Mike Rose is a gifted writer who has written many books about education, work, and culture.

 

In this post, he reflects on the meaning of the election. I exchanged emails with Mike, and he told me felt paralyzed by the election. And then he wrote this essay, which I think you will enjoy reading.

 

He begins like this:

 

Some friends and readers have been wondering why I haven’t written anything about the presidential election. The truth is I was numb with disbelief and anger and felt as hopeless about politics as I can remember feeling. What else was there to say other than the obvious: so much pain is going to be inflicted on so many. I also couldn’t get out of my head the fact that if a relatively small number of people in a handful of districts in a few states had voted or voted differently, this catastrophe of suffering would have been averted.

 

One of the things that has baffled me from the start of Donald Trump’s rise in the GOP primary is how he could become the darling of so many White working class voters. I know some segments of this population, particularly the people who worked in heavy industry in the Northeast, many of them, like me, are the children or the grandchildren of the Southern and Eastern European immigrants who came to the United States in huge numbers between 1880 and 1920: Italian, Polish, Slovakian. Many of my contemporaries’ children also worked in those industries as they were in decline, or didn’t get to work in them at all, for by the early 1980s (a decade before NAFTA), the processes of deindustrialization had begun. If someone like Donald Trump, pampered and entitled, a braggart, demanding and overbearing… if such a guy happened into their midst—perhaps his limousine broke down en route from Northeast Ohio to Western Pennsylvania—if such a thing happened, many of them would certainly not embrace him, and could well dislike him, for he represents everything contrary to the codes of behavior they grew up with, the kind of man they respect, the way you talk about yourself in public.

 

I know rural America much less well, though benefited tremendously when I stayed with local teachers in small towns during my travels for Possible Lives. I feel comfortable saying that the majority of the people I met in places like Southwestern Montana or the coal fields of Eastern Kentucky would have the same reaction to a Trump-like fellow descending into their midst. They would regard him with suspicion.
So what gives? Well, as numerous political commentators have noted, especially after the election, Donald Trump was saying what a lot of people wanted to hear. The messenger didn’t matter.
Trump said many things, most of them shockingly blatant—no subtle dog whistling, except, perhaps, with anti-Semitism—assailing Mexicans, Muslims, undocumented immigrants, women, you know the list. His pocketbook appeal to working-class voters was his anti-trade message—which got intimately wrapped up in anti-immigrant, nativist language—and his bold proclamations that he was going to bring jobs back to economically devastated regions. And though it gets much less mention than the White working class issue, we should not overlook the fact that many in the traditional Republican base who are not blue-collar folk at all—the banker next door to me, the flower shop owner in Omaha, the dentist in Atlanta—voted in large numbers for Trump even though they might have done so reluctantly. He would reverse the Obama policies they don’t like, cut taxes and regulations, put conservatives on the Supreme Court. A lot of White Republican women voted for Mr. Trump, defying predictions that his loutish behavior would drive them into the Clinton camp, or at least lead them to not vote on the top of the ticket. And, Good Lord, Evangelical Christians overwhelmingly supported our Sinner-in-Chief, justifying their vote with talk of forgiveness and redemption. Certainly on their minds were social issues and the Supreme Court. While some high-profile Republicans—foreign policy experts or big players like Meg Whitman—supported Clinton, most Republicans voted for Trump, with some opting for third party candidates. What elites wanted in this election—elites from the Never Trump GOP types to Katy Perry and LeBron James—was rejected in an angry spasm by those who felt ignored one time too many. In the bitterest of ironies, they voted for the most elite candidate of the lot, cocooned in a world of chandeliers and self-absorption.

 

Please read on.