Trump's America

Donald Trump is the president-elect of the United States. We continue as a polarized country. We need to find a way out of the angst and national malaise. I don't know how we are going to do this. And it's not realistic to just say, "God's in charge." When it comes to national affairs, I think God has largely put US in charge. So, what do we do?

There are several different "audiences" with which to deal if we are going to find a way forward:

1. Those who supported Trump because he gave voice to their anger, fear, and possibly nationalistic, misogynist  and racist views. These may be the people who are responsible for the 60% rise in "hate crimes" that have been reported by the FBI since the election.

2. Those who supported Trump because they just feel left out and dis-empowered. These are the people in the "flyover" areas often talked about by pundits, but according to filmmaker Michael Moore, rarely taken seriously--except by the Trump campaign. Moore suggested--months ago--that these people wanted to "throw a 'Molotov Cocktail' into Washington" and that would be Donald Trump. He predicted way back then that these people would put Trump over the top. They did.

3. Those who supported Trump because, ultimately, they are party loyalists, and Trump was their candidate. Some of them overlooked his flaws; others just put on a cloak of denial, but either way, they voted the ticket.

4. Those who supported Trump because they just really didn't like or trust Hillary Clinton. Period. It pretty much didn't matter what the other candidate looked like. They were NOT voting for Clinton. Some of these folk extolled Trump's business acumen and believed these credentials could help the country.

5. Those who voted for a third-party candidate. Some did this because they didn't like Trump OR Clinton; others because they LIKED Stein, Johnson, or whomever; and some because they wanted to help get the Libertarian Party over the 5% mark toward legitimacy.

6. Those who supported Clinton because they did NOT like Trump. They weren't big on Clinton and the "baggage" or "drama" she brought to the ticket, but they were NOT going to vote for Trump.

7. Those who felt Clinton was very qualified for the office, based on her senatorial and State Department experience, but who still struggled with some of her questionable judgments such as the exorbitant speaking fees for Wall Street firms and the whole private email thing. Many of these were women and men who felt that the combination of experience and her gender--the potential first woman president--overcame the negative.

8. And finally those who enthusiastically supported Secretary Clinton, many of whom did so back in 2008 as well.

So, things are not as simple as "Trump vs. Clinton" people in this divided land. This was a much more complicated presidential race than it first appears. However, the extreme "poles" do tend to draw attention to themselves--the "alt-right" group that were the screamers and the brawlers at his rallies, and the strong feminists (including many men who were allies) who supported Clinton at least to some measure because of the trailblazing opportunity of voting for a woman.

Notice that I have said nothing about religion in any of these scenarios. Why? Because people of various religious backgrounds and practices were all over this list. It is true that the group branded "evangelicals" by the press voted heavily for Donald Trump. This is a really lousy label, however. "Evangelical" means "people of the Good News." I believe that every person who calls themselves "Christian," and who believes in witness to her or his faith, is an "evangelical." If you invite people to come to church with you, you are practicing "evangelical" theology. If you believe that Jesus left this world better off than when he came, you are "evangelical." If your faith makes you smile, treat people with compassion and respect, and you like to exude positive "vibes" in the name of Jesus, you are "evangelical." I could go on. I call myself and evangelical liberal, which is what Mr. Wesley, founder of Methodism, was. He believed in the the Bible as our guide to faith, but was very liberal in his interpretation of how it applied to life in the Eighteenth Century. He preached faith in Christ in the streets, and in the fields of England, but organized efforts to provide public education, reform the prison system, and encourage fathers to work hard and provide responsibly for their families (which was a really liberal social idea in that century!). Methodists were "people of the warm heart" when it came to having a passion for their Christian faith, but who also had a burning heart to change the society. That would be my definition of "evangelical liberal."

What the media is calling "evangelical" are Christian people who ascribe to certain core dogmas such as being "born again," believing the Bible should be taken literally, and who believe people who don't have the born again experience are condemned to Hell. This understanding of evangelical generally is applied to very conservative individuals who include among their social dogmas being anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-same-sex marriage. Many people thus labeled "evangelical" in the popular culture voted for Trump because of their conservatism, and in some cases, just because Trump promised to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade.

These two paragraphs are a gross oversimplification of the different understandings of "evangelical," just as my Eight Audiences listed above are an oversimplification of the fields of American voters in this most recent election. However, both are meant to provide at least a framework for understanding the "mess we's in," so to speak.

So, how do we go forward? In a world that still believed in compromise, we would look for some common ground:

1. People need jobs who have been displaced by outsourcing, the death of certain industries like coal and steel, and the rapidly changing job market, period. Expanded opportunities for education, training and re-training are needed.

2. Something has to be figured out with healthcare. The ACA was a flawed attempt to offer coverage to all, and I believe this is still a common goal of many Americans. They just don't want to mortgage their home to pay for it, and are tired of deductibles now approaching half of the annual premium outlay.

3. Our children need a quality education that should not be based solely on one's ability to pay for it. Public systems should not be funded merely through taxing people in the district. This means that wealthy districts will have good schools, and poor or inner-city districts will have poor schools. And it's not just the money. Just pumping dollars into schools won't help without changing some of the paradigms for testing, teacher competence, and administration. And all students should be able to afford a college or trade school education after high school, for all jobs, including the trades, will require specialized training.

Let's call these things the "basics." I don't believe that any of the Eight Audiences above would have a problem with these "essentials." What if we petitioned our new government to work on these things? If you look at them carefully, you will see that the most liberal liberal and the most conservative conservative would have a fundamental problem with any of these three foci. There will be different ideas as to how to approach them, and some very conservative (especially Libertarians) may balk at government even taking on the challenge. But I'll bet the majority of Americans would affirm these things. I'll bet even the "evangelicals" would be OK with them.

If the government could stimulate job creation and help catalyze education and training for people to be qualified for the jobs which are created, this would be good. If we could come up with a better way to make affordable healthcare available to all, this would be huge, but it would most likely involve doing something that Secretary Clinton said would be very difficult: separate healthcare from employment. And if we could create systems that would make education and trade training widely available and affordable, an educated citizenry would be prepared to do occupy the jobs created, going forward.

Again, this is certainly an oversimplification of complex, national challenges. However, what I believe is not only practical but necessary if we are to make any progress is finding common ground goals that every constituency can believe in, and ones that, if accomplished, would benefit all Americans. Hence, I submit these three for your consideration.

Conservatives could still keep their "pet" agendas: strong defense, the Second Amendment, smaller government, etc., and they could continue to fight for these things. Liberals could fight for theirs: equal rights and pay for people of any gender, gender identity, or orientation; First Amendment freedoms, dismantling racism, etc. And "evangelicals" (as well as other religious groups) could fight for their agendas: anti-abortion, freedom to practice religion without undue government harassment, etc.

But maybe, just maybe we could greatly advance our country by making sure people had jobs, a decent education, and healthcare, first. We'd all have more energy and resources to work on the "pet" agendas! And our society would be that much more just.

Incidentally, these are, in a form, the kind of reforms Mr. Wesley was about in Eighteenth Century England.

Now, to quote comedian Dennis Miller: "This is just my opinion--I could be wrong." Shalom, Yinz.