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America Votes: Trump Yes, Postmodernism No

By Walter Donway

November 22, 2016

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This is Part II of a two-part series on the first Postmodernist election.To read the first part, click on — “The Media Stages a Postmodern Election.”

“During the last forty years, we have seen such postmodernism come to dominate the humanities in higher education and replace traditional scholarship with puerile analyses cast in terms of race, sex, and economic status. Very recently, this corrupting postmodern technique has been transmitted downward to the mass media.”

Dr. Stephen Hicks, Professor of Philosophy, Rockford University

The college-bred peers of the media, overwhelmingly the millennial generation, processed through the universities at the present flood tide of postmodernism, lunged at the bait, swallowing the hook, the sinker, and half of the line. They were not alone. Black Americans, already committed to salvation through Democratic politics, received the message that the Republican Party had nominated an outright racist. Women, overwhelmingly younger women, but many others, received the message that the Republican Party had nominated a misogynist insensitive toward the weak (handicapped). Hispanics received the message that the Republican Party had nominated an anti-Hispanic authoritarian.

Much of the Republican leadership cracked under the media pressure. House Majority Leader Paul Ryan disavowed his party’s Presidential candidate based on the Mexican judge story and the “pussy tape.”

Much of the Republican leadership cracked under the media pressure. House Majority Leader Paul Ryan disavowed his party’s Presidential candidate based on the Mexican judge story and the “pussy tape.” At the second Presidential debate, by the way, as soon as the “pussy tape” was introduced, Mr. Trump simply apologized, saying he was not proud of it, it was inappropriate, and it did not represent who he was now, over a decade later. The media instantly rejected this apology, on behalf of all American womanhood, as insincere and inadequate, and went full speed ahead in their caricaturing of Mr. Trump.

For the media, there was only one unforeseen problem—but it was one that on election eve and after had them confused, flushed with embarrassment, and, if only momentarily, humble. “Where did we go wrong?”  “How did we get it so wrong?”

The variants on those themes have been multitudinous and they continue today, in the wake of what is called the “greatest election upset” in history. How did the polls (with exceptions I mentioned), the press analysts, and the pundits almost uniformly declare that candidate Trump did NOT represent any common American values and would be resoundingly repudiated in the election? “How did we get it so wrong?”

On election eve, the TV anchors and panelists awaited the Clinton victory—yes, there was nervousness, only two days before the FBI had concluded, abruptly, that it had no recommended charges based on its new investigation of Secretary of State Clinton’s possible criminal abuse of classified intelligence information. A bit of a cliffhanger, but the polls reliably showed that in two days she had sprung back to leadership; all would be well.

They had fashioned, out of postmodernism’s premises, a narrative of the politically correct first female candidate for President, bringing us together, and her opponent, the billionaire racist, misogynist, xenophobic, cripple-teasing bigot and “divider.” And they had believed this story themselves, as we believe, however improbably, what confirms our deepest assumptions, and focused on the part of their audience who also believed them. And never imagined that any serious, significant remnant of Americans would fail to accept their fable.

What went wrong? The postmodernist press corps fashioned a narrative, with suitable characters and plot, and a tone of rising anger and anxiety. Their peers among the White college-educated, Black spokesmen (or entertainers), and Hispanic leaders in the great cities on both coasts, plus Chicago, agreed and reflected back to them their righteous indignation.

Indeed, election eve began, as had the election, with New York, California, Illinois, and “Bosnywash” (the Boston to New York to Washington metropolitan corridor) unassailably in the Democratic camp with well over a hundred electoral votes for Hillary Clinton. On election eve, she never got above 215. The other bastion supposedly was Florida, where the great Miami-Dade-Broward County urban area went overwhelmingly for Clinton, but the rest of the state narrowly offset this to give Trump a pivotal victory.

On election eve, the panelists (as mentioned, I was following PBS Channel 13) watched anxious, then bewildered, then alarmed, then confounded as a brilliant red fire burned across America through state after state, region after region, where voters did not hear the postmodernist sirens screaming their alarm at “Miss Piggy” or the women who came out the past to charge “inappropriate touching.”

In one of the most indefatigable campaign schedules in history, a 70-year-old supposed “playboy” had made five campaign stops a day with high-energy, ringing appeals to “Make America Great Again.” The spacious sweep of America between the two coasts heard a message that an America they increasingly could not understand, with ideals unrelated to their lives, would not in the end supplant the America they knew and loved.

As the drumbeat of postmodernist alarms threatened to drown out any opposition, Mr. Trump was drawing astonishing crowds to rally after rally. In the closing days and hours, Mr. Trump campaigned for the most part alone—the media said “lonely,” “isolated,” “rejected,” “abandoned by his party”—but his supporters watched Hillary campaigning with entertainers like Jay-Z—who supposedly represented Black Americans—rapping about “ni**ers,” “pimps,” and “motherfu**ers” while the media rolled on about Mr. Trump’s vulgarity and insensitivity. (Unbelievably, Mr. Trump heard about this and said, quite casually, to an audience, “I like Jay-Z.”) It was vintage Trump: say what you believe and damn the torpedoes.

And so, the wild red fire blazed through the evening—Florida for Trump, North Carolina for Trump, Pennsylvania for Trump, Ohio for Trump, Iowa for Trump: All the supposed “battleground states,” which Trump had to sweep, fell one by one. Reliable stones in the “blue firewall” that guaranteed Clinton’s victory—such as Michigan and Wisconsin—fell to Trump.

I was watching the panelists literally begin to mumble, heads down, “So what went wrong…?” “We have to ask ourselves…” “Why didn’t we see this coming?”

They had fashioned, out of postmodernism’s premises, a narrative of the politically correct first female candidate for President, bringing us together, and her opponent, the billionaire racist, misogynist, xenophobic, cripple-teasing bigot and “divider.” And they had believed this story themselves, as we believe, however improbably, what confirms our deepest assumptions, and focused on the part of their audience who also believed them. And never imagined that any serious, significant remnant of Americans would fail to accept their fable.

In brief, voters for Mr. Trump had heard his positions, almost obliterated in mainstream media coverage, and heard Clinton’s “let us unite, stronger together,” but had said, “No, we will not unite around the postmodernist slogans and goals. We will united around, and vote for, OUR values.”

And now, we must bow briefly to a seemingly different group, namely those among the supposed postmodernist audience whose votes added to the consternation of the media. On November 8, some 8 percent of Black Americans, one-third of Hispanic Americans, and more than half of white women voted for Donald Trump to be their President. In assuming that politics is all about identity groups, that ideas are a function of oppressed and oppressor conflicts, the media simply missed millions of individuals they had taken for granted. One out of three Hispanic Americans saw reason in Mr. Trump’s positions; one in twelve Black American perhaps—I am speculating—did not like being represented in the great struggle for America’s values and future by Jay-Z and Beyonce or perhaps agreed with Mr. Trump that Black-on-Black crime, not the police, are devastating our inner-cities; and more than half of white women voted on issues they saw as more important than the “pussy tapes” and “Miss Piggy.” Who would ever have suspected?

A final factor, much speculated on, but impossible to quantify, are secret Trump voters. In our time, the only deadly sin we recognize—the only trespass warranting anathema–is being politically incorrect toward an “oppressed” group. This includes not only outright bigotry but any failure of “sensitivity.” On virtually the first day of the campaign, after Mr. Trump’s comment that Mexican criminals were being ejected across the border along with the millions of what he called “good people,” it became profoundly suspect, at least in the New York I know, to withhold condemnation of Mr. Trump. After the Mexican-American judge saga, the “pussy tape” saga, the Miss Piggy saga, and the Kovaleski saga, admitting openness to the Trump message became like being, well, being a black man in Mississippi in 1920 suspected of lusting for white women. It simply was not possible to socialize after committing the Trump heresy. Earlier in the campaign, my wife of some 20 years, told me: “I don’t know if I could live with someone who voted for Trump.”

Theirs is advocacy journalism, not reporting, and the advocacy was: stop Trump.

Postmodern journalism staged managed this situation—consciously, I believe—because it reflects their own philosophical assumptions. Theirs is advocacy journalism, not reporting, and the advocacy was: stop Trump. Yesterday, I walked into a restaurant and spied a man, a lawyer living in Sag Harbor, with whom I had spoken at the very beginning of the campaign. He waved and said, “So … what did you make of all this?”

My habitual response to that inquiry, throughout the campaign, had been a pained smile suitable to any interpretation. He hesitated for a few seconds, watching me, then asked: “Did you vote for him?” He hastened to add, “I mean, I didn’t want to ask before …”

“No, no, of course not,” I said.

He shrugged and rolled up his eyes. “Hey, I did. I voted for him. Couldn’t stand more of the same.”

“Yeah, I did, too,” I said.

He replied “It’s okay. It’s over. Sit down, why don’t you? Did you see this table in the Post of who actually voted for him? Amazing!”

Just two white, male, college-educated oppressors letting down their hair. He said, “You know, my whole practice is in immigration cases…”

If you manufacture a story, believe in it, and pay attention only to that part of your audience that also believes in it, you have no reason to be startled when reality contradicts you. That is what happened on election evening 2016. Still, we should credit the “New York Times” for letting their “public editor,” Liz Spayd, assigned to represent reader views, to write on the day after election that “Times” stories in weeks leading up the election portrayed “… a juggernaut of blue state invincibility that mostly dismissed the likelihood of a Trump White House.”

The consequences are more serious than the cold-water bath that perhaps briefly awakened the postmodernist press. The frightening story they spun was taken seriously by much of their audience, by those attuned to postmodernist message. This was no mind-game, no competition for ratings—that which preoccupied the media and was exploited to the hilt by Clinton and her operatives.

An audience of educated, sensitive, attentive American men and women, and their children, became panicked as the election unfolded. Women told me they were taking anti-anxiety medications. Some mourned that they could not afford to leave the country. The media must have on its conscience families who so frightened their own children with the postmodernist narrative that, in the wake of the election, we see photographs of weeping, depressed Yale University undergraduate women.

After the briefest pause for shock at the election outcome, young men and women in the cities—first, New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, but also elsewhere—are surging through the streets, lighting fires, snarling traffic, and getting arrested. The press shakes its collective head, mournfully, and says: “Look at these young people distressed by the election.” President Obama, as always with reason and calm, urges restraint and even, in a post-meeting press conference, called Trump “a good guy.”

The media and politicians have done their thing. The election is over. They are prepared to move on. Great game, everyone. See you in four years.

We end where we began, with postmodernism and its premises, particularly that all politics is, and must be, a zero-sum game played by oppressors and the oppressed. That appears to be the view of demonstrators carrying signs that say “Not our President.”

But not others, now radically polarized not by Mr. Trump but the postmodernist press and a ruthless and cynical Democratic candidate, working in synergy, who may have given us four years of confusion and division over America’s leadership.

We end where we began, with postmodernism and its premises, particularly that all politics is, and must be, a zero-sum game played by oppressors and the oppressed. That appears to be the view of demonstrators carrying signs that say “Not our President.” Police report that in New York City, at least, the majority of demonstrators are not yet 16 years of age. Our kids took the media seriously; hey, it’s all they know.

That much of American journalism staged a morality play about what was at stake in the 2016 Presidential election, tells us nothing about what to expect from President-Elect Donald Trump. Scant attention was paid to Mr. Trump’s policy proposals, principles of government, and views of history. How many voters can state two or three of Mr. Trump’s positions, except “the wall,” halting and reversing illegal entry into America, and renegotiating some trade pacts?

That much of American journalism staged a morality play about what was at stake in the 2016 Presidential election, tells us nothing about what to expect from President-Elect Donald Trump.

The media demanded endless clarifications on “groping,” but I would have wished to know if Mr. Trump had heard of John Locke’s theory of property rights as indispensable to liberty—and what Mr. Trump thought of that, today. I would have wished to know how he understood the rash of mass murders in our schools—and the role of guns. I would have enjoyed a debate question on the proposition “that government is best that governs least.” I would have asked what role government can hope to play in “Making America Great Again” in a nation made great by capitalism, voluntary action, and private philanthropy—the system that exists in its purist form when government is strictly limited in its functions and attends to the rule of law, not engineering “equality” or “greatness.”

I would have foregone meeting the undeniably beautiful Alicia Machado to know the mind of the man who now will be President. He remains to me too much an enigma; I have hopes, but not much more.
 

 

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