The WWC and Trump

This article on the Harvard Business Review website explains fairly effectively why Trump was supported so enthusiastically by such a large proportion of voters.

The blogger, Joan Williams, took her father-in-law's personal history into account, and has come up with a very persuasive theory.  It is that many working-class men were able, over the years, to start up their own business, with no help from the Government, and no college education.  These people are now very middle-class, but by no means part of the white-collar Republican Elite.

They distrust professionals, but they respect the Rich.  This unfamiliar pair of values: Rich Yes, Educated No, describes many of our conservative acquaintances; it was just that we did not realize that it describes such a huge population.  Democrats, of course, are, by and large, educated, professionals, many of us actually teachers, many of us liberated women, many of us lawyers, and though we hate the banks and Wall Street, when Wall Street is in a bind, we tend to rush to their rescue.

The White Working Class hates every single demographic on that list: Professionals (who are often managers in businesses owned by white men who never went to college), teachers (who keep trying to teach good American kids "stuff they don't need to learn"), liberated women (who are a shame to society, who "keep getting abortions"), lawyers ('nuff said), Stockbrokers (moneysuckers and crooks), and foreigners, minorities, and tree-huggers and those against good old fossil fuels.

The moderately affluent business owners, though from an socioeconomic point of view are not considered working class, nevertheless identify with the working class, which is why all this ranting about Obamacare did not make sense for the longest time.  When liberals think of the working class, they think of the black working-class, and the Latinos, and Native Americans.  Well, that's a mistake we're not going to make again very soon.

It is emerging that the Conservative Christian Right is divided about supporting the president-elect.  That's something they have to figure out for themselves: it is hard to advise people who have mythological beliefs from a rational point of view; they have to consult their fairies and come to some sort of conclusion within their cosmology.  All we know is that Trump is furiously walking back lots of his campaign rhetoric, and pumping up the apologetics on behalf of his team.  That's all very entertaining, but one thing we can be sure: no lessons will be learned.  Americans will not lay the blame for anything that goes wrong on Donald Trump and his ignorance; it will all be blamed on Barack Obama.  On the GOP side of the Aisle, the only mistakes are mistakes in public relations, period.  They have their eyes on the only prize: re-election.

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