There is No Trump Card
As we watch the train wreck of American “democracy” with morbid fascination, unable to avert our eyes from our favorite news sources, we often sense in our more honest moments that we are witnessing in real time the consequences of decades of socio-economic mismanagement on the part of the elites and satiated apathy on ours. We have lived well enough to leave well enough alone, and the wealthy and powerful have taken full advantage of our torpor. We are waking up from the middle class dream into a reality whose hollowed out industrial towns, unskilled labor force, rusty and crumbling infrastructure, existential suffering, and political incompetence resemble more the Third World and the 20th century Soviet Empire than the grand myths of America.
On voting days, I always did feel – despite the obvious charade– a certain delight in participating in an event that included me in something so much larger than myself. The service of the volunteers at the polling locations reminded me that there is a genuine human desire to cooperate to make the world a better place. And my vote represented an incremental step on humanity’s evolutionary path.
It does not feel the same this year. While we slog through the most personal, least substantive campaign in my lifetime, the planet is literally burning around us. Nearly every significant measure of the state of the planet and of Civilization is worsening. Losses in biodiversity, rising atmospheric temperature and ocean acidity, diminishing forests, fish stocks, and water and food security—all these remain on pace. For the first time in two hundred years, there are fewer democracies than before. Inequality in wealth is at its highest level in human history. Billions of people suffer from malnutrition, unsanitary conditions, and non-potable water. Malnutrition, by the way, breaks down like this: 800 million to a billion suffer from lack of calories and protein, and over two billion people suffer the physically- and mentally-stunting effects of micronutrient deficiencies. Sixty-five million people are climate, war, and economic refugees. At least three billion live on less than $2.50 a day; four billion people live on less than $4 a day. Meanwhile, some billion of us enjoy a cornucopia of food and material stuff, and some fifteen million of those live the unconstrained lives of royalty.
When they did finally wake up, millions of Americans found themselves no longer part of the gravy train. They were unemployed, underemployed, unskilled, and uneducated. They worked at Wal-Mart selling cheap imports, making some arbitrarily determined minimum wage without benefits, paid sick leave, or even job security for the job they did not really want. And there was little hope for improvement. The American dream was a mirage rapidly diminishing over the horizon. We see and feel their dismay, their alarm, their rage. They feel as if the American political system has failed them. Given the options, they blame one political party or the other. And, of course, the presidential candidate becomes the scapegoat upon which we heap all our frustrations and resentments.
Okay, first Hillary Clinton. Yes, she’s completely establishment. She commands enormous fees for speeches at Wall Street conferences. She has served in numerous top government positions – U.S. Senator, Secretary of State, and First Lady to the Arkansas Governor and American President. Her husband Bill oversaw the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the beginning of the new Gilded Age. Like Obama and the previous presidents, she will surely appoint Goldman Sachs elites as economic advisors, do relatively little to improve planetary environmental conditions, and make the world safe for military contractors and business oligarchs. Under her watch, the twinned crises of environmental and socio-economic breakdown will surely continue unabated.
Then there’s Donald Trump, who at the time of this writing is playing out the script of his predictable self-destruction. That some thirty or forty percent of Americans still support him, or, for that matter, have ever supported him, may defy some sense of reality on the part of most of the world citizens. Yet, there is surely plenty of historical precedent. Throughout the Western world, at least, some similar proportion of the electorate is, in their confused resentment, supporting an anti-immigrant, anti-environmental, anti-anything-that-is-loving agenda.
If we were not in unprecedented times, perhaps it would not matter which of these two representatives of the wealthiest and most powerful was voted into the single most powerful position in the world. However, we do live during unprecedented times. The human population is still swelling; global food security is in serious jeopardy; conflict is once again heating up on the planet, from the big belligerents like the U.S., Russia and China, to regional and civil conflicts all over the globe. Global warming will exacerbate all our problems, leading to ever-larger stress-producing waves of refugees. The issues are interrelated, deeply buried in the foundations of Civilization, and complex beyond our reckoning.
Neither of these candidates will likely improve the conditions of the human dilemma. Nothing in their records suggests they possess the necessary level of consciousness to provide paradigm-shifting leadership. Neither of them approaches the wisdom of the present president, and even Barak Obama could not disentangle the political Gordian knots. However… the big however: given the complexity of problems, tensions, and surprises that heads of state and other powerful elites will surely face in the coming years, I think there is little choice but to pull the lever for Hillary Clinton. Then, we can get on with the important task of righting the listing ship of Civilization.
