I couldn’t see the issue of why so many people are voting for Trump when it was right in front of me. When you are part of an elite class as I am now, you often use selective memory to forget about money until something slaps you in the face to wake you up.
I forgot that most America’s problems are based in classism which is at the heart of our divisions. I think that it is at the core of our nation’s various isms because it affects everything. I now see the forest for the trees about why Trump is still in contention even though he is morally bankrupt. “It’s the economy, stupid,” a statement made in 1992 by James Carville who was a strategist for Bill Clinton.
I have watched different videos of people who were long time Democrats who were voting for Trump. When asked, “How can you vote for him when he is such a terrible person? Are you choosing the right thing to do over against his moral lapses and they simply responded “yes.” So many elites including me can’t figure out why voters are all right with him. It is not so much what Harris stands for or her plan to help Americans with gaining their financial footing. It is the existential issue of what they have been experiencing during the current administration. It is what is happening to them now despite Harris having a better plan and everyone across the globe with the same inflation dilemma. The Trump supporters live in the now of what they don’t have of fear of losing.
What happens is elites such as me look down our noses and say, “How could they be so dumb.” Elites don’t live paycheck to paycheck, but MarketWatch’s survey 66.2% and Bankrate’s survey is 70% of our nation do. There is additional data that reflects that living paycheck to paycheck means that one crisis will immediately put you in debt.
How would you and I like to live like that? Oh! Wait a minute! I did! A “depression memory” doesn’t go away after financial struggle of paycheck to paycheck with the thought that one crisis will put you in serious jeopardy. I have counseled people who have enormous financial success after coming up during tough financial times and are still looking over their shoulder for the grim reaper of debt acting as a shadow because it is not about money anymore. It is about vulnerability.
Coupled with this phenomenon is the research by David Callahan, the author of The Cheating Culture, that outlines the results of his work among our American citizenries. The bottom line is that given the choice, we will choose money over integrity. I know a physician who recently retired who is totally against Harris. He has a medical degree, a law degree, and degree in Business Administration. I was shocked to see his words on Facebook. It was all about Harris and the Democrats raising taxes and imposing a high capital gains tax, taking his hard-earned money. However, I remembered he came from a large middle-class family with several siblings, went to a mid-tier college in Pennsylvania, and worked hard to pay for a good bit of his academic life. Perhaps he was living paycheck to paycheck with no back up. I can only guess that he did. We never talked about it!
Then I did the hard work of tapping into my own vulnerability of living paycheck to paycheck after my father had his crippling stroke when I was in tenth grade. We lived on 60% disability of his weekly paycheck that we received which was 60% of not much. That was a psychological turning point for me and drove me to factories to work before scholarships to Berkeley at Yale and Duke kicked in with a fellowship to Duke from Berkeley at Yale.
So, here is the truth. If I can transport my psyche and soul back to paycheck to paycheck and someone came along who lacked morality but would be new from the leadership that I was receiving, I would have voted for them in a heartbeat. You see that you will do the irrational thing when passion and emotion enter and reason leaves.
When I saw those people interviewed who shifted their vote to Trump, I said to myself, “There but for the grace of God, go I.” We can fool ourselves, but vulnerability is like a shadow that is always there when you are living paycheck to paycheck waiting for that crisis that will put you under. I am hoping for a win for Harris, but I now understand why Trump may prevail. It certainly won’t be because he has better policies or morals.
Comments