubris and a self congratulatory almost manic belief that one person can bring to all what they lost as a result of so many complicated forces — I think that’s frightening. And to entrust change to a person who is himself part of a real financial elite, who has shown no compassion in his life for those he claims now to want to save — that just seems odd. The one percenter is going to save the fate of those who feel betrayed by the one percenters? No wonder the markets reacted positively. They know what he stands for.
That the pain of those who were not benefiting by internationalism and globalization was underestimated — that’s for sure. They were promised change. In fact, change came (insofar as it was permitted by the obstructionists who did everything possible to stand in change’s way). Jobs grew. But in some sectors, capitalism moved away from protecting those who now feel betrayed.
But that’s only part of the story. Trump won for many reasons and one of them is that he allowed you to speak aggressively, with hate. Without that, he would not have succeeded.
Too, I have to object to the idea that liberals pushed Clinton in some historic fashion onto an unwilling public. The democratic process gave us Clinton. For better or for worse. No one sat behind a magic curtain and handed her to you and me. She emerged out of a political process that you and I believe in. And then she was rejected.
I did enjoy reading your post and I understand where you’re coming from but do know that some of us who are deeply unhappy with the election result are trying as best as we can to address the country’s problems with compassion and sincerity and if we resist people like Trump, it’s not because he is a conservative (is he a conservative?) or a republican (is he a republican?) but because he inserted himself into the political process as a great unknown, with a temper and yes, hubris, believing that he alone can make things better for those who suddenly need help from a government they decry.
But, I refuse to be pessimistic. I want him to succeed. Why wouldn’t I? Like you, I want my grandchildren to eat vegetables and for those who feel lost to gain a footing in the new economic order.
At the onset, understand that I don’t support Trump. I didn’t vote for him because of many of the reasons you outlined. At the same time, I didn’t vote for Clinton either. Would I have voted for a different Democrat? It’s a moot point, really, because South Carolina was destined to line up behind Trump, come hell or high cliche.
Regarding the term “progressive elites,” you write that you “cringe at the words ‘progressive elites’ because they look down on knowledge, facts, reason in favor of something abstract and unknowable.” I see both sides looking down on knowledge, facts, and reason in favor of emotion — it just depends which issue we’re talking about. Take for example the whole notion of transgenderism. Conservatives see it as a simple matter: genetics determines whether you’re male or female. They also point to the irony of social liberals championing the idea that there can be a “female brain” in a male body and vice versa after decades of championing the feminist view that there’s no such thing as a male brain or female brain, suggesting that the left is contradicting itself for the sake of being “on the right side of history.” Facts are facts, these folks say. On the other hand, there is an abundance of evidence that global warming is real, and as far as I can tell, there’s a lot of evidence that human actions are at least contributing to it. The scientists examine the data and make the determination based on facts. Yet the right responds that these cycles are natural, that humans have nothing to do with it, or they deny it outright. But here’s the thing: on both these issues, both sides see themselves as following the trail of knowledge, facts, and reason and the other side as following something emotional.
So we can’t even get both sides to agree what facts are. That in itself is frightening, and it leads to the arrogance I see on both sides. Elements in both sides refer to the other side as idiots, as dolts, as emotionally driven windbags. From there it devolves: not only is the other side filled with idiots, they’re idiots who harbor malice toward our country as a whole.
Regarding other portions of your comment —
I share your doubts arising from Trump being a member of the financial elite. Yet Clinton herself has a significantly pro-Wall Street relationship, and the fact that she would never release the transcripts of the speeches she earned millions with speaking to Wall Street is somewhat telling, just as Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns is telling. We can ask the same question: what are they hiding?
I share your concerns about the tenor of Trump’s campaign and the effect that’s had on political discourse. Yet we can look at the left and find just as much hate-mongering and vitriol. Anyone who disagreed with the left’s progressive social agenda is shouted down, labeled a bigot, and told to crawl back to their cave. Trump supporters were positively vilified, and still are. Free discussion of the issue seems impossible.
I share your faith in the electoral process in America, but the email dump Wikileaks gave us shows that the Democratic party was attempting to manipulate the system to lean away from Sanders and toward Clinton. There was no magic hand that gave the party Clinton for a nominee, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t those trying to be said magic hand. The Republicans are in an oddly inverse situation now, as so many of the establishment leaders refused to support or actively opposed Trump now have to fall in line behind him. And I’m equally aware that there were undoubtedly such scheming going on in the GOP as to how to move Trump to the side.
I too share your concern about that “hubris and a self congratulatory almost manic belief that one person can bring to all what they lost as a result of so many complicated forces.” I think both sides are guilty of this as well. There was, among many in the left, a positively messianic element to how supporters felt about Obama; there is much of the same going on on the right as well. But there is a positive side to this for Democrats: the Republicans hold all the cards now. They have absolutely no one they can blame. For at least the next two years, the country is completely under their control, and they can test their belief that one party can bring all the change they want. If they are as incompetent (not to mention malicious) as the left suggests, there will be a complete landslide in the mid-terms; if Trump behaves as president as he did in the campaign, he’s likely to be the last Republican (inasmuch as he is a Republican) president for a very long time.
You write that “Trump won for many reasons and one of them is that he allowed you to speak aggressively, with hate. Without that, he would not have succeeded.” Again, I see this as happening on both sides. The left often speaks of the right as just so many idiots who would be better off leaving the country. Clinton called Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables.” And it continues — one only has to look at the reaction going on right now in our cities to see this. Calls for Trump’s murder? Vandalism in response to a perfectly legitimate election result? Refusal to accept the results of the election? (Wasn’t it Trump’s supporters that were supposed to behave like that if he lost the election?)
Finally, you write that many are “unhappy with the election result are trying as best as we can to address the country’s problems with compassion and sincerity.” I see that in social media. But sadly, I see the things described above as well. I’m not sure the reaction would have been as vitriolic had any other Republican been the winning candidate, but I think there still would have been a fair amount. There always is, on both sides.
I’m glad you’re not pessimistic. A few weeks ago, the thought of a Trump win depressed me terribly because I feared his temper, his impulsiveness, his petty grudges. Perhaps the Republicans who reluctantly voted for him with the hope (and literal prayer) that he might change are right. Perhaps the gravity of being the most powerful man in the world in charge of the country that leads the world will temper his behavior. We’ll see soon enough. But I am hopeful. Still, I’d like to see a little bit better behavior from the left — more people behaving like Obama and Clinton are, which is positively spectacular.
Just briefly, because I’m so tired — being a babysitting grandmother is physically draining!
Please, please, please do not label the left as being an entity of a kind, with set beliefs and menacing anti conservative views. I know such people do exist, but in my family alone (which leans left if you look at the voting record, but never without contemplating what the other side has to offer), we never feel that we have all the answers or indeed any of the answers.
It becomes more clear for us when the republicans (not Trump actually) align themselves with a social agenda: bathrooms. Marriage. It’s not a question of political correctness, it’s just that in the scheme of things, the libertarian approach of allowing people to fashion their own future appeals to me. To my family. But on matters of fiscal policy? I think many of us listen hard to the opposing arguments. There’s a reason why free trade and internationalism are shared by many democrats and republicans. Many of us believe that the benefits are obvious: the lifting of impoverished communities worldwide and yes, the potential of creating new and better paid jobs as a result in this country.
Personally, I can’t stand nationalism — I see it in Poland frequently and I saw it In Trump’s pull toward making America great. But, if it’s just talk then I’m willing to keep on listening. I just wrote a very long email to my Polish friends (who were shocked and disappointed in the American elections and the democracy that put us where we are today — and mind you, they are not all “liberal” in the American definition of that word, not by any measure) explaining the many factors, fractions groups, ideas, alignments that lead to a Trump victory. A confluence of things coming weirdly together (or brilliantly together, because who knows — maybe he’s just in it to make a name and a buck for himself and he figured out how to talk himself into that position of power) just for this one election…
One more thing: you say that the republicans will have their chance now to prove what they can do… Not really. Trickle down economics, deregulation — this has been done before. I remember reading ten years ago how the Chicago school of (trickle down) economic growth had been discredited, seemingly forever. But the reality is that you cant test these things in a vacuum. Take the last 8 years: Obama had the most unfair set of cards dealt to him when he stepped into office 8 years ago. History will credit him for averting the greatest financial meltdown of our time. The infrastructure that Trump proposes (and who will pay for it?) should have been Obama’s to effectuate. Instead, he had to worry himself sick on how to avoid a full scale depression and a quagmire in Iraq and then, consequently, in Syria. Trump steps into something that is a hell of a lot less complicated (though not uncomplicated!). And he has two houses to back up all that he wants to accomplish. He should forever thank Obama for that.
Anyway, we probably agree more than we disagree. What I avoid is discussing politics with people who truly believe that they have it all figured out. (Try discussing the agendas of the current ruling party in Poland with those who are in favor or opposed to it: it’s becomes even uglier than the discussions that we have here in the States!) Obviously I don’t sense that you are closed off to argument or I would not have spent my last waking minutes on writing long comments on your rather wonderful blog. :)
I don’t really expect the Republicans to prove their point: they have it all figured out, right? ;) Nor would I expect it of Democrats. What angers me more than anything is the insistence (that can be found on both sides) that compromise is suicide. So in that sense, we certainly agree!
On a note for the first part of your post…. My dad forced me to eat eggs, every Saturday morning for years. And I dreaded in ernest the weekend. Gags and sick feelings, and I to this day do not eat eggs. I didn’t do it out of disobedience I simply didn’t like eggs.
That’s certainly a concern I have. But we’re not talking about a huge helping here — it was literally four or five bites when finally got around to it!