Donald Trump and the Dalai Lama

G Scott Blakley

G Scott Blakley

Progressive Westerners support the Dalai Lama and autonomy for Tibet and its people, fearful that the Tibetan culture, centered on Buddhism and and the uniqueness which comes from living on the high plateau, will disappear as the Chinese increasingly inhabit and occupy the country. Actor Richard Gere is a spokesperson for the International Campaign for Tibet, speaking out for the Tibetan people and their rights. Preserving cultures at risk like that of the Tibetans finds much support among progressives.

Bruce Goacher, from Davenport, Iowa, is “a repo man in a camouflage cap and oil-smudged jacket,” and a supporter of Donald Trump. Goacher supports Trump’s call to bar Muslims from entering the United States, as do many of Trump’s supporters and others in the Republican party. As New York Times columnist Timothy Egan notes, the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer came out in favor of Trump, as did David Duke, former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
Kathy Parker is “against the anchor babies, and I’m against the Muslims,” as Molly Ball reports in the Atlantic. Such supporters are characterized as racists and bigots by the liberal press. As Charles Topher puts it in Addicting Info,
“I know. it seems obvious, but if you do a little looking around conservative circles, you’ll see a blatant denial of Trump’s minions being the racist dunces that they are, or that his supporters qualify as anything other than “patriotic” Americans from all walks of life. That’s just not the case. It’s safe to say that Trump supporters are people who think we should build a 300 foot electrified wall with steel spikes and a moat filled with fire-breathing dragon-like lizards to keep out the evil Mexican rapists that flock to the borders by the millions…The Donald is building a base of ignorant, bumbling fools.”
“In addition, anti-immigrant Republicans seem to be especially uneducated. While 33 percent of Republicans have a high school degree or less (Democrats, of course, hold a distinct advantage among highly-educated adults), 48 percent of the xenophobic portion of the GOP has a high school or lower education level — and they will absolutely be voting. 44 percent, compared to 36 percent of other Republicans, say they will be following the 2016 election “very closely.” Trump supporters also believe their man is the reich person for the job, with 52 percent of those who want to deport immigrants and turn away refugees saying that the billionaire will be our next president.”
More temperately, Dana Milbank adds, “Though all Trump supporters surely aren’t racists or bigots, even a cursory examination of social media reveals that many are.” Conor Friedersdorf adds, “Donald Trump is betting that his supporters are xenophobic bigots. Those supporters may not realize as much. But after Monday, the conclusion is hard to escape.”
Meanwhile, Victor Orban writes that there is a run against liberal democracy itself, with “an aversion to independent institutions like the courts, the central bank, and the media…They blame the loss of control over their lives, real or imagined, on a conspiracy between cosmopolitan-minded elites and tribal-minded immigrants. They blame liberal ideas and institutions for weakening the national will and eroding national unity. They tend to see compromise as corruption and zealousness as conviction…What makes anxious majorities most indignant is that while they believe that they are entitled to govern (they are the many after all), they never can have the final say. And so they are ready to blame the separation of powers and other inconvenient principles of liberal democracy for their frustration.”
Oh, wait! He was talking about Poland and its recent election, not Trump.
Meanwhile, the right-wing Front National Party led by Marine Le Pen has advanced, but due to collusion between the Socialist and center-right parties, failed to make significant gains in regional elections. Molly Ball thinks that the Trump phenomenon demonstrates the widening fissure between the “intellectual conservative movement, a decades-long project of institutional actors like the Heritage Foundation and the American Conservative Union, which seeks to push the party toward strict adherence with a set of ideas about limited government, strong national defense, and the traditional family. And then there is the populist, nativist strain, which isn’t really about ideas so much as a raw appeal to emotion. Trump’s dominance of the primary field is forcing the party to confront a frightening prospect: that the populist bloc may be the bigger of the two.” This threatens “to reorient the GOP away from ideological conservatism, along the lines of right-wing European political movements.”
In 1971, the middle class accounted for 61 percent of the nation’s population; today it is just less than half. Today, after the recession of 2007-2009, the median net worth of families is about at the level it was in 1983. Bruce Goacher points out the the signs of the decline. “That was a gas station. That was Sears. Over here was the A&P. They’re all empty.” He supports deporting illegal immigrants as he mentions ‘a local company that charges “8, 10 grand” to replace a roof. “OK, there’s a boatload of Mexicans come by, and you can get it done for 2 or 3 grand. They’re not from here. That’s hurting the businessperson that’s here.”’
Ken White uses the term ‘culture bundling’ to describe a lot of what divides us into tribes. He uses the debate over guns to make his point. “Gun control advocates don’t just attack support for guns; they attack conservative, Republican, rural and religious values. Second Amendment advocates don’t just attack gun control advocates; they attack liberal, Democratic, urban and secular values. The gun control argument gets portrayed as the struggle against Bible-thumping, gay-bashing, NASCAR-watching hicks, and the gun rights argument gets portrayed as a struggle against godless, elitist, kale-chewing socialists.” One suspects that the Trump supporters strongly represent one of the bundled cultures. And Lexington says that “Mr Trump offers them something that they crave: validation. What is more, as a billionaire who could be a member of the elite but chooses not to be, he offers them validation that—they feel—puts the Obamas of this world in their place.”
Even after the Paris terrorist attacks, Bernie Sanders reiterated that income inequality is the major theme of his campaign. As he noted in last month’s Democratic debate, “I’m running for president, because as I go around this nation, I talk to a lot of people, and what I hear is people’s concern, that the economy we have is a rigged economy. People are working longer hours, for lower wages, and almost all of the new income and wealth goes to the top 1%. And then on top of that, we’ve got a corrupt campaign finance system, in which millionaires and billionaires are pouring huge sums of money into super PACs, heavily influencing the political process. What my campaign is about is a political revolution. Millions of people standing up and saying, enough is enough. Our government belongs to all of us, and not just the handful of billionaires.” And Robert Reich returns relentlessly to his theme that our economy is at risk as the middle class falls behind.

And who are these downtrodden middle class Americans that Bernie Sanders and Robert Reich are standing up for? Brian Goacher and the very “bigots” supporting Donald Trump, threatening to split the Republican party, and turning against the very principles on which our government was created. Our founding fathers were, many of them, slave holders, and yet they wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The Constitution can hold that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” The first amendment can state, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” But the Constitution also said, “No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.” Slaves can run away, but the free states are obligated to return them to their masters. Shrinking from mentioning the word slavery, the creators of the Constitution also wrote, “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” As Donald Trump trumpeted, the blessed FDR approved shipping American citizens of Japanese descent into concentration camps; California passed An Act to Protect Free White Labor Against Competition with Chinese Coolie Labor, and to Discourage The Immigration of the Chinese into the State of California; the US followed with the Chinese Exclusion Act, ”one of the most significant restrictions on free immigration in US History. The Irish faired little better. When Barry Goldwater, principled conservative, ran for president and was looking for votes, he noted that when duck hunting, you go where the ducks are. And Saint Ronald used code words like state’s rights and forced busing similarly to appeal to the white working class. Ian Haney Lopez called it Dog Whistle Politics. Donald Trump is just more direct.

Under financial stress and fear of physical violence, human beings go tribal. If Steven Pinker can talk about how “The Better Angels of our Nature” have led to a decrease in violence since the Enlightenment and particularly since World War II, it is clearly not our better angels animating Trump supporters. Haney Lopez, exposing the racism still rampant in our society and our politics, nonetheless notes that when civil rights made it easier for black people to compete for jobs, it was not the well-off elite with their enlightened views who found increased competition for employment, but working class whites. The same holds for job competition from immigration, as Brian Goacher notes.
Like the Tibetans, the white working class feels itself under siege, sees the waning of its culture, its power, and its ability to order their lives in accordance with their interests. Perhaps a better approach than vilifying Donald Trump and his supporters would be to follow Bernie Sanders and Robert Reich in bemoaning the hollowing out of the middle class and the downward spiral they have been in over the past 40 years, and seeking to wrest power from the wealthy and well-connected, so that America works again for its citizens instead of against them. Maybe with an economy which works for those it has been leaving behind, tribalism and bigotry will recede, a culture can feel less under siege, and our vitriol in both directions can wane.

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