There is no question that Trump is a product of a wealth. He is an arrogant, thin-skinned man who is, for all intents and purposes, a bully. Now that he is president and we’ve seen that his form of bullying is not going to change, the question becomes this: Is he indeed the the American Id? I still say yes. There is an undercurrent of privilege that runs through our way of life. The only actual question is who deserves that privilege?
Our economic system is built on the premise of having things and getting better things as soon as those things are announced. We are an impermanent culture. It is in every commercial, every holiday, heck, it is even engrained in our churches and schools. Look around you. It is more common to find a brand new church building filled with the latest tech toys than it is to find and old brick and mortar institution. Schools are racing to build themselves up in the same fashion. It is a lot like our cellphone plans where you hold on to a model for a while and then give it back when the next one comes out. Same is true of our clothing. I can’t name ten items I own that are more than a decade old. All of this new and disposableness we allow is a sort of privilege because it creates an expectation that we need the newest and hottest and we, the American people, deserve only the best. Heck, the fact that we claim singular ownership of ‘America’ given the vast number of American Continent nations outside of the US is further proof of this sense of privilege and, in fact, blindness to that privilege.
The people who voted for Trump are more at peace with this truth than those of us who did not. Sure, a number of fringe folks, racists, etc. also hit the polls hard to stop Clinton, but they didn’t put Trump in office. Our Id did.
Some Thoughts:
- This gets posted late again because the spotty internet in my burb strikes again. Nothing like coming home to no service and waiting around till there is service again.