I felt as if I were stuck in quick sand-sitting at a bar in
downtown Phoenix talking about economics and politics that my supposed
millennial, no student loan privileged ass had no place talking about. With
every thought or sentence I would sink more and more into the quick sand that
was my own white privilege where I was well off enough to actually care about
these things, to have the energy to talk about them over a beer, a meal, and
ambience. I would sink in until I would eventually collapse into myself,
realizing that I was not talking to others but more to my own mind, trying to
sort through the labyrinth of conflicting principles that my moderate head kept
throwing out. See…I was living on the cusp of a world that, for the next seven
months, was not going to allow me to camp out in the middle with my comforting
and easy moderate views. Primary season was ending and the general election was
coming.
The
last general election was like a mirage or a fossilized Rosetta stone that I
had yet to decipher. If you asked me who
Obama beat it would take me a minute to realize it wasn’t John Kerry. For all
of the coverage, pageantry, and outlandish behavior that come from any election
season it is rare that those who were in it recall the time fondly or in great
detail at all. It’s like surviving a storm and it is okay if not accepted that
any question of presence is met with an answer “Yes...I was there.” No other response is needed and at the
conclusion the country goes back to clicking headlines, posting videos, and
questioning why nothing ever seems to get done. It’s a cycle that has become so
monotonous that it often breeds immediate misremembrance, like the work week or
whether or not the dishes are clean or dirty. Then something like Donald Trump
happens.
All of
the media, liberal and conservative, were scrambling around as if a flash
grenade had just gone off, disorientated, fumbling, and maybe even blaming
themselves in a moment that should not have been self-righteous. (Than again,
when you are a talking head, when is any moment not self-righteous?) They
couldn’t even remember when it had all started or when it had even gained
steam. Up until Indiana they were all still convinced that it couldn’t work,
that the man that Donald Trump was and the sacred office that was President of
the United States could not be one election away from meeting. The campaign was
fleeting, people were too pissed off, he had alienated too many, he was too
brash, he was stumbling, he was on the god damn Celebrity Apprentice, there
were protesters, they were fighting, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, CONTESTED CONVENTION!
All of the glory that the chaos had brought to these media pundits had
evaporated away with the conjuring of the most unlikely of scenarios. The very people
whose eyes they wanted had done them one better and done something that they
all never wanted: nominated Donald Trump.
In a
time where the financial mat was most recently pulled out from under the feet
of hard working Americans and in a time where financial institutions seemed to
be as cared for and coddled as a new born baby, control and accountability was
no longer democratized but capitalized. The people who had suffered the most had
been shut out and punished seemingly more than the crooks who had put them
there. Most of the time these people didn’t even know it and kept chugging
along, searching for that idea of an American dream that they whole
heartrendingly wanted to believe still existed. They would continue like this,
the silent, seemingly stubborn majority of America that has too many scattered
voices and spectrums to unite as one. News stations would indirectly talk about
their fates through cryptic headlines of housing markets and job reports;
making sure to never refer to them directly by name. Maybe this was all proper
controlling by the media, for they knew if they called them out, if the
presumptive hornets’ nest was tapped, that the silent majority of the country
would begin to develop a voice. That’s a
stretch in and of itself when talking about a purely reactive industry where
the daily clicks matter more than the long, drawn out journalistic pieces that are
believed to not warrant anyone’s attention. More than likely they were beat to
the punch by Donald Trump who, whether accidently or intentionally, stumbled
upon this hornets’ nest.
I like to think it was accidently because
that’s the only way I can justify this long shot becoming a reality. A reality
so random that it could have only been brought about by accident and that the
rhetoric, the outrageousness that he said at the beginning of it all-the call
to ban all Muslims, the call for Mexico to pay for a wall on the border, the
take your pick buffet of sexist comments-was all to only gain some air time
with the media and maybe just get his name out there again. Free press for a crazy
and wacky campaign. To me there couldn’t have been any rhythm or reason to it
because that would go against what I thought of a nominee, who they should be,
how moderate they should be. My privileged mind could not fathom how the
Republicans could imagine winning with this candidate. Only then did I realize
that the media, papers, internet, and I were not thinking of the same
Republicans. We were thinking only of the generalized Republican.
It had been drummed into our brains for years,
ever since defense spending was rampant and everybody’s angry Grandpa was
labeled as a Republican. The Dems were for the little guys, the
disenfranchised, those whose voices were plugged out by the Koch brothers and corporations
that wanted women to keep their babies and criminals to die horrible deaths.
That’s what we had been taught; that trust fund kids were voting for Bush and
they would keep doing it to get the tax breaks. It all seemed to make sense
because Obama offered that hope and McCain and Romney were so white, so
establishment, that they fit that stereotype of working against the silent
majority, not understanding, not relating. Who would have thought that a white
billionaire would be the man to show the disarray in all this? To show the
gross prejudice that had been eroding right under the eyes of America. The Republican
party was being taken over.
The
money and pundits didn’t matter. The gasps for Meghan Kelly, the protesters at
the rallies, and comment after comment that most were convinced would be the
last knife in the back; it all didn’t matter. All of the perceived Republicans,
the sweater vest wearing, boat sailing, and entitled hoard, were not showing up
at the polls. It was a different kind of crowd. An angry, revolutionary type
crowd. They were disenfranchised, ignored, the crowd that the perceived
Republicans had been brushing over all of these years, not trying to corral but
not necessarily alienating. Maybe these
people agreed with some of the craziness that Trump possessed but I don’t
necessarily think so. I just think they wanted to see if they still had the
power and if the big money could be beat because that’s the irony of all of
this: Trumps meteoric rise to party nominee is the most American thing to
happen in any primary.
His
politics aren’t in the mold of the fore fathers and his alienation of a number
of demographics goes against all that this country stands for but it cannot be
argued that the power of democracy has not been better shown than in this
Republican primary of 2016. There was no good ol’ boy candidate. There was no
candidate backed by money or name recognition. There was only an outsider, a
person who had tapped a nerve among a population that was searching for a
figurehead more than a voice. They didn’t want the politics or the
rhetoric-they wanted a change. The voters wanted someone different, someone not
of the mold, someone who wasn’t the electable plug and chug, a person who would
bring change, even if it would be outrageous. They wanted to be reminded again
that they had a voice, that they could make a difference.
Now,
maybe this general election turns back to normalcy and the true moderate colors
of American show themselves in November and I breath a sign of relief. Even if
this is the case, we all would have still seen a seismic shift in the Grand Ol’
Party. The importance of this primary would still not be overshadowed by what
might end up being a not very close general election. It would be remembered as
a time where voters found a different, if not troubled voice again, over a
decade after the popular vote didn’t decide an election. There are inklings of
even the Democrat side finding a new voice-where a young, presumably entitled
and debt ridden populace is making a seventy something socialist relevant long
after the math has not been in his favor.
It all points to something
profound and revolutionary and…inherently American. 
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