When Trump was elected, Donna posted commentary on Facebook about his wife Melania—Finally there’s a class act as a first lady. Translation: Michelle Obama was not a class act. And why wasn’t Michele Obama a class act? She’s beautiful, an attorney, educated at Harvard Law School, a mother and role model who championed health, nutrition and fitness to a legion of young women. Could the barrier to her being a class act be because of her color? Too black to be first lady, the way I was too white to be Italian?
Mean girls do grow up to be mean women. Donna’s posts are full of posed photos, family reunions always taken in restaurants. She looks the happiest when she has a drink in her hand. Then there is her dark side proclaiming law and order, denigrating Black Lives Matter and the protests in Seattle. Many of Donna’s posts have been taken down by Facebook (REMOVED), which means they were political weapons—(HATE).
The white working-class has a reason to hate. They have been under siege for as long as I can remember. What has changed dramatically is the loss of good jobs, the ability to make a good living wage, and the opportunity for upward mobility and prosperity without having a college degree. Death rates for middle-aged white Americans are rapidly rising. The three leading causes of death are suicide, accidental poisoning (primarily opioid overdose) and alcoholic liver disease. Described by Anne Case and Angus Deaton in their book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, almost all of those who are part of this new spike of premature deaths are middle-aged white Americans without a college degree. The great demarcation between death and despair, and longevity and prosperity has now become a college degree.
America, no longer a healthy society, has become toxic. People atrophy and perish because they don’t know how to do something or aren’t given the time to learn how to do something, or they’re not savvy enough to see what they need to do. When people are full of fear and despair and are pummeled into exhaustion, it’s not hard for an immoral leader to churn these emotions into hate. Trump identified the pain of the white working-class, and in particular their tendency to feel inadequate about themselves, their inability to make a good living or to have a good life. He gave them a much needed sense of identity, and that is why they will follow him to the ends of the earth and even die for him.
Because the white working-class is uneducated, they feel disrespected and often think of themselves as losers, and when jobs start going away, they think the system is rigged against them. (It is!) Instead of doing the hard work to understand the multiple sides and complexity of political and economic issues, they are willing to form opinions that are overly simple but far from the truth. It is easy to manipulate people who are not educated. Trump speaks to their pain. He tells the white working-class they are not responsible for their own decline. He creates an enemy, a scapegoat, a target to blame. Get them to hate the enemy. Demonize the enemy. Fan the flames. (The radical left, Black Lives Matter, Muslims, China, Antifa.)
MEME Posted by Donna Donato on FACEBOOK