Brexit and Trump, Fear and Uncertainty

Brexit and Trump, Fear and Uncertainty June 24, 2016

I was stunned last night to watch the results trickle in from Britain and to see that it had voted to leave the EU. As a friend commented yesterday, this union has been about much more than economic prosperity as it has been a lynchpin in the peace enjoyed by western Europe for over half a century.

But enough of Europe. Let’s talk about the United States again…

As I was listening to the reasons being offered by those who were voting to leave the EU I heard a lot of the same concerns that are motivating politics in the US, and the Trump phenomenon in particular.

A Symptom

First, though, I think it is important to step back and take stock of what these phenomena might be symptoms of. There’s a reason that Trump won and that Sanders did so well, and I think it’s related to the reason that Britain voted to leave.

There are two realities that a massive number of people are experiencing at the same time.27824706785_09dc41418c_b

One of these is growing economic disparity. While capitalism continues to make the economic pie bigger, the actual size of the pieces that most people have access to are shrinking. This week the IMF warned that America’s shrinking middle class is  going to negatively impact our potential for economic growth.

In economics, as in politics, we are retreating to the extremes, leaving the middle increasingly vacant.

And there’s the rub. For the majority of people the economic outlook is worse now than it was thirty years ago. The cost of being a fully functioning member of society is increasing as well. If you want to be an average Joe who can keep up with your town’s baseball team and hold down a job you’ve probably just talked about paying over two hundred dollars per month for cable TV, internet, and a cell phone.

At the same time the persons are struggling, stock prices are at historic highs, in urban areas home prices are at unaffordable highs, banks continue to make money hand-over-fist, and we all know that our governments are owned by corporations.

The system is doing well, but the people aren’t. We haven’t heard. We haven’t listened. We haven’t cared. That’s bad.

Scapegoats

Then there’s part two. And this is where things have the potential to go from bad to insidious.

When things are bad we want someone to blame. Our deeply tribal DNA will always, whether we are cognizant of it or not, try to put the blame on someone who is not like us. Sometimes that “other” is a political party. Sometimes that “others” are other social or ethnic groups.

We start to blame our economic struggles on immigrants. We blame them for taking our jobs. We blame them for tapping into our social services and healthcare systems.

We fear for ourselves in the face of uncertainty. And we discover in the face of our neighbor a tangible object on which our fear might rest.

We have real things to be afraid of: putting food on our tables, the wellbeing of our children. And we experience fear of others who might harm our bodies through violence. And so we ensure that we can harm their bodies first. We see to it that they remain outside, where they will never be able to take from us to clothe their children or take our bread to feed their elders.

I would suggest that here we are seeing as well the ongoing struggle to come to grips with our post/late-modern world, in which multiculturalism is a given and the comforts of cultural hegemony and cultural isolation are slipping away.

Next thin you know our churches are going to have to have two different worship services: one for traditionalists who want things done like they were in the 50s and 60s, and another for people who want something more contemporary. Change is disorienting. It is discomforting. And usually it feels, in the depths of our being, like something has gone terribly wrong.

And so we want someone to blame.

In Bed with Different Powers

At the same time that all of this is happening, leaders of the ecclesiastical industrial complex have been coming out in support of Donald Trump. Jerry Falwell, Jr.’s endorsement of Trump came with a photo of them in front of a Playboy magazine cover. (Falwell’s spokesperson will no doubt soon assure us that only reads it for the articles.) The irony of this for a movement that has built itself through construction of a sexual purity culture is rich beyond words. Screen Shot 2016-06-24 at 7.14.50 AM

But the irony here is not nearly so important as the lessons of history.

There has been a time, not yet out of memory for our elders, when an economically depressed people found a leader who gave them a scapegoat. He adopted the language of Christians when it suited him. And many of them, in turn, supported his rise to power. It proved deadly for the scapegoats. We all know in hindsight that we could never support Hitler. But can we learn from the past well enough to not repeat it?

Our fears are real. And many of them are well founded. But a time of fear is rarely a time when we act in wisdom. Every time I’ve heard someone say, “I didn’t sleep at all, thinking about what I had to do here,” they made a bad decision.

Fear is telling us that we need to stand apart and take care of ourselves. The reality is that we need each other more than ever. (What’s Wall Street going to do when there’s no middle class spending $600 every other year on a new smart phone?)

Fear is telling us that we have to cling to the way things are and get back to the way things were. The reality is that we cannot turn back the clock, which means that we have to find a way to create a better future together.

Fear is telling us that our neighbors are our enemies. The reality is that we face common enemies in hunger and cold, in sickness and death, in fear itself, in exploitation by systems and powers that are greater than ourselves.

We need better leaders. We need to be led in a better way. We all need greater courage to follow. And we all need greater courage not to.


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