So 52% of British voters were motivated by two feelings that trumped the warnings of economic disaster that would flow from leaving Europe. Two feelings: fear and disgust.
1) Fear of losing their country – -- their culture -- especially to a wave of immigrants.
2) Disgust that the political process of the European Union was undemocratic and deadlocked -- unable to cope with the collapse of the Greek economy, or the flood of refugees, or the aggressive behavior of old/new Russia.
So frightened, so disgusted that they voted to leave the EU.
Notably, though some polls had predicted a vote for Brexit, the numbers were considerably higher. Many “Leave” voters evidently masked their socially disreputable opinions when pollsters asked how they intended to vote.
Does any of that sound like US politics? Fear and resentment of “outsiders” at the bottom, deadlock at the top, lessening of actual democracy? Should we worry about the accuracy of polls that report only a minority of US voters feeling like Brexit voters?
The deep issue in the US is not Donald Trump but the existence of a frightened, angry, resentful, and disgusted band of voters. They are not economically desperate –-- surveys suggest their average income is around $72,000 per household. They are culturally and psychologically desperate. And they feel that their path to the future is blocked.
And their fear and fury grows every time progressives dance their jig of joy that precisely the “new un-Americans” (Muslims, Blacks, Mexicans, gays, etc) will soon outnumber the old insiders.
Notice I say they are a “deep issue,” not a “deep problem.” The problem is not their existence. The problem is what has led to their fury.
It is easy to label their fears of Mexicans, immigrants, Muslims, African-Americans, uppity women, and GLBTQ folks as “racist, chauvinist, misogynist,” etc. At one level, an accurate description. At that level, labels of contempt.
But we need to go deeper. They are feeling marginalized, thrust out of dignity and respect in “their own” country.
Somehow we need to respond to their sense of exclusion and marginalization -- respond with compassion and creativity, not simply proclaiming our moral superiority over these “contemptible racists.”
Somehow we need to create a public policy of social respect for them without obeying or supporting their first impulses to despise and attack the “new Americans.”
That won’t be easy. Still, let me try to sketch the barest notion of what a policy of respect might be.
What to do? It would betray the long stumble of America toward fuller democracy if we were to abandon our insistence on affirming and empowering the “new” cultures. But does that require marginalizing the old ones?
Imagine a Federal program that empowered both “new” and “old” Americans, both economically and culturally.
Imagine a program that paid for two kinds of projects to be undertaken by any group of 200 households living close to each other in cities or rural areas: -- perhaps in the boundaries of an elementary-school district.
• Money to pay for solar or wind collectors to be emplaced by a neighborhood energy co-op . A co-op, not individual households. Our national support is for democratic communities, not for isolated individualism.
The initial Federal grants would cover the initial costs both of the collectors themselves and of the workers who would be trained to install them. Once in place, the collectors would reduce prices for the purchase of electric power, making it much cheaper than coal-based energy.
New jobs would help lift up the actual neighborliness of the neighborhood. The Federal grant money would also go to a small part-time staff chosen by the neighborhood co-op, both for dealing with technical issues of solar-collector upkeep and efficiency, and for staffing regular meetings of the coop.
• Money to pay for twice-a-year neighborhood cultural festivals where the same neighborhood solar coops would bring together musicians, story-tellers, cooks, crafts-workers, and other exemplars of the neighborhood culture for a week of celebration.
In a New York neighborhood, this might mean bomba music and Puerto Rican food. In rural Tennessee, it might mean country music and a rifle range.
The money would actually go to local cooks, performers, crafts-workers, story-tellers, etc., with some money reserved for the neighborhood co-op to bring a regional or national hero of the local culture.
Offering this program to neighborhoods all across the country would greatly expand the work of the Folk Arts program within the National Endowment for the Arts.
These specific program/s may or may not be exactly what we need. Either way, they point beyond the often reductionist knee-jerk economics-only outlook of most American liberals, progressives, and leftists.
If not these specifics, then others -- based on the same principles, that we must share both our economic abundance and the abundances of our cultures, with enough money to make the sharing real.
Such a program –- cooperative in both economic and cultural spheres -- could end the marginalization of both the old and new Americas, without giving either of them domineering power over the other. It could feed money to the grass roots and pavement tops of America, in ways that would affirm and build on their myriad differences, encouraging neighborliness as well as a new economy based on sharing rather than domination, based on healing Mother Earth instead of wounding her, burning her.
It could avoid a kind of American Brexit that would build a wall not only against Mexicans but also against all our internal “immigrants.”
And it would mean healing the burning hearts of those Americans whose fear and fury, channeled into raging support for Donald Trump, has so startled and frightened much of middle America as well as liberals and progressives.
Diamonds (that is, money) cannot trump Trump or his Trumpery. Clubs (that is, coercion -- violent or nonviolent) cannot trump Trump or his Trumpery. Even spades (hard work and the labor movement) cannot trump Trump or his Trumpery. Only hearts can trump Trump and his Trumpery.
That is, only turning our hearts to what is moving and enraging Trump’s supporters can trump Trump and the trumpery he spews into the body politic. And that is the real issue facing America -- far deeper than one presidential election.
