OCTOBER 29, 2024 – After watching/listening to vice president’s uplifting campaign speech this evening, I was schooled by our older son, who also heard Harris’s rallying cry. Cory himself is not voting for Trump, but he understands why a lot of men—regardless of race—are Trump supporters. I realized that if I wanted to understand better, I needed to listen.
Cory is a smart and attentive observer of human behavior. That skill plus his command of language and his life experience among people who haven’t enjoyed the opportunities that have framed my own existence give me access to insights that I couldn’t attain on my own.
“I know these people,” he said, referring to Gen-Z males and his fellow Millennials. “The ones who feel they’ve been left behind; who’ve heard the unfulfilled promises of the establishment and consider politicians to be liars. Along comes Trump, who’s the first person they’ve heard who’s willing to bash the establishment—and does so relentlessly. It doesn’t matter that he himself is lying. The important thing is that he’s calling out the people in power, and that resonates with the people who feel they’ve been left behind by the existing power structure. They want to tear things down and so does Trump, so in that respect, he speaks to these people.”
Of course, this explanation prompted about a thousand, “Yeah, buts,” leading with, “now they’re in league with the devil,” but given that Cory was explaining, not advocating, I didn’t offer a single “Yeah, but.” Instead, I tried to listen again to Harris’s speech and discern how it might sound to one of these “left-behind” Trump supporters. What had sounded so sincere, positive and sensible to me as a Harris supporter—“I will work with Democrats and Republicans”/“I will make sure that people who disagree with me have a seat at the table”—now sounded like lies to my imaginary MAGA ears. Through this juxtaposition, I could better acknowledge the division in perceptions of Trump.
With Cory’s insight, I’m no less in favor of the Harris/Walz ticket or more favorably inclined toward Trump/Vance. I still believe the latter would be a disaster for the Republic. But after hearing Cory explain the connection between how people perceive their lack of prospects, on the one hand, and how people perceive the causes of misfortune, on the other, I’m now more concerned than ever about the aftermath of the current presidential campaign, irrespective of who is inaugurated next January 20. The disgruntled will not shed their disapproval, and the victors will dare not accommodate their adversaries. Stir in a strong dose of irreversible disinformation, the usual lust for power, and the favorite word in the American political lexicon—fight!—and we are likely to become more divided than ever.
The 236-year-old question—answered once in 1861 at a horrible cost—will be whether we can bend like a white ash in a storm and thus survive. Or will it be our national fate to break in half like an old burr oak too rigid to weather the tempest?
The answer lies with our youth—strong and flexible ash trees, not unyielding, unchanging oaks. Take our nine-year-old granddaughter, for example. Today she—a third-grader, mind you—schooled us on the three branches of government. And when I asked her to repeat my daily mantra, she knew exactly what I was talking about: “Smile, be kind, and pay attention,” she said.
To nudge her education along, Cory urged me a while ago to introduce Illiana to the Child’s History of the World, which I’d read to him at her age. Whenever she stays overnight with us, I read her a chapter or two. This evening’s session schooled us both about the conclusion of Lycurgus after his grand tour in search of what made nations “great”:
Wherever the people thought chiefly of fun and pleasure, amusing themselves and having a good time—he found they were not much good, not much account—not great. Wherever the people thought chiefly of hard work and did what they ought, whether it was pleasant or not, he found they were usually good for something—some account—great. A Child’s History of the World by V.M. Hillyer (p. 79)
As I read the opening phrase of the foregoing passage, I thought of modern America, in which sports heroes and other entertainers are paid vast sums of money while their fans grouse about pay increases for public school teachers and the cost of smaller class sizes—and too many students eschew math and hard science.
Yet, as Illiana and I further learned, Lycurgus went overboard with “Spartan discipline.” When presented with a choice between Sparta and Athens, we both favored the latter; the Ancient Greek capital of “mind-building” and the arts, all of which required a strong degree of discipline.
These readings are but a tiny pin hole into the past, but in time I hope to expand the opening into a broad view of world history, geography and culture. It’s my little antidote to the fear and despair that often cloud our vision of the future. Each of us must “spring to the white ash”[1] to help row our common boat to a place of better promise.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
[1] A reference to the oars of the whaleboat—from a passage in Moby Dick; white ash being a favored wood for oars on account of its strength and flexibility.
