A time to be silent, a time to speak
Donald Trump has won his second presidential term. What does this mean—for us as individuals, for our country, and for the world? Today is the second in a series of reflections on the revelations of this election season and the new moment it has ushered in. (You can read the first installment here.)
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Donald Trump’s very good week
Here are a few reflections on last week.
First, Donald Trump has made a remarkable political comeback, rising from defeat and impeachment to win a majority of the vote. That Trump won is not that surprising given how close the polls were. That he won every swing state and gained over fifty percent of the popular vote is remarkable.
Second, Trump’s election is significant in its demographic breadth. Trump’s relative success among minority voters along with his appeal to working class Americans represents an intriguing coalition. Trump won those who make under $50,000 and under $100,000, while Kamala Harris won those who make over $100,000. The Democrats now seem to be the party of people who listen to NPR. It’s not clear if this is a Trump specific phenomenon or whether it represents a permanent shift in voting patterns.
Third, despite a sound win by Trump, talk of realignment is premature. Let’s recall the 2008 contest, after which we were told Obama was a generational figure and we were entering a new era of Democratic government. That idea lasted about two years, until Obama’s party got shellacked in the 2010 midterms. By the end of Obama’s time in office his party had lost the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and over 1000 state legislative seats across the country. If it can happen to Obama, it can happen to Trump. And as noted, it is highly questionable whether a post-Trump Republican party can sustain this coalition.
Overall, it was a good week for Donald Trump, but, like the Roman emperors of long ago, he should be reminded that all glory is fleeting. The Republican House majority (likely but not confirmed at this writing) will again be razor thin. The Republican Senate majority is solid but not overwhelming. Trump’s own victory was similarly sound but historically modest. Trump should not make the mistake too many presidents make (including Joe Biden) of overreading his mandate. The election was less an endorsement of Donald Trump than a repudiation of the Biden/Harris administration.
Jon D. Schaff of Professor of Political Science at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. He’s the author of Abraham Lincoln’s Statesmanship and the Limits of Liberal Democracy and co-author of Age of Anxiety: Meaning, Identity, and Politics in 21st Century Film and Literature.
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Words are cheap
A pretty high percentage of Americans voted for someone who wants “Hitler’s generals,” who fantasizes about executing his opponents, and seems wobbly on the Constitution—and they feel justified for doing it. And a decent percentage of Americans are appalled and upset.
People on both sides feel the need to “say something.” People want to explain their position (favorably) and to try to explain the opposition (unfavorably). We are now, as we have been for a while, still in a war of words. In this moment, it is good to remember Proverbs 26:4-5. These back-to-back verses tell us, “Do not answer a fool according his folly, Lest you also be like him” and “Answer a fool as his folly deserves, Lest he be wise in his own eyes.”
Should we be saying something to our respective fools or not? Well, maybe “say less,” as the kids say. If you feel some kind of way about things, do something productive to build a better future for our country. If you feel that people’s fears are misplaced, do something to reassure your fellow citizens and to make sure their fears are not realized. Proverbs also reminds us that mocking others will not offer any solutions.
It is not that the outcome doesn’t matter; it absolutely does. And it is not that there’s nothing to say; there is plenty to be said. But what we do matters more. Words alone won’t get us where we want to go.
Elizabeth Stice is a professor of history at Palm Beach Atlantic University, where she also serves as the assistant director of the Honors Program. She is the author of Empire Between the Lines: Imperial Culture in British and French Trench Newspapers of the Great War (2023). In her spare time, she enjoys ultimate frisbee and putting together a review, Orange Blossom Ordinary.
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Stage right
The conservative mantra that “politics is downstream from culture” looks suddenly like a relic. With Trump’s second coming the lived repudiation of that law is complete—along with the melding of idealism, and even innocence, it reflects. Whatever idealism remains on the Trumpian right passes through the sieve of its world-weary, clear-eyed He-may-be-a-bastard-but-he’s-our bastard modus operandi. And that species of idealism comes out thin, if it comes out at all. The Republicans have fully completed the transfer of the nation’s cunning Cold War calculus to the home front. (Remember our good friends Trujillo, Pinochet, Médici?) They’re all Machiavellians now, over in the Grand Old Party. Christian Machiavellians, of course.
Politics as downstream from culture was at best a limited metaphor. All metaphors are, but this one failed the test of reality with an F-. Politics is not “downstream” from culture. Rivers run one way; politics oozes everywhere, a liquid that flows into crevices and sometimes comes in a flood. But politics is also a hammer that smashes. And it’s a lightning bolt that fells trees and lights fires. Politics certainly moves “culture”—another metaphor worthy of more attention than we give it.
It’s more likely today that we imagine politics as part of an “ecosystem,” and that’s closer to reality. Ecosystems include rivers—but also meadows and storms and bears and birth and death. Trump emerges within an ecosystem. He reshapes it, despoils it.
But all organic metaphors for the human realm finally fail. We do not follow the laws of nature. We are unnatural beings, ensnared in, as Augustine put it, a “chronic condition of civil war,” yearning toward peace, careening toward ruin. Happily, an unimprovable metaphor is within reach: The world is a stage. We, the unnatural ones, are the actors, agents of change, always in motion. That truth is exactly as terrifying—and as promising—as it sounds.
Eric Miller is Professor of History and the Humanities at Geneva College, where he directs the honors program. His books include Hope in a Scattering Time: A Life of Christopher Lasch, and Brazilian Evangelicalism in the Twenty-First Century: An Inside and Outside Look (co-edited with Ronald J. Morgan). He is the Editor of Current.
Am I being nit-picky if I raise an eyebrow at academics whose lives revolve around … saying things and putting words together … start telling folk to “say less” because words don’t get us where we need to go? It’s not that I’m actively opposing the vita activa, or that encouragements to good citizenship aren’t appropriate. Rather, there seems to be a trend these days–I’ve noticed it in a number of Christian publications, in fact, including my own denomination’s magazine–where the thoroughly academic writers suddenly veer from their vocation of explaining the world and suddenly launch direct attempts at changing it. They do that, of course, by saying things–sometimes by just ordering people around. I’ve been told to smile more, bake and share cookies, learn how to use pronouns correctly, be ready to apologize when I don’t, volunteer, and so forth. I guess all those are good, though I confess I don’t open my Chromebook in the morning to get instructions for how to allocate the hours of my day with that kind of specificity. Now, however, I’m being told to “say less.” I’m tempted to answer in the famous words of General Anthony Clement.