BY PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of a Trump presidency is not
the man’s big-headed, pig-headed penchant for self-promotion, but the shock
wave of hate he has awakened. Americans are stressed and politically distressed,
expressing anger in vulgar, bipolar ways.
I observed the current electoral cycle from Ithaca, New York, a
university town that voted 85% for Hillary Clinton, with a smattering of votes
for independent Jill Stein and others. But the familiarity of one's immediate
environs can be deceiving, for one only has to drive a few minutes out of this
liberal community and then it’s conservative country for hundreds of miles in
every direction.
People on this little blue island in a big red sea are worried the
political waves to come. Already there was a “cry-in” on campus and a mourning
vigil on the downtown commons. Local cafes played comfort music, mostly sixties
rock and folk ballads such as “This Land is Your Land” and "Imagine" while doling out extra
servings of comfort food. I was in the public library on the day after the US
election looking for books on the history of fascism when an old white-haired
woman came up to me, expressing fears about the future. She showed me an
illustration of the planet earth perched on the edge of a sharp precipice.
“That’s how I feel now,” she explained.
“You mean, like, earth in the balance?”
“No. Like the end of the world…I am Jewish, 100%. My mother was
a victim. The racial hatred. You know, the swastika.”
The upswing of swastika taunts in the wake of Trump’s victory is
odd and troubling, but not symptomatic. Some of Trump's supporters are indeed
unrepentant chauvinists and xenophobes, but he did better than his
"respectable" Republican predecessor Mitt Romney with minorities, and
better than Hillary Clinton with women in key states.
Indeed, one of the few Trump supporters I met in Ithaca was an
African American magician who does magic tricks on the Commons. When I saw his
folding table decked out in support of the great white hope, I took it to be a
put-on, part of his show, something he would make disappear--presto! But he
turned out to be utterly serious in conversation. I later saw him on local
access TV promoting Trump.
Ithaca’s hip reputation of being “centrally isolated” is a
geographic fact of life, for it sits squarely in the middle of upstate dairy
country, far off the grid of interstate highways and train lines. What I didn’t
realize at first was the acute political isolation.
“Liberal” Ithaca is the rare exception to the area pattern of
job decimation and failing farms, an enclave where real estate values rise and
jobs are created. Being home to Cornell University and Ithaca College alone can
explain the difference, but it is also a beneficiary of ecotourism, the organic
food boom and it serves as a hub for outlying hamlets.
The weathered church steeples, abandoned workshops and
struggling brick and mortar shops bring to mind Main Street, USA. Not the
Disney-lite version, but the heavy Hollywood one. If you’ve seen Jimmy
Stewart’s hometown in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” (a composite
of nearby Montour Falls and Ithaca) you can picture what it looks like. Or used
to look like. Things have gone downhill to the point that the dystopian decay
of “Back to the Future” is real.
Rednecks are among Trump’s most fervid supporters, but so are
humble, gentle farmers, army veterans and evangelistic Christians. The
five-hour drive from Ithaca to New York City takes one through little
Trumpvilles dominated by fast food chains and derelict downtowns. With so many
impoverished hamlets in the agro-industrial rust belt, it’s not for nothing
that even locals refer to the Southern Tier along the Pennsylvania border as
“Forlornia.”
But to dismiss the blue-collar workers and rednecks that race
around backcountry in pickup trucks as white trash (or “deplorables” as Hillary
put it) was a miscalculation of the Democrat’s campaign. Having lived
subsistence style in the shadows so long, the rabblement’s anti-establishment
hatred was palpable when offered a chance to show how they felt at the polls.
So how did a spoiled, flamboyant, carrot-top kid from Queens
turned casino magnate cum real estate mogul come to be the spokesmen for rural
values? How did this jet-setting playboy Manhattan-dwelling snob get the stamp
of approval from bible-thumping rural folk?
Trump succeeded with “deplorables” because he paid attention to
them.
As much as “The Donald” might like to hear himself talk, he
paused long enough to hear their pain. He jetted into impoverished towns and
winged it, speaking off the cuff in populist lingo, dropping the pretense of
civility to speak in stark terms that struck a chord.
The Democrats, clinging to Obama’s urbane urban strategy,
foisted the tired Clinton dynasty on a rust-belt nation in the midst of a
paradigm shift, and stumbled badly. With Bernie Sanders as the agent of change,
they might have had a chance. With Hillary, it was too much of the same old,
same old at a time when it should be evident that nothing will ever be the same
again.
Given the vulgar rhetoric that ravaged all sense of decency
during the campaign, fears of creeping fascism are not without foundation.
For better or worse, a deeply divided America is on the cusp of
change, and the whole world watching with bated breath.
