Between Now and November

Democrats and their mainstream media allies hate Donald Trump, and that hate has been the central political dynamic of the past four years. By extension, they also hate Trump supporters which comprise more than 60 million Americans who they consider ignorant at best, or irredeemably racist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic at worst. As someone who held my nose when voting for Trump in 2016 I shall likely do so again in November, only this time with relish.

Democrat voters interviewed by Mainstream Media during the New Hampshire primary last week were asked who they liked, but their answers were more about who they didn’t like — Donald Trump. They weren’t sure what Democrat to vote for and would make up their minds in the voting booth, at which time they would choose the candidate most likely to beat him. Bernie supporters were rabid for their guy but supporters of the other candidates were unenthusiastic. Democrat and media pundits are afraid Bernie will get the nomination and then be easily beaten by President Trump.

The pundits, however, still don’t understand the 60+ million Americans who voted for Trump in 2016 and likely will again in November. Neither did they understand the Tea Party movement a decade ago. Back then they went looking for Tea Party leaders to interview but couldn’t find any. They couldn’t comprehend that this was a real, spontaneous, grassroots movement against what an Obama Administration which was growing government. Obamacare was taking over the healthcare industry and the president was spending nearly a trillion dollars on supposed “shovel ready jobs” to stimulate the economy.

At CPAC 2010 in the lobby

Attending CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) in Washington during 2010 and 2011, I sensed a discomfort in the Republican establishment running the conference with the upstart Tea Party thousands of whose members invaded CPAC. Republican leaders were not sure where this new, amorphous, small-government throng would fit in, if indeed it could fit in at all. There were no clear leaders with whom dealmakers could meet and talk about making sausage. Meanwhile, Democrats in President Obama’s IRS like Lois Lerner obstructed the Tea Party’s efforts to procure 501(c)4 status for their groups which would enable them to organize and raise funds.

Facing Republican condescension and Democrat obstruction, it soon became apparent to virgin activists in the Tea Party that neither side wanted them in their respective Washington cloisters. Thus spurned, these pockets of the Tea Party returned to their rural enclaves and either organized locally or returned to political dormancy — until Donald Trump started campaigning around their country. He woke them up.

Previewing what Hillary Clinton would later say about Trump supporters, Democrat spinmeisters  ten years ago said the Tea Party was racist and xenophobic. In a September, 2019 interview with the leftist publication Mother Jones, Harvard government professor Theda Skocpol reiterated those accusations against the emerging Tea Party of 2010 who were later to become Trump supporters. She said Trump’s promise to build the wall pleased them and: “The other thing they like about Trump very much is that he ‘kicks ass,’ that he makes people on the left angry and upset. They love that,” she said.

They certainly do. While many former Tea Party types were put off by Trump’s incessant braggadocio, they could overlook it because he so enflamed the left. When Democrats and their mainstream media allies called Trump racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, and all the rest, they recalled the same baseless slurs being thrown at them years before. The “Never Trumpers” included Republican leaders as well as Democrats and were the same people who spurned the Tea Party. Trump had the same enemies they did, so the old aphorism: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” took hold and held fast.

As facts continue to emerge about Obama Administration efforts to prevent Trump’s election, and subsequent efforts by his surviving minions and Democrats in Congress to bring down his presidency, Trump’s support only hardens and increases. At this point in the primary process, it doesn’t appear that any of the Democrats running can possibly beat Trump. He continues to tweet and say stupid things but the economy is humming along. He’s making trade deals. He’s getting judicial appointments approved. With nine months until the election, he looks unbeatable.

But nine months is an eternity in politics. Anything can happen between now and November. Like what you may ask? The Corona virus, for one thing. Chinese efforts to contain it have been futile. So have their efforts to censor information about how serious it is. Their economy is slowing considerably and likely to tank. Pulitzer-Prize-winning science writer Laurie Garrett has covered first-hand over thirty epidemics worldwide and she offers a very sobering account of what we may expect from the virus now being called COVID-19. “The economic and political repercussions are going to be enormous,” she says.

Finding Ourselves in History

To the old aphorism “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know,” I would like to add: “…and neither does anybody else.” None of our best historians understand all of history. They specialize. They study what happened in a particular time and place. They try to be objective in a Jack Webb-style: “Just the facts, Ma’am,” but that can make for dull reading. So they adopt the writing style of a storyteller. They humanize the main characters, illuminating both virtues and flaws. They make judgements. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t sell many books. If they’re also teachers, and many are, their students would fall asleep.

Like the late star of Dragnet, historians are trying to solve a mystery, but unlike him they’re not going to arrest a perpetrator. They may, however, tarnish a reputation here and burnish one there. Such may be their intent when beginning their research. The best historians try hard to be unbiased, but they know they’re human and will always fall short of perfect impartiality. Others only offer a pretense of impartiality.

Bias or fact?

Another human factor that may work to distort history I will call peer pressure. When historian colleagues all tend to interpret the events of a particular time and place in a particular way, there’s a strong tendency to go along. One might dare to offer a slightly different shade of meaning but to go further would risk being shunned or even attacked.

When I taught history I’d do what many teachers do and parse the word, suggesting it can mean: “his story.” as if there may be other stories offering different perspectives on the same events.  Feminists like to parse the word too, but emphasizing the “his” part as biased in favor of men, and that students might want to think of it as “herstory” as well.

Never was I taught history as a separate subject until fourth grade when Sister Charles Paul passed out the first history books at St. William’s School in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. By the end of September I’d read all of it and longed for more, but no more came along. I don’t remember getting any more history texts until I went to high school and had Western Civilization I and II. Then it was US History in junior year and that was it until college. Never did I sense a love of history in my teachers though. Many high schools gave US History classes to football coaches who had little or no interest in them.

After my risk of getting drafted declined in 1971 I dropped out of college, then went back in ’73 after deciding to become a teacher. For that I needed degrees and took a few more uninspiring history courses, so my interest in history had to be sated by my own research. After being horrified watching the Adolph Eichmann trial with my father in 1961, I learned all I could about the Holocaust. Then the Vietnam War affected everyone in my demographic as my best friend and others I grew up were sent there. Some died and all were profoundly changed, so I learned all I could about that as well. Thus did those two phases of history became my own specialities. 

D-Day, WWII

When students came to me with little or no historical perspective or interest, I devised methods to help them to fix themselves in time. Digital imagery became available in the ’90s, so I encouraged students to bring in pictures of their ancestors to be scanned. Then they digitally constructed  horizontal timelines of the 20th century with pictures of their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents across the top above the years corresponding to their lifespans. Across the bottom they put images of major world events occurring during those lifepans. Just as Vietnam had dominated my generation, World War II and the Great Depression affected the lives of their grandparents and/or great-grandparents. World War I affected their great-great-grandparents, and so forth. They could also import pictures of presidents who served during those lifespans. 

Ellis Island

After that exercise, study of relevant historical occurrences became personalized. My hope was they would gain a deeper understanding of how world and national events can have enormous effects on the lives of ordinary people. Many students were thus motivated to question surviving ancestors about those events. Thus they’d fix family members in time and gain a deeper understanding of where they fit in too.

Last week’s column concerned fixing students in space by learning geography. My hope was they would leave my class having merged the two skills. They would be able to visualize where their ancestors came from, know when they came here, and even why. They’d be motivated to research further back in time as well as further away in space, and then realize how they came to be here — living and speaking English in rural Maine.