WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE:

The 2016 electorate

• Who are these people? Where did they come from? Did they go to the same American churches and schools as I did? Did they truly listen to the sermons on Christian charity or the read the Talmud’s mandate to do good works? Did they study American history and world history in high school or college? They are the sons and daughters of immigrants who despise and ridicule any other new immigrants to this country. (The only non-immigrants are the people demonstrating in the Dakotas.) They rail against government control and creeping socialism but come from families that were literally rescued from starvation by the big federal social programs initiated by FDR and LBJ in the 20^th century. They warn against “government welfare” but readily accept their Social Security check each month and are not hesitant to flash their Medicare cards at the Doctor’s office.
• Who are these people? Some live in middle class homes just like I do, eat at the same restaurants and root for the same sports teams as I do. Yet they support political lightweights and worse yet narcissistic demagogues like Donald Trump who preach America first and do everything they can to sabotage any attempts to protect our American environment. At the same that their self righteous calls for “family values’ leaves their lips, they are filing for divorce at a rate greater than any other nation in the world and their children are turning to drugs at alarming rates.
• Who are these people? Many work hard all of their life in blue collar jobs and often subsist on the margins of poverty. They are like my father and uncles who paid too much for their health care and got themselves into debt to send their children to college. Yet, they continuously vote against their own interests. They stand by quietly in denial while their political heroes decimate their unions and systematically lower taxes for the rich from a 90% rate in 1954 to a 33 % rate. They are so easily seduced by the so called American promise of prosperity, while their odds of ever becoming rich are about the same odds as hitting the lottery.
• Who are these people? Not all the Trump supporters are the poor working class Americans who have lost their jobs in manufacturing because of technology and a global economy.  The average salary of Trump supporters is 70K a year.  Some proudly belong to the business class but they are engaged in what Dorothy Thompson once called “doubling”. Thompson used the term to describe the Nazi concentration camp officers, who join with neighbors and their children in singing Christmas carols at night and go on to gas Jews during the day. Each day these business professionals leave their suburban homes or urban co-ops in the morning for work, kiss their wife and children and wave “hello” to their neighbors. They are respected and gracious members of their community who will readily help a neighbor in distress. Then they go to business where an entirely antithetical set of values prevail. They cheat their partners, they steal sub-legally, they gamble with other people’s money and they accept unconditional bonuses from their buddies. Then they go home and dress up for church. And at election time they idolize a business tycoon who has hustled his wares for decades and now pretends to be an American patriot
• Who are these people? In this troubled economy, they have jobs, homes, medical insurance and children in college. Yet, they refuse to pay even a small increase in taxes in their state and towns to provide for those who have lost their jobs or work for a minimum wage that keeps them in the poverty class. They compromise their own local educational systems by failing to support a budget that will prevent the hiring or cause the firing of good teachers. By doing this they foolishly lower their own real estate values by living in a state or town that has a poor reputation for its schools. They replay the classic Shakespearean tragedy over and over. They cause their own downfall.
• Who are these people? They come from ethnic groups that in earlier generations were vilified as Greaseballs, Micks and Huns. Some even come from a race that was almost wiped out during World War II in Germany just for being who they are. Yet they resent and despise the African American man in the White House and carry around graphic posters with lipstick smeared photos of him painted as Lucifer or Hitler. They listen to demagogues on the radio who call him “uppity” and politicians who euphemistically call him “arrogant”. They enthusiastically support a candidate who falsely claims that this President was born in a country in Africa.= and not in the US.
• Who are these people? They call themselves Christians and carry their bibles proudly to church where they join with others to hear “the word of God”. I guess they never turned to the many, many different times and different ways Jesus preached that we are our brother’s keepers. They skim past the account of where he got so angry that he physically chased the money changers out of the temple. And how about “render unto Caesar,etc” which set the foundation for the separation of Church and State. And how about the beatitudes---“Blessed are the merciful etc” How about those beatitudes. And BTW, where are their ministers, priests and rabbis who don’t have the courage to confront their own congregations about social justice.
• Who really are these people who can sit by silently while thousands of children in their own affluent country die from semi-starvation or inadequate healthcare? What do they do with their conscience when they see photos of children in Appalachia, Chicago or Native American Reservations living in dire poverty? How can they justify fighting against any kind expanded healthcare program when they see those long lines of their fellow citizens waiting in the bitter cold outside of those free health clinics?
• While we are on the Bible: “He who is without sin, cast the first stone” Who the hell am I to lecture on this and go on like one of those street corner preachers. Who am I? I’m flawed and selfish and self absorbed like everyone else. I’m certainly not in the mold of St. Francis of Assisi who took the clothes off his back to give to the poor. I didn’t rush off to Haiti to work with the earthquake victims. I don’t give to charities nor go to church nearly enough. I drive over elevated highways that cover the cardboard box quarters of the homeless. Like everyone else, I am often in denial about my own part in all of this neediness and poverty. But I realize this one thing ----when I do look at them or think of them, I realize “There for the Grace of God go I”---and the ones I love.
  
  JVP