By Janlee Wong
Are you angry? The phenomenon known as Donald Trump can be summarized in one word: ANGRY! It makes sense. The Donald is an angry man when he gets on stage. Just like in the movie Network, he exudes, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” Or in another movie, Falling Down, the angry man is asked: “Is that what this is about? You’re angry because you got lied to?”
Somewhere in America, there’s always been angry people, but the Donald has captured it so well, and projected it so well, that he’s winning over the angry people and they’re coming out to vote for him. And what are the angry people angry about? Everything.
America used to be great. That’s the beginning refrain for the Donald Trump siren song. (I can) make America great again. That’s the chorus. After World War II, America was the mightiest power (economically, militarily, socially, culturally) in the world. Through force of arms, economic and military aid, and the power of our ideas such as capitalism, democracy, hope and idealism, we helped and influenced many countries ravaged by the global conflict that killed millions upon millions. Hence our greatest enemies became our strongest and most successful allies – Germany and Japan.
Yet, our ally in war became our enemy in peacetime – the Soviet Union. For the next almost 40 years we fought a new kind of war, the Cold War. We divided rather than unified the world into communist and non-communist camps. We fought communist dictators with our own anti-communist dictators. We and the communist world sold and supplied billions of dollars of weapons so each could win by killing the other side.
Our economic success led us to be the wealthiest nation in the world. Even our poor were many times wealthier than the poor of other countries. With the fall of communist economic systems and the embrace of capitalism, we thought we had finally won it all. Yet, the allure of capitalism was tempered by the reality that only the few will become super wealthy and the rest of us will be either middle class or poor. With deregulation and the anything goes in the financial world, super capitalism showed it’s true colors with maximum profit taking undercutting the middle class by making it harder the wages and income to grow (keeping expenses (wages) down to maximize profit).
Information technology exploded but benefited only a few and the well educated. After all why hire as many people when automation can do the job? And for those manufacturing and energy sectors that employed so many people, labor became too expensive for optimal profit making so move those jobs elsewhere where labor is cheaper and there are few regulations.
For those farm and service sector jobs, for those non-union construction jobs, immigration reshaped our the labor pool drawing in millions of poor workers willing to work for cheap wages, no benefits and in poor working conditions without complaining. This system also hurt our own native born poor by retarding wages and diminishing the power of organized labor.
No wonder some people are angry. They’ve been left out of the economic dream. They’ve been “invaded” by immigrants who fuel an economic system that keeps the poor and the middle class down. Socially and culturally, civil rights for racial, ethnic, religious and sexual minorities, the rise of secularism over religion and the advent of integrating new cultures and languages into a multi-cultural society is almost too much to bear. No wonder some people are angry.
Our drift to a individualistic and libertarian society over a communal one has exacerbated the divide between those that see a role for government programs and regulation and those that wish for a very small government role with almost no government intrusion and interference. A society that lets individuals do whatever they want gives rise to a gun society so individuals can protect themselves against other individuals and big government control. Sadly a few individuals use their guns to express the anger.
So the angry people are seeking a leader that is both angry and promises to address these angry problems with simplistic solutions. They also seek out a person who is not to be bothered by facts, realities or complexities. Make it simple. Just do it. It appeals to the instant gratification, action oriented culture that we have become. Donald Trump is the perfect angry man.
