Getting Beyond Trump: It’s Well Past Time We Start Dealing with the Larger Picture

Someone suggested to me that I write a follow-up to my book, Why Trump? I never stopped publishing articles online about the right wing and how to respond to it, but that someone was correct; I needed to do more. It is now two years after Why Trump? Some things have changed, but the underlying situation remains the same. The right wing is still turning the United States into a two-tiered society, and worse, there is no effective opposition to the right wing.

America isn’t the way it is because Trump is president. Trump is president because America is the way it is. Trump became president within a system. He’s responsible for his actions, but it is a system that allowed, if not enabled, him to gain power. Trump is a symptom. If Trump is wrong, then something is also wrong with the American system that is enabling his wrongdoing.

What is an effective opposition to Trump’s and the right wing's extremism? It’s certainly not simplistic sloganeering, name-calling, and memes. I don’t suggest that we not oppose Trump’s excesses, but unless you are also willing to oppose the wrongs that are historically entrenched in the United States’ political and legal systems that enable Trump and the right wing, you are, in the end, also enabling Trump—and future Trumps, who just might be worse.

Thinking Trump was the problem has led to bigger problems. We need to get beyond Trump. We need to deal with causes more than with symptoms. Addressing the root causes of problems is the road to solving them. To recognize root causes, we need a clearer understanding of US society and its history.

I don’t provide easy answers because there are none. Avoiding the temptation of easy answers is one of the guiding principles of this book. We don’t need labels, slogans, and memes; we need to be open-minded and clear-eyed about what is happening and why. Only then will we be able to start extricating ourselves from the current morass of echo chambers and start building a better politics and society.