NOVEMBER 1, 2019 – Yesterday, in his column, The Point, CNN commentator Chris Cillizza explained Trump’s support. Cillizza boiled it down to the attitude, “I’m fed up with the [corrupt, do-nothing but ignore me] government and won’t take it anymore!” Trump played on that in 2016 and will hammer at it for re-election. Cillizza cited a recent Trump campaign ad during the TV broadcast of Game 7 of the World Series, in which ad the narrator says, He’s no Mr. Nice Guy. But sometimes it takes a Donald Trump to change Washington.
I agree with Cillizza, but I’d take his analysis further.
What I’ve observed among Trump supporters I know is an impatience with government; a chronic “throw the bastards out” attitude. Trump’s iconoclasm plays well with this crowd, however ironically, since the in-your-face evidence reveals that in substance the iconoclasm is self-dealing, nepotism, cronyism, corruption, and disregard for rule of law, all on an unprecedented scale, even by Washington (swamp) standards. But that’s the point—it’s so much worse than the worst, it’s the best!
This “throw the bastards out” streak reveals a deeper question: are we up to the task of responsible participation in democracy? Or are we too impatient?
Only a totalitarian regime can rightfully assume credit for all that goes right and be fairly blamed for all that goes wrong. In our country, however, individual liberties enjoy greater protection than anywhere else. “Gov’m’nt” can do only so much about the problems that afflict us. (Take gun violence, as one prickly example.) Despite government’s reach even in America, we still have immense autonomy to help or hurt ourselves.
What’s particularly ironic about this “Throw the bastards out!” attitude is that rarely is it expressed by truly marginalized groups (e.g. blacks; Native Americans) as impatiently as by disgruntled white people.
What’s also ironic is the attitude that “Throw the bastards out!” folks (“TBOFs”) harbor toward the military, Social Security and Medicare—most want more, not less of these things. In aggregate those three features of government eclipse all else.
So what government swamp are the TBOFs concerned with? The CDC? The NIH? The FAA? NASA? USAID? NOAA? The Bureau of Labor Statistics? The National Parks division of the Department of the Interior? (etc., etc.)
Maybe the “swamp” is metaphor for government’s (Congress’s) inability to untie Gordian Knots; by way of one small example, government’s failure to convert the world’s most Byzantine and costly healthcare system into one that provides every citizen with affordable, accessible, quality healthcare. If the TBOFs understood how Congress is elected (468 campaigns every two years, each requiring staggering amounts of money); if they watched the details of the legislative process, they’d understand the underpinnings of “gridlock.” If they understood government at a deeper level, they’d focus their impatience on the reform of campaign finance and lobbying by big-monied special interests.
There’s plenty wrong with government, but in supporting Trump, the impatient TBOFs opened the sewer pipes into the so-called swamp. What has that produced? A flood of sewage.
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© 2019 Eric Nilsson
