Monday
Many Democrats and moderate Republicans have the same diagnosis for Donald Trump’s continuing popularity amongst white middle class men: he is speaking to economic frustration, not to racism and xenophobia. The belief has electoral ramifications since, if it is true, then this constituency can be reached by addressing economic stagnation and class inequality. It is a version of Marx’s theory that the economic base shapes ideological superstructure.
Liberals like Jamelle Bouie have begun challenging this view, however, and they could turn to Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor for support. Last week I wrote about how Ivan Karamazov’s parable challenges President Obama’s contention that “freedom is stronger fear.” Today I contend that the Grand Inquisitor would also disagree with the president over his explanation of white middle class rage.
In a recent interview with NPR, Obama had this to say:
But I do think that when you combine that demographic change with all the economic stresses that people have been going through because of the financial crisis, because of technology, because of globalization, the fact that wages and incomes have been flatlining for some time, and that particularly blue-collar men have had a lot of trouble in this new economy, where they are no longer getting the same bargain that they got when they were going to a factory and able to support their families on a single paycheck, you combine those things and it means that there is going to be potential anger, frustration, fear. Some of it justified but just misdirected. I think somebody like Mr. Trump is taking advantage of that. That’s what he’s exploiting during the course of his campaign.
When NPR brought up the issue of race, Obama acknowledged that it plays a factor but then steered the conversation back to economics:
If you are referring to specific strains in the Republican Party that suggest that somehow I’m different, I’m Muslim, I’m disloyal to the country, etc., which unfortunately is pretty far out there and gets some traction in certain pockets of the Republican Party, and that have been articulated by some of their elected officials, what I’d say there is that that’s probably pretty specific to me and who I am and my background, and that in some ways I may represent change that worries them.
But that’s not to suggest that everybody who objects to my policies may not have perfectly good reasons for it. If you are living in a town that historically has relied on coal and you see coal jobs diminishing, you probably are going to be more susceptible to the argument that I’ve been wiping out the economy in your area.
Bernie Sanders has been making a similar case that white middle class anger is about economics, not race and ethnicity:
“[S]omebody like a Trump comes along and says, ‘I know the answers. The answer is that all of the Mexicans, they’re criminals and rapists, we’ve got to hate the Mexicans. Those are your enemies. We hate all the Muslims, because all of the Muslims are terrorists. We’ve got to hate the Muslims.’ Meanwhile, the rich get richer.”
And here’s David Frum, a moderate Republican, making a version of the same argument:
The angriest and most pessimistic people in America are the people we used to call Middle Americans. Middle-class and middle-aged; not rich and not poor; people who are irked when asked to press 1 for English, and who wonder how white male became an accusation rather than a description.
You can measure their pessimism in polls that ask about their expectations for their lives—and for those of their children. On both counts, whites without a college degree express the bleakest view. You can see the effects of their despair in the new statistics describing horrifying rates of suicide and substance-abuse fatality among this same group, in middle age.
Frum proposes an economic solution to steer the GOP back to the center:
[P]arty elites could try to open more ideological space for the economic interests of the middle class. Make peace with universal health-insurance coverage: Mend Obamacare rather than end it. Cut taxes less at the top, and use the money to deliver more benefits to working families in the middle. Devise immigration policy to support wages, not undercut them. Worry more about regulations that artificially transfer wealth upward, and less about regulations that constrain financial speculation. Take seriously issues such as the length of commutes, nursing-home costs, and the anticompetitive practices that inflate college tuition. Remember that Republican voters care more about aligning government with their values of work and family than they care about cutting the size of government as an end in itself. Recognize that the gimmick of mobilizing the base with culture-war outrages stopped working at least a decade ago.
Such a party would cut health-care costs by squeezing providers, not young beneficiaries. It would boost productivity by investing in hard infrastructure—bridges, airports, water-treatment plants. It would restore Dwight Eisenhower to the Republican pantheon alongside Ronald Reagan and emphasize the center in center-right.
Many Democrats argue for a similar approach, according to Bouie of Slate:
If this is true—and Trump is capitalizing on the economic anxieties of working-class Americans—then the response is straightforward: Address the anxieties, and you neutralize his appeal. Building economic security for working- and middle-class Americans is—and has been—a long-term project, undermined by a constellation of forces from globalization and the rise of Wall Street to the collapse of unions and the move toward a smaller, less-durable safety net. But if Sanders and Obama are right, then all liberals and Democrats have to do to beat Trump—or more broadly, diminish Trumpism—is continue being liberals and Democrats, with continued calls for more social insurance, more programs for families, more rights for workers, and a greater role for the public in our politics.
It’s certainly the case that, if both parties started fighting for the economic betterment of this demographic, then life for the middle class probably would improve.
But would it lead to the hoped-for change of attitude? Bouie is skeptical because he believes that, rather than being a symptom of the problem, racism and xenophobia are the problem itself:
But there’s another possibility that challenges this sense that Trump feeds—and feeds off of—false consciousness. What if Trump’s racism attracts supporters? What if his bigotry is the point?
Bouie points out that America has long been susceptible to racial demagoguery:
What’s key is that there’s always been a portion of voters who are activated by racist appeals. And in an erstwhile herrenvolk democracy, this shouldn’t be a surprise. They show up in surveys, polling, and research data as Americans who rank high on racial resentment or hold strong anti-black views. They respond favorably to racial demagoguery—whether from candidates or media or both—and exist throughout American politics, in the far-right margins as well as a voting group in the Republican Party.
The Grand Inquisitor would agree. True, he first seems to agree with Obama, Sanders, and Frum that economic factors are primary. Lecturing a returned Jesus on why he erred when he rejected the three temptations in the desert, the churchman says that the people would accept, in an instant, the devil’s offer of turning stones into bread. Jesus’s assertion that we can rise above our bodily needs is an illusion:
Dost Thou see these stones in the desolate and glaring wilderness? Command that these stones be made bread—and mankind will run after Thee, obedient and grateful like a herd of cattle.
Maybe they would also return to the Democratic fold or vote for Frum’s reformed Republican platform.
However, the Grand Inquisitor then points to a force that is even more powerful than bread—which, for our purposes, could be called tribal identity. The multitudes need to believe in what everyone else believes.
The Inquisitor’s reasoning gets a little intricate here so bear with me. According to Matthew and Luke, Satan urges Jesus to cast himself from the temple in Jerusalem to prove that he is the son of God. If Jesus were to perform such a miracle, the Grand Inquisitor says, he would create a cult of personality and ensure the devotion of the large numbers. They would have a concrete foundation for absolute belief.
Jesus, however, wants people to believe without the aid of miracles, and the Grand Inquisitor says that this imposes too heavy a burden of freedom on humankind. What the multitude wants—and what Trump’s personality cult offers his followers—is certainty:
But man seeks to bow before that only which is recognized by the greater majority, if not by all his fellowmen, as having a right to be worshipped; whose rights are so unquestionable that men agree unanimously to bow down to it. For the chief concern of these miserable creatures is not to find and worship the idol of their own choice, but to discover that which all others will believe in, and consent to bow down to in a mass. It is that instinctive need of having a worship in common that is the chief suffering of every man, the chief concern of mankind from the beginning of times. It is for that universality of religious worship that people destroyed each other by sword. Creating gods unto themselves, they forthwith began appealing to each other: “Abandon your deities, come and bow down to ours, or death to ye and your idols!” And so will they do till the end of this world; they will do so even then, when all the gods themselves have disappeared, for then men will prostrate themselves before and worship some idea.
Trump’s followers are prostrating themselves before a version of America that looks like them. To those who hold a different version of America, they come close to saying “death to ye and your idols.” Their desiring, the Grand Inquisitor makes clear, goes far deeper than economics.
The man who can possess himself of the multitude’s conscience, he then tells Jesus, will triumph over those who can merely offer people bread:
With “daily bread” an irresistible power was offered Thee: show a man “bread” and he will follow Thee, for what can he resist less than the attraction of bread? But if, at the same time, another succeed in possessing himself of his conscience—oh! then even Thy bread will be forgotten, and man will follow him who seduced his conscience. So far Thou wert right. For the mystery of human being does not solely rest in the desire to live, but in the problem—for what should one live at all? Without a clear perception of his reasons for living, man will never consent to live, and will rather destroy himself than tarry on earth, though he be surrounded with bread.
Trump and, to a lesser extent, Ted Cruz and Ben Carson have currently succeeded in seducing the conscience of a significant portion of GOP primary voters, and they’re not doing it with economic appeals. Issues of identity are, at the moment, trumping bread.
Before panicking, however, let’s remember that the supporters of the GOP’s outsider candidates represent only a small portion of the entire American electorate. Most Americans, I believe, don’t fit the Grand Inquisitor’s profile.
But it is also true that we are probably deluding ourselves if we think that sound economic policies will, in and of themselves, save us. Tribalism is continually rearing its ugly head, especially (as the president reminds us) when times are difficult, and we must hold true of the ideals of our founding fathers and mothers. The Grand Inquisitor no doubt would say this is an impossible ideal, just as he says that Jesus was promoting an impossible idea, but that’s all the more reason to strive for it. Freedom is hard, as the president also tells us, but it’s either that or give ourselves over to the mercy of cynical Grand Inquisitors.
Trump may relieve his supporters of the burden of independent thought, but they’re making a bad bargain if they accept his deal. If they really thought about it, they would realize he does not have their best interests at heart.