Why Trump’s massive victory gives me hope for the future and renewed pride in the American experiment

The people have spoken and they have shouted:  We will not be told what to do, what to think, what to believe, how to act, how to live, and how to vote in record numbers. 

At the risk of sounding like Michelle Obama, I have never been more proud of my country than last Tuesday night.  Allow me to explain:  First, I have always been proud of my country.  A classic Gen Xer born in the 1970s and raised in the 80s, I grew up in a world that was far from perfect, but full of energy, spirit, fire, and a will to succeed, to push the limits of what is possible in everything from extreme sports to computer technology.  We were the Action Park generation, left to their own devices to explore, push those aforementioned limits even as children in our own admittedly limited way, and, yes, do some exceedingly stupid shit.  We were the generation that, like Tom Cruise, saw the world around them as kids and said, I want to do that someday, however ridiculous.  There was no horizon too far for our bikes or skateboards, no new discovery we didn’t want to make and likely brag about in our own exceedingly immature way, no dare that could go unchallenged or at least undebated.  Personally, I have always had a contrarian streak, a refusal to conform simply for the sake of refusing, one that you might say is in the Twiste family DNA.  Like Kurt Vonnegut famously satirized in Cat’s Cradle, when the powers-that-be hoped to popularize a strange new religion by banning it, the surest way to get me interested in something was to tell me not to do it.  Rules, when I was growing up and the extent to which they existed at all in many cases compared to the world of today, were meant to be questioned at the least, or wildly and joyfully broken at the most.  The old adage about being better to beg forgiveness than ask permission perhaps better characterized my youth and that of the great majority of my peers, a philosophy that persists into adulthood.  No, we aren’t exactly punk rockers, far from it in most cases, nor were we really outsiders in the classic sense of the term, but there was a stubborn streak of defiance, a reflexive questioning of authority, and a willingness to take risks, however stilly, stupid, or dangerous at times, that defined us.  Of course, there is an undoubted and inescapable streak of nostalgia to the youthful musings of a middle aged man at this point and any self-perceived defiance might well be greater in hindsight then reality.  There is also the sadder reality that many of my fellow citizens who weren’t white and middle-class during these same years were unable to enjoy the sort of childhood I did, but regardless, to me and many like me, it seemed like the world we grew up in simply no longer exists, especially over the past couple of decades.

For whatever reason, study after study has found that young people in America today are far more risk averse than previous generations and suffer from far more mental maladies, potentially as a direct result.  Late last year, Montclair University reported on an ongoing effort to study risk aversion in Generation Z compared to their elders.   As they put it, “Despite risk analysis research demonstrating that we live in one of the safest times ever, Gen Z experiences a disparity in risk assessment essentially having the perception that risk is everywhere they turn.”  This extends from both the perception of more dangers in life generally and a shift in what that very perception means in the first place.  While previous generations have implicitly understood that there are degrees of risk and a proper assessment of any given risk requires a person to weigh the potential reward, “Gen Z members view risk as either the presence or absence of safety in a situation” and live in a “world where risk is black and white: things are safe (safe spaces, e.g.) or contain dangerous risk.”  Not surprisingly, this has led them to engage in less risky behaviors as a result.  For example, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Youth Risk Behavior Study released the same year found that the percentage of high school students who had sexual intercourse declined from 47% in 2011 to 30% in 2021 while those currently having sex dropped from 34% to 21%.  Substance abuse also dropped dramatically during the same period with 39% of students drinking alcohol in 2011 compared to 23% in 2021 while marijuana use fell from 23% to 16%.  These might seem like positive developments on the surface given these behaviors are potentially dangerous and self-destructive, but it appears to me at least, that the decline is for the wrong reasons.  They aren’t avoiding risky behaviors other generations embraced because they have made a personal moral decision to better themselves for some reason.  Instead, it’s because they’re too afraid or too mentally unstable to embrace the fullness of the teenage experience.  As the CDC described it, “mental health among students overall continues to worsen, with more than 40% of high school students feeling so sad or hopeless that they could not engage in their regular activities for at least two weeks during the previous year—a possible indication of the experience of depressive symptoms. We also saw significant increases in the percentage of youth who seriously considered suicide, made a suicide plan, and attempted suicide.” While minorities and the LGBTQ community have suffered the worst throughout the decade, no one has been immune and overall, the “percentage of students across every racial and ethnic group who felt persistently sad or hopeless increased.” 

Based on this data, my own anecdotal experience, and other stories, from ridiculous viral videos where attractive young women with undoubtedly bright futures ahead claim they can’t afford all of the luxuries in life working at Walmart to coining new terms for how they hide in their parents house to a recent finding that Generation Z believes adulthood begins at 30, I’d resigned myself to the fact that America simply wasn’t my country anymore.  Contrary to the conventional progressive wisdom, this conclusion wasn’t because the country had grown more diverse since my (largely misspent) youth in 1980s Staten Island and 1990s New Jersey.  I am not clamoring for a return of all or mostly white neighborhoods with lily white picket fences.  Generally speaking, I am a fan of diversity. I went to college in Greenwich Village to immerse myself in New York City, where I was exposed to a lifetime’s worth of different backgrounds, sexual preferences, lifestyles and perspectives in four years.  Since then, I’ve spent much of my adult life working with people around the world, learning and sharing with them, and even before beginning my professional career, spent years in the car business working closely with just about every nationality on the planet.  I have enjoyed it all, and found that most people, at least in my generation, prefer broadening their experiences rather than limiting them, embracing the opportunity to learn about different people from different backgrounds.  No, my chief concern wasn’t what some rather insultingly and somewhat racistly call the “browning of America.” It was that the defiant, risk taking streak which transformed a backwater colony into the world’s only superpower was gone forever, replaced by a younger generation of conformists who did what they were told and were afraid to do anything else.   Coronavirus, to many of us, appeared to be a world-wide case study in this regard.  The sight of college students willingly confined to the dorm rooms, students in both high school and college complying with forced masking and social distancing, embracing remote education, and generally accepting that their world could be so radically diminished without their say in their formative years seemed a confirmation of how different the younger generation had become in just a few short decades.  As my forty-something friends discussed many times during the pandemic, they simply wouldn’t have been able to do anything like that to us, not a chance.  Even if they were foolish enough to try, we would have been busy defying their decrees before the words were fully out of their mouths, but perhaps most importantly, they wouldn’t have tried in the first place because they would’ve known no one was going to listen.  We were going to do what we were going to do anyway, for better or worse.

Equally crucial, the decline in rule breaking and an adventurous outlook on life was coupled with the rise of a radical anti-Americanism that has taught young people for years that their country is essentially irredeemable.  While children of my generation were certainly not taught that America was a perfect union, once again contrary to what passes for today’s conventional wisdom, we weren’t lectured constantly about her evils either.  The Founders were not routinely described as slaveholders, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson reduced to an asterisk after their names to undermine their history making and world changing accomplishments.  Critical Race Theory was still a socialist fantasy percolating around college campuses, and had yet to go mainstream, much less inspiring lesson plans in grade school.  Anti-racism wasn’t even a thing.  More importantly, civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. were seen as embracing fundamental American values, and the ideal of a colorblind society they sought was said to be founded in our original ideals in the first place; a continuation and an extension of our experience in freedom and inalienable rights instead of a repudiation.  There was no 1619 Project to insist the entire country was founded on the greatest fraud in history to protect the institution of slavery.  There was no white privilege, limited talk of white supremacy, which was generally reserved for actual white supremacists rather than those who believe being punctual is a crime against humanity on par with admiring William Shakespeare.  Math certainly wasn’t racist, and the world wasn’t framed entirely in terms of the oppressor and the oppressed with different levels of oppression depending on the uncontrollable aspects of your birth.  While we were taught the world had its problems and challenges, and so did America, we weren’t indoctrinated with the belief that either were beyond repair unless we abandoned everything that made us unique in the first place.  Throughout it all, we were inculcated with the sense that no dream was unachievable, no heights that could not be reached, nothing that would stand in our way if we worked hard and got a little lucky.  This didn’t mean it would be easy or that everyone would succeed, or that some wouldn’t have a smoother path than others, but the idea that fundamental barriers stood in our way due to race, gender, or some other immutable characteristic wasn’t a factor, or at least wasn’t a determinative one.  This wasn’t an acknowledgement that there were no disparities in life based on your racial, ethnic, or educational background – in college in particular we discussed them at length – but rather that the root cause of these disparities wasn’t systemic and could be addressed in a targeted manner, even if we disagreed on the specifics of that manner.  Underlying it all was a belief in the inherent greatness and goodness of America, an embrace of Americanism, though personally I couldn’t truly understand it at the time, not quite fully embracing my identity as a truly proud citizen of the United States until the end of my college years.

Between these noxious trends and others, it seemed America had lost both the hope that made us great in the first place and the spirit to pursue our dreams based on little more than hope itself, but President Trump’s insurgent victory last Tuesday, proved I may very well have been wrong in this assumption.  While pundits generally view the outcome as yet another battle in the endless war between conservatives and progressives, there is an undeniable cultural component as well.  It’s no secret that future President Donald Trump was strongly opposed by the establishment including the media, academia, and the government itself, what we might generally refer to as the elite.  Even setting aside his multiple indictments, his 34 convictions, and various civil losses, these elites opposed him any possible way they could, demanding that the American people accept their judgment over their own.  In April, the Associated Press reported, “As Donald Trump seeks the presidency for a third time, he is being vigorously opposed by a vocal contingent of former officials who are stridently warning against his return to power and offering dire predictions for the country and the rule of law if his campaign succeeds.  It’s a striking chorus of detractors, one without precedent in the modern era, coming from those who witnessed first-hand his conduct in office and the turmoil that followed.”  In October, US News and World Report compiled a list of “High-Profile Military Leaders Slamming Trump,” noting that “Former high-profile military leaders are sounding the alarm on former President Donald Trump, referencing his rhetoric of admiring dictators and vows to turn the military on domestic opponents.” Likewise, Bloomberg reported on the equally strident view of dozens of economics in between, claiming “Economists mostly shun politics in favour of policy. We prefer to be aloof soothsayers giving voice to data and research rather than our own beliefs. A luminary in the profession once told me that ‘the only political party economists support is whichever is willing to be smart,’ before adding, ‘and a smart economist would never join a political party.’ And yet, in a stunning turn — at least for us in the profession — 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists, from Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz to Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Daron Acemoglu, released a letter endorsing Kamala Harris for US president.” Rather than drowning in this tsunami of almost 90% negative media coverage, much of which insisted he was a fascist dictator in cognitive decline who couldn’t be trusted with power ever again, he rode a wave that rejected every one of these premises.  Rather than being smothered by the fear and loathing of top military leaders, government officials, academics, celebrities, and a cadre of card carrying experts, he rose above them powered by people who saw their supposed elite as proverbial emperors with no clothes.  The people, simply put, didn’t listen this time, reclaiming their independence from those who think they’re our betters, issuing the most dramatic rebuke of the establishment in recorded history, and doing so on an unprecedented scale.  CNN’s Harry Enten described the surge in support for former President Trump with two words, “Holy Toledo.”  Not only did he improve his performance in every state except Washington, among young voters (18-29), blacks, and Hispanics, he put up the best gains for a Republican in 20, 48, and 52 years.  Every one of these voters and every other Trump supporter in the country did so by implicitly rejecting the establishment view, taking the risk to make up their own minds without undue influence, breaking the rules they’ve tried to set for us, and ultimately taking their country back in the face of a united, ubiquitous, and uniform opposition.

No, they might not be punk rockers, but they are rebels.  The rightful heir to the American spirit of independence and defiance.  The people have spoken and they have shouted:  We will not be told what to do, what to think, what to believe, how to act, how to live, and how to vote in record numbers.  It was a classic American moment, and one that should fill anyone with even a slightly rebellious steak with pride.  Perhaps the country I grew up in isn’t gone after all…