I Tried to Warn You. Are You Now Ready to Solve the Problem that’s Bigger than Trump?

This isn’t an “I told you so.” This is an “all right, let’s talk about where we go from here.”

We could argue about what mistakes were made by Democrats this election. Of course they made mistakes because, obviously, they failed to stop the reactionary right. But how about instead of assigning blame we begin to find solutions?

I have been arguing for awhile in articles and books that Trump is not the problem we face. The problem isn’t Trump, it’s not his past or future administrations, it’s the people who brought him to power. The problem and threat to our freedoms is the deeper, older movement that currently takes Trump as its focus.

The election result demonstrates that. If Trump was the problem, then the incessant mention of his many failings and mockery of his many absurdities would have led to a decline in his support. Trump is pathetic, delusional, and corrupt, and those traits would eliminate support for a leader, but Trump isn’t a leader. Trump is a figurehead. Nothing anyone says about Trump changes the movement because the movement is not about Trump.

Trump is the current focal point, spokesman, and political figurehead of the right-wing American nationalist movement. There’s nothing new about Trump, nothing new in anything he’s ever said (well, except that “grab ’em by the pussy” line). Trump’s divisive rhetoric is a rehash of the anti-immigrant and faux moral outrage propaganda that has been present in American politics since the nation’s founding.

The American Right Wing

All right-wing movements share a common goal — to conserve and/or return to traditional power structures that restrict power to a small group, creating a two-tiered society of the haves and have-nots. American nationalism is a right-wing ideology with two main components. One is the idea that America is exceptional and superior to other countries. The other is the idea that America’s exceptionalism can be maintained only by a two-tiered society that concentrates power in the hands of white male Protestants. Thus, American nationalism includes the belief that giving power to nonwhite male Protestants corrupts the purity of America. When you understand these components of the American right wing’s ideology, everything they say and do makes a lot more sense.

Trump didn’t invent American nationalism. Trump has never invented anything. He just slaps his name on things — buildings, planes, bibles, and American nationalism. He doesn’t give a shit about anything or anyone but himself. If Trump has accomplished anything, it’s the con job of selling himself as a patriot to bilk people out of their money.

Ask the Correct Questions About the American Right Wing

It’s understandable that people on the Left attack Trump — he’s the figurehead, so he’s the easy target. But if Trump disappeared, little would change because Trump is a symptom of America. Attacking Trump leaves the underlying American right wing unscathed. It actually helps the right wing by reinforcing their desire to defend the purity of their American nationalism from the corruptive influences of those who oppose their ideology.

Instead of attacking Trump, the symptom, address the causes. Ask why some Americans want a two-tiered society and why they think that power concentration makes America exceptional. Ask why those Americans want to keep power away from whole classes of other Americans.

Asking those questions gets to the core of the problem. Doing so will reveal why some Americans want Trump as their figurehead, why they don’t care about his crimes and boorish behavior, and why they believe his lies rather than the truth about him. They support Trump because he says he hates the same people they hate, and they believe he will relegate those people to the status of have-nots in America’s two-tiered society.

It’s about acquiring power and meaning. People who support and even idolize Trump get feelings of importance and meaning from belonging to a movement. That’s common human behavior. People frequently join groups and/or become fans of public figures to gain a sense of importance and identity — think of fans of pop music groups or sports teams.

People gravitate to American nationalism to buttress their sense of self with a sense of meaning — a sense of meaning that comes at the cost of other people’s rights and privileges and sometimes lives. That’s what we are dealing with — that right-wing people get their senses of power and meaning from being American nationalists and the feelings of superiority it breeds.

It’s not about Trump; it was never about Trump. The targets of our efforts to maintain freedom need to be the American right wing who take Trump as the current focus for their reactionary movement and the millionaires using them all as useful tools to gain more wealth and power.

This isn’t rocket science, and yet, these realities are not grasped, or at least not talked about enough, including by the Democratic Party.

A Smarter Opposition

The problem we face isn’t Trump. The problem is the older, larger, deeper right-wing movement. That movement finds success because it is funded by big money corporate interests, and it sells a vision of a two-tiered America. The sales campaign succeeds by offering people a sense of meaning wrapped in the flag of American nationalism.

Defending freedom and equality for all Americans requires that we oppose the ideology of the American right wing. The Democratic Party’s strategy of attacking Trump and reaching out to moderate Republicans didn’t work, as if it ever could have. A better strategy is getting back to basics and dealing with people and their need for meaning.

The hardcore MAGA people support Trump because he says he hates the same people they hate. Other people will side with the right-wing agenda because they find something in it with which they can identify. We can’t expect to talk with or affect the MAGA followers, but we can provide the rest of the country with an alternative to the American right wing.

What would that alternative be? Certainly more than just not right wing.

We can start by acknowledging that there have always been two Americas.

• The America that is a nation of immigrants, and the America that demonizes immigrants.
• The America that rewards hard work, and the America that rewards the wealthy at the expense of the working class.
• The America that promises liberty and justice for all, and the America of slavery and segregation.
• The America of universal suffrage, and the America of voter suppression.
• The America that defends freedom, and the America that defends corporate interests.

Politics is about power, and the American right wing wants the America that concentrates power into a two-tiered society that favors one group over others. The wealthy, who benefit the most from that America, sell their right-wing agenda to people by offering people a sense of meaning even though they aren’t tangibly benefiting from the right-wing agenda.

A smarter opposition to the right wing is to offer people the alternative of the America of opportunity and freedom. Not just talk about that other America, build it, show to people that we’re serious by doing it.

Obviously, that’s easier said than done, but the doing of it is necessary. We have to show people the alternative. We can and should talk about the Project 2025 agenda of an America that concentrates power in the rich elites. We also need to talk about the other America that circulates power among the people.

We can and should talk about people voting against their own self-interest when they vote for right-wing politicians. But instead of talking down to them as being ignorant and foolish, we need to show how they can find meaning in the other America.

Because when Project 2025 starts screwing over people, even, if not especially, the people who voted for Trump, we need to have a better alternative agenda ready for them. It won’t help to tell them we told them so. If we remain tepid and empty, or worse, hostile, they will stick with the right wing.

It’s not about Trump. Fuck him. We need to solve a problem much deeper than Trump. We need to oppose that larger American right-wing agenda, standing against them, yes, but more importantly, working to help everyone else.