Donald Trump's Presidential campaign, introduced in mid-June of 2015, was originally viewed by many sources as a joke. The Huffington Post, who started covering the campaign in July 2015, originally announced that they would be covering it under their entertainment section. They were eventually forced to change their tune in December, deciding that as the campaign plagued on and the opinions of Donald Trump became more offensive and dangerous, it was no longer a joke. Trump was gaining popularity, and the real danger of a Trump presidency was evident. It had to be addressed seriously. The Huffington Post moved articles covering Trump under the political category.
My colleague Alex Curran-Cardelli, recently wrote an article on Donald Trump's presidential campaign. In it, her argument was that if we just stopped giving Trump attention (essentially not sensationalizing him), his ideas wouldn't validate and encourage his supporters in the same way.
Her idea, in an ideal world, would work. I would love to open my Facebook page, and not read a single article about Trump. We wouldn't have to see his ridiculous comments on a daily basis, and without the press, he probably wouldn't double down on their ludicrous nature in the same way.
However, to simply dismiss Trump's comments, is, unfortunately, to dismiss a certain demographic of American voters. Voters who are mainly white, male, and angry. Joan Walsh of The Nation described them as "Republican voters who didn't go to college." David Coates of The Huffington Post cited Walsh before continuing on her claim, writing that Trump's supporters are "conservative Americans... now surviving on the very bottom rungs of the generally-threatened US middle class." These are voters who feel they have lost their place in America. Globalism and other structural economic changes in the 1970s have left the less-educated behind. Poor white voters who were hurt significantly by the 2008 recession, do not have the means to reinvent their economic plans in a world that increasingly does not have a place for workers who did not go to college, or will not be able to.
It is not unfair to say that white Americans felt more resentful about this consequence than per say, black and Hispanics, who have been left behind countless times in American history.
Trump's supporters, in the past eight years, have viewed Obama's America as elitist. These voters are distrustful of government. According to the Chicago Tribune, half of them have "a high school education or less and about 19 percent had a college of postgraduate degree... More than a third of his supporters earned less than $50,000 per year, while only 11 percent earned more than $100,000 per year." Some of them are not the same Republicans that we saw coming out for Mitt Romney in 2012, who was oft viewed as out of touch with the average American and seen as flaunting his wealth. Poor, white, Republican voters feel cheated and angry, and Trump is feeding right into their inner thoughts. They are often racist and feel powerless. Trump's ideals bolster their identity (and oft times, for male voters, their masculinity), providing authentication and validation of their offensive ideals.
Unfortunately, this is not a population that Americans can ignore. Their ideals, as we have seen through Trump's statements over the past six months, are dangerous and rightfully offensive. But their ideals are a monster that our country has created, and one that we must address. One that we can not address if we dismiss Trump as a ranting bully or insolent child.
Trump is a threatening beast; to ignore him is to ignore the danger he poses and the cultural climate of our society. To do so would be even more dangerous than the world Trump envisions. Trump is not a joke. Nor is he a child. He is an American; one who speaks for the people of an America he envisions. An America that is exclusive and contrary to the one believed to be possible after the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Trump's America was born out of a reaction to Obama's America. Many like to blame Trump's ideals on the man himself, but it was our culture that created him.
