Our Miniature, Bloodless French Revolution

I did not vote for Donald Trump.  I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, either.  But, I was pretty much 100% sure she was going to win. So, on Election Day, I found myself in the same state of shock as most of the country.  In the weeks that have past, we have come to accept it, and the parallels with Nazi Germany are being thrown left and right.  I do think that we’ve had a repeat of history.  But it’s not Nazi Germany.

You see, what we really had was a very toned-down version of the French Revolution (and probably the only reason we didn’t have a full-fledged one is because we have a democratically elected government).  When I was young and first learned about the French Revolution, I simply didn’t get it.  How could they have just sat there and let the people starve?  In fact, I sort of felt like the Aristocrats maybe deserved it a bit. Perhaps the Scarlet Pimpernel wasn't doing a good thing.

The fact is that Marie Antoinette’s famous, misquoted line is the crux of the matter. When she was told that the people had no bread, Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, said in the most airheaded way, “Well, then let them eat cake.”  Sometimes people think of this as Marie Antoinette not caring.  In fact, it’s a symptom of much bigger problem.  It’s not that she didn’t care.  She wasn’t even cognizant enough of them to not care. 

 This line is actually misquoted.  She actually said, “Then let them eat brioche.”  French law said that if a baker ran out of bread, they would need to sell their brioche for the price of bread.  So, Marie Antoinette was just not getting what they were saying at all. She was thinking in the frame of “we ran out of bread, better make a grocery run tomorrow.”  I can just imagine her advisers:   “You don’t get it, Marie, do you?  They don’t have bread because there’s no food.  PERIOD.  End of Story.”  

And really, all of us, the American Aristocracy—the Americans with college degrees, and under-control-mortgages, and a little extra money at the end of the month to put in the Disneyland jar—were in that same boat.  We completely underestimated the American 3^rd Estate.  On Election Day, we had our mouths hanging open wondering how this guillotine got in the center of Paris. 

Now we have to ask ourselves:  How was the Republican Party so extremely out of touch with its party base? How was the Democrat Party so off-course on what the people wanted in general? How were the pollsters so very wrong? How was the media’s thermometer so in need of a recalibration?  And the answer is that we were as clueless as Marie Antoinette.  

You see, we got so caught up in protecting all the minority rights that we made a whole group of people feel as though they no longer mattered.  That wasn’t the intention, but quite frankly, our intention doesn’t matter.  That’s what we did.  

Now I have to ask myself, what did I miss?  

And here’s what I’ve come up with: I missed it all.  I didn’t understand just how upset they were, and I didn't understand how many of them there were. 

And instead of vilifying them, why don’t we look into how they felt? These aren’t hateful people.  These are people who are angry.  And anger makes people do drastic things.  And Donald Trump somehow tapped into that anger.  I don’t think that Donald Trump will win another term, because as I’ve said before, he tapped into jealousy, anger and xenophobia.  And he doesn’t have the ability to keep his promises.  They’re unsustainable and untenable promises and policies.  And Jealousy, Anger and Dissatisfaction, as I’ve said previously, are all very tricky mistresses.  And when he doesn’t satisfy those mistresses, they will turn on him with a vengeance.  

But, perhaps it’s time that we sat down and said:  You’re angry.  I get that.  What I have a done to make you feel that you, as the Working Class White, don’t matter?

When I was eighteen, my family moved to Upstate NY.  I went away to college right before they moved, but I would return for summers.  And when I returned to work in the summer, I realized that there was a lot of Upstate NY that would be what most of my socioeconomic class would refer to as White Trash.  

This is the class that Trump harnessed, for the most part.  But instead of using this derogatory term, let me characterize them for you:

They grew up with their father working in a manual labor job.  He didn’t have a college degree, but he worked hard.  And by working hard, he was able to keep them in clothes, keep the lights on, keep the house out of the hands of the bank, and mom could stay home.  

Now they grow up.  And they go to work in a manual labor job.  No college degree, but their daddy didn’t have one either.  But instead of what it was, they go to work every day, and so does their wife.  She can’t stay home with the kids—no money for that.  So, they go to work, and they work hard.  But they don’t have college degrees, and people really want those these days.  And they work hard, just like daddy did.  But now, their house is in foreclosure, the electric company is about to switch off the lights, and they’re in so much debt that they can’t even see a time or place where they could even pay off their interest, let alone their principle.  

Back to Upstate NY, specifically the Finger Lakes.  This place used to be the center of everything: manufacturing, agriculture, biomedical research, medical research, chemical synthetics, religious awakenings.  At one point, Upstate NY produced ½ of the world’s wheat.  Now, Xerox is going under, Kodak is in the soup, Jello left, Corning has moved most of its production, and it keeps going.  There are some soybean farms, and that’s mostly it.  

They don’t have the money to leave with the jobs.  So, they just sit there.  Falling deeper into debt.  And all the while, the media forgets that they exist.  They raise up the minorities by pushing the working whites further into the mud.  They talk about the minority’s rights. All the while, this majority is feeling forgotten.  And there they sit, out of sight, out of mind, ready to rise up. 

And there the American Aristocracy sits, remembering to not fat shame, and making sure that gay rights have been appeased, patting ourselves on the back for being so good at being inclusive.  Praising ourselves for how much better we are than our grandparents’ generation.  

“What about us?” they cried.  “While you’re feeding the poor in your urban soup kitchens, have you forgotten that most of the poor don’t even live there?” And we just mock them and call them uneducated rednecks, and lump them into a category of lower-intelligence.  

 I’m reminded of what Atticus Finch said of Mayella Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird. “She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance.” But instead of seeing that and finding solutions, we just made jokes.  

And I think about all of this, and I start to feel that I might have forgotten the 3^rd Estate.  

And all of the sudden, I find myself wearing the ridiculous white wigs, and caught confused as to how that guillotine made it to the center of Paris, when a reprehensible rich man somehow managed to grab their trust (heavens knows how a multi-millionaire gained their trust).

I don’t mean this as an accusation.  I am with all of you.  I, too, forgot that they existed.  I knew they were there.  Technically.  But I never thought about them.  I didn’t consider that most of the impoverished in our country aren’t urban, aren’t black and aren’t immigrants.  And I never thought that there were enough of them, or that they were volatile enough, to stage a coup in our comfortable political world.  

Unfortunately, when they did, they did so through Donald Fudging Trump.  And really…I guess we only have ourselves to thank for that.  Because we forgot the words of George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life, “Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you're talking about; they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?”

Perhaps it’s time to stop calling them horrid names and starting to think, “How did I contribute to this?” And “How can I make this better?” Thank heavens that our French Revolution hasn’t resulted in any Reign of Terror Yet. in any Reign of Terror yet.