Staughton Lynd, Radical Historian and Labor Lawyer, Dies at 92

By Sean Posey

One of the giants of the American Left, activist, lawyer and eminent historian, Staughton Lynd, died Nov. 17 in Warren, Ohio. He was 92. In a career that took him from the Freedom Summer of 1964 and the first organized Vietnam War protests to a national campaign to save shuttered steel mills in the Rust Belt, he straddled the worlds of the Labor Left of the early 20th century and the New Left of the ‘60s and ‘70s. 

Friend and colleague Tom Hayden referred to Lynd’s ideology as “a blend of Quaker, anarchist and Marxist traditions.” During the ‘60s, he was the model of “the historian as activist,” and found himself at odds with contemporaries such as Eugene Genovese, who opposed his ascension to the presidency of the American Historical Association. In explaining the conflict between the two, Howard Zinn described Lynd’s moral outlook. “Genovese saw … Lynd as a self-righteous person because Lynd is a very Quaker type, even his life is hard to emulate.” Zinn later referred to him as “an exemplar of strength and gentleness in the quest for a better world.”

His parents, Robert and Helen Merrell Lynd were sociologists widely known in the field for their “Middletown” books, which applied the tools of anthropology to the study of life in Muncie, Indiana. Upon graduating from Harvard, a young Staughton sought “to combine the life of the mind and social action,” as he later described it, by studying city and regional planning in graduate school. It was not to be. He moved into an ecumenical religious cooperative community – where he met his wife and longtime intellectual collaborator, Alice – before going on to study American history at Columbia.

After meeting the young scholar at a 1960 gathering of the American Historical Association, Howard Zinn, head of the history department at Spelman College, invited him to teach at the historically black college for women in Atlanta. Alice Walker was among his many students.
Before accepting a position at Yale, Lynd served as director of the “Freedom School” during the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964. That summer, a bridge between the Civil Rights Movement and the escalating American involvement in Vietnam opened in Lynd’s mind during a speech Bob Moses gave to a Freedom School convention after the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in July.

“He emphasized that the bodies of the young men were discovered almost simultaneously with Congressional passage of a resolution concerning the so-called Tonkin Bay incident,” Lynd later recalled. “I was unaware of it until Bob spoke about it. There was a connection between these two events, Bob said. Dark-skinned people were being killed both in Mississippi and Vietnam.”

Lynd’s involvement with the nascent anti-war protest movement in 1965 made him a national figure and eventually ended his academic career. He chaired the first anti-war Vietnam protest in Washington with the Students for a Democratic Society in April of that year. Tom Hayden later remembered the event as a harbinger of a movement to come. “As we gazed at the unexpected crowd of 25,000, I remember Staughton dreaming out loud that someday such a massive crowd would flow over the Capitol and take the government back.” 

Hayden wanted Lynd to lead a national antiwar movement. “He was perhaps the only person who could unite the New Left and the Old Left, speak truth to power, and also be a persuasive advocate within the mainstream.” But such a move was against Staughton’s nature, and the “anti-leadership ethos” of the era precluded such a possibility, Hayden later recalled.

Hayden and Lynd attracted far more attention later in 1965 when they traveled to North Vietnam and met communist leaders, becoming the center of a global story. They documented the journey in their book, “The Other Side.” At home, Lynd found himself defending the trip and his anti-war efforts on William F. Buckley Jr.’s “Firing Line” TV show, and eventually, at Yale as well.

In his academic life, Lynd’s 1968 book, “Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism,” broke new ground in its examination of the radical tradition in early American intellectual thought and won praise throughout the field. Nevertheless, due to his activism against the war, Yale denied him tenure. Lynd claimed he found himself essentially blacklisted in academia.

Drawn to Chicago and its long history of radicalism, he spent a few years in the late 1960s working as a community organizer with the famed Saul Alinsky. During this time, Lynd became interested in unions and the labor movement after meeting men who had lived through the CIO organizing drives of the 1930s. During a writers’ workshop in Gary, Indiana, he met two socialist steelworkers from Youngstown, Ohio, developing a friendship that led him to the steel city in 1976.

The year after his arrival, the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. announced the closing of its Campbell Works just outside the city. At the time, it was the largest peacetime plant shutdown in American history. Lynd, who had graduated from law school while in Chicago, became lead counsel for a group called the Ecumenical Coalition, which sought to buy the mill from the company and reopen it under employee-community ownership.

“What was new in the Youngstown venture was the notion that workers and community residents could own and operate a steel mill,” he later wrote in the book, “The Fight Against Shutdowns.” The effort attracted international attention. Political economist Gar Alperovitz became involved with developing the plan. He had been thinking along similar lines and had co-written “Strategy and Program: Two Essays Toward a New American Socialism” in 1973 with Lynd, which developed some of the themes seen in the Youngstown initiative.

Despite getting the Carter administration to look at their plan, the government declined to provide funds needed for the modernization of the mill. Though the effort failed, Alperovitz later wrote, it inspired the founding of the Ohio Employee Ownership Center at Kent State University and foreshadowed a growth in worker-owned businesses throughout the state.

Staughton and Alice spent their later years advocating for the abolition of the death penalty and working for prisoners’ rights. The couple served as co-counsel in a landmark class action lawsuit challenging the use of solitary confinement at the supermax Ohio State Penitentiary. The Lynd’s also worked with men from the “Lucasville Five,” accused of being the leaders of the worst prison riot in Ohio history at the maximum-security Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. Staughton wrote a history of the event in, “Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising.” 

He stayed connected with local labor organizing and international freedom movements during his final years, said writer and activist Daphne Carr. “[Staughton] urged us to join strike lines throughout Ohio. In these last years he was in constant email and Zoom contact with friends across the world, sharing manuscripts and details about struggles worldwide.”

Staughton Lynd represented the best of humanity, scholarship and activism. His passing, like that of Howard Zinn before him, turns one more page in a radical chapter of American leftism. However, the indomitable legacy of that humble Quaker of the left will live on. The relevance of his life to a new generation of labor historians, organizers and activists is more evident now than ever.

Decade of the Animals: Eco-Horror and the Cinematic Lessons of the 1970s

By Sean Posey

When Michael Myers donned the Captain Kirk mask in the 1978 classic Halloween (yes, that's a mask of William Shatner) he helped change horror movies forever. For most of the next decade and beyond, the horror subgenre of the slasher film dominated drive-ins, multiplexes and video store shelves.

But before Halloween surged at the box office, another now almost forgotten horror genre made waves by combining the environmental anxieties of the era with giant, murderous rabbits, vengeful dogs and bloodthirsty frogs, among other angry critters. The "Nature Strikes Back!" films of the 1970s ran the gamut from schlock masterpieces and haunting classics to the downright unwatchable. However, these films are also part of a time capsule - giving us a glimpse into an era when a building environmental crisis seemed to provoke real soul searching. What were we doing to animals and the natural world? What might they in turn do to us?

In the opening of her seminal 1962 book "Silent Spring," Rachel Carson describes an idealized American town where nature and man are still in balance, at least for a time. Foxes and deer frolic amidst orchards and fields of grain, and a general bucolic feeling pervades. But soon "a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community," Carson writes. In particular, the birds disappeared. "It was a spring without voices."

She was writing about the chemical industry and the destructive effects of pesticides on animals and the environment. "Silent Spring" played a key role in ushering in the environmental movement, which gained strength as the 1960s progressed. But in the film world, in an unplanned coincidence, Alfred Hitchcock answered Carlson's question: "The birds... where had they gone?"

The Birds hit theaters less than a year after "Silent Spring" debuted, and it quickly captured the nation's imagination. The site of something so benign as the common avian viciously turning on man terrified audiences and helped redefine horror. But it wouldn't be until the 1970s that the "eco-horror" film fully blossomed.

The 1972 cult classic Frogs, which ushered in the era's eco-horror films, replaces Hitchcock's birds with an unlikely assortment of reptiles and amphibians - all bent on extracting revenge on a polluting Florida patriarch and his unlikeable family. In the film, Jason Crockett (Ray Milland) is a cranky millionaire intent on wiping out the frog population in and around his private island so that he and his clan can properly celebrate the Fourth of July.

A wildlife photographer named Pickett Smith (Sam Elliott), who is working on a story in the area and encounters the rampant pollution, tries to dissuade him from launching his own private war on the local frog population, to no avail. "I still believe man is master of the world," Crockett tells him.

But the amphibians and reptiles are one step ahead of the game. Guided by the omnipresent frogs, which never seem to directly attack anyone themselves, a bevy of snakes, lizards and even an alligator snapping turtle wreak death and destruction on the dullard cast members. Smith leads a small contingent off the island, where it appears that a mass animal uprising is under way. Crockett refuses to leave and is trapped in his mansion as hordes of frogs - in all of their croaking wrath - descend on him.

Frogs was released the same year DDT - which was applied over Florida for years in a quest to eliminate fresh and saltwater mosquitoes - was banned. The first Earth Day had been held two years previous. "Environmentalism, much like the anti-war subculture, started to influence not only activists and the newfound socially aware, but also the style and consciousness of the new eco-horror films," writes Lee Gambin.

After Frogs, the eco-horror genre gathered steam. Perhaps the most unintentionally funny film to follow was Night of the Lepus, which premiered only months after Frogs. It opens with a news broadcast reminiscent of the TV segments from Night of the Living Dead. But instead of warning of the walking dead, the broadcaster informs the audience of the growing problem of invasive species in Australia and the American Southwest - namely the rabbit. This was a real-life problem, and the issue of invasive species was one of the most readily recognizable environmental topics of the time. Interestingly enough, the broadcaster compares rapidly multiplying rabbits to the human population explosion, a popular intellectual to subjects after Paul R. Ehrlich's 1968 book "The Population Bomb" debuted.

As the film opens, a beleaguered rancher (Rory Calhoun) enlists a group of scientists to help tame a scourge of rabbits in Arizona. They attempt to use an experimental serum in order to scramble the animals' breeding cycle, but one of the scientific team's children switches an injected rabbit she's fond of with one in the control group. When the rabbit makes it back to the wild, it helps breed a group of oversized killer bunnies.

The director used close-ups scenes to depict "giant rabbits" in miniature sets, and in scenes where they attack up close, actors in fuzzy bunny costumes were used. Never again will you hear rabbits referred to being "as big as wolves and just as vicious." And never again will you see a character grimacing in horror as he watches a caravan of adorable but murderous rabbits appear in his rearview mirror. But beneath the bargain-basement special effects is a message about humanity's harmful tampering with ecosystems and the deleterious effects of introducing invasive species.

Oddly enough, despite featuring a fearsome animal munching on unsuspecting bathers, Jaws, released in 1975, isn't much of an eco-horror film. As entertaining and suspenseful as it is, there's a never a concrete reason given for the great white's assault on Amity Island. If anything, Jaws is more about masculinity and the relationships between men than it's about man's relationship with animals and the environment. Nevertheless, it helped spawn numerous '70s films about how tampering with animals and the natural world will bring down nature's wrath, including Piranha (Then... you were shocked by the great white shark - Now... you are at the mercy of 1000 jaws!), Tentacles (It's turning the beach ... into a buffet! ) and Grizzly (Not since JAWS has the terror been like this!).

So many eco-horror films were made in the '70s that sub-genres soon emerged, including films dedicated to deadly domestic animals. Before Cujo became a household word, 1977's The Pack introduced man's best friend as a murderous foe. In the film, a swift tourist trade is part of the backbone of a small fishing island during season, but well-heeled visitors from the city have a bad habit of leaving their recently adopted dogs behind when it's time to return to their regular lives.

The film follows one such canine that's abandoned by a departing family before joining a pack of wild dogs living in a derelict building. When a readily available food supply runs out, the dogs come for the island's human population. The Pack shows that humanity's disregard for animal life doesn't stop at wild fauna.

A group of trapped tourists who are part of the main cast are depicted as either clueless or venal. It's left to a scientist, played by Joe Don Baker, to save the group. However, Baker's character also sympathizes with the attacking animals, and at the film's end, after the main pack has been destroyed, he saves the helpless abandoned dog we've been following throughout the movie from being killed by a vengeful tourist. In The Pack, man's carelessness and disregard for the animal world extends even to a subspecies that's been his companion for at least 14,000 years.

In 1974, F. Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina of the University of California found that chlorinated fluorocarbon gases, then found in everything from aerosol spray cans to refrigeration units, were seriously damaging the ozone layer, which helps block ultraviolet light from the sun. That environmental emergency was used as the central conceit in the 1977 film Day of the Animals, which incorporated a real-life environmental emergency to a greater degree than most eco-horror films.

The central plot involves a group of hikers ascending a mountain in Northern California just as a mysterious psychosis begins to effect wild animals in the area. The higher the altitude they ascend to, the more animals begin to act strangely, until finally, they attack. What's driving them? The hole in the ozone layer is allowing in ultraviolet radiation that in turn is causing the animals to kill, though in a karmic twist, they only target humans.

The cast consists of an assemblage of telling archetypes: a Navajo Indian who is the first to sense the rift in the natural world, a racist and misogynistic advertising executive (Leslie Nielsen) who himself goes crazy, and a New York socialite (with no love for nature) who berates her put-upon son. In the town below, news reports reveal the connection between the ozone hole and attacking animals. "God sent a plague down on us because we're just a bunch of no-good fellers," one of the yokels exclaims.

Mountain lions, bears, wolves and snakes (left over from Frogs?) proceed to chomp, tear and dismember the hiking expedition and the nearby town as martial law is declared and troops in environmental suits move in. But the animals themselves also soon die and the "shift in the ozone level" normalizes, according to news reports.

The film's pre-credit sequence announces that this is a scenario that "COULD" actually happen. As silly as it is (and as awesome as a shirtless Leslie Nielsen challenging a bear to a wrestling match is), Day of the Animals is an earnest film that's a time capsule from an era when a pending environmental crisis could be counted on to at least inspire some political action. CFCs were ultimately phased out under the 1987 Montreal Protocol.

Probably the best of the many '70s eco-horror movies is the Australian classic The Long Weekend. Focusing on an estranged couple seeking to rekindle their relationship over a weekend getaway to an isolated seashore in the bush, the film is much more of a psychological horror picture where the danger is never fully shown. The screenwriter gradually reveals the deep rifts that have eaten away at the couple's relationship as the tension builds, one that is echoed by the rifts between man and the natural world. As the two fight, litter, spray insecticide and, in the case of the husband, shoot a dugong (a kind of sea cow), animals and the landscape around them begin to grow hostile.

"My premise was that Mother Nature has her own autoimmune system, so when humans start behaving like cancer cells, she attacks," screenwriter Everett De Roche said in a 2012 interview. No one animal (a mutated bear in 1979's The Prophecy or worms in the case of 1976's Squirm) is responsible for the mayhem that ensues.

It's as if the environment itself wants to do away with the couple. In a way that few other films of its kind succeed in doing, The Long Weekend gives the viewer the sense that the ecosystem and all the animals it supports are attempting to strike back against humans.

This is reflected in the atmospheric soundtrack. A long, slow death rattle punctuates parts of the film, almost as if nature itself were crying out in agony and outrage. The Long Weekend is not only one of the best eco-horror films of any age, it's also a grim warning from the end of a decade where the environment, albeit briefly, seemed to take center stage in the cultural and political world.

By the 1980s, eco-horror films were on the wane. Dystopian productions such as the Mad Max series - also classics of Australian cinema, like The Long Weekend - figured strongly in a cinematic decade more concerned with nuclear annihilation and urban collapse than ecological crises. Films such as Escape From New York, Blade Runner,The Running Man, The Quiet Earth and Night of the Comet cashed in on the new trend. In more recent years, The Day After Tomorrow and The Road have been among a spate of films with an even grimmer outlook than the '70s eco-horror genre.

The idea of animals taking revenge against man now seems quaint. Indeed, we are currently going through what scientists call the Sixth extinction or the Holocene extinction. Approximately 20 percent of all species on Earth face extinction - a number that could increase to 50 percent by the end of the century. It wouldn't make much sense to produce a film like Frogs today as amphibian populations have been in decline for the past 20 years, according to Science magazine. A third of amphibian species are currently at risk of extinction with chemical pollution being a large contributor to their plight. Perhaps the Jason Crocketts of the world won in the end?

The eco-horror films of the future might feature poisonous jellyfish, sea snakes and other creatures that could expand their natural ranges as ecosystems change due to global warming. Or perhaps now we've come to realize that man is the most dangerous and terrifying animal of all. Rising seas, desertification, chemical pollution, scorching temperatures and other disasters (e.g. California wildfires) - all linked to manmade climate change - now seem to be nature's way of dealing with us. And that's a reality more horrifying than any screenplay.

Trump's Lost Sons

By Sean Posey

Accused mail bomber Cesar Sayoc reportedly spent much of the past 10 years living in a van in southern Florida. According to those who knew him, he drifted through life - working odd jobs at a pizza shop and a strip club. He seemed to have made little impression on the world.

On the day of his arrest, cable news and social media lit up with images taken of his van. Festooned with the stickers depicting images of President Trump - and his political opponents, who appeared with gun sights superimposed on their faces - the vehicle served as a seemingly made-to-order meme. But who is Sayoc?

During an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, Sayoc's family lawyer, Ron Lowy, provided some revealing insight into the man. Sayoc had apparently never been political before Donald Trump descended the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy in June 2015. After that seminal moment, Sayoc gave himself over to the Trump movement.

Trump has been "reaching out," in Lowy's words, to "outsiders" just like Sayoc, "people who don't fit in, people who are angry at America." Trump is telling these people they "have a place at the table," Lowy explained. "This was someone lost," he said of Sayoc. "He was looking for anything, and he found a father in Trump."

Sayoc is not alone. Most famously, Kanye West adopted Trump as a kind of father figure. In October, West travelled to the Oval Office to meet the President. During a rambling speech to the press, he explained his attraction to Trump and the "Make America Great Again" slogan that so memorably defined the President's campaign.

"I love Hillary," West said. "I love everyone. Right. But the campaign, 'I'm with Her' just didn't make me feel, as a guy, that didn't get to see my dad all the time. Like a guy that could play catch with his son. It was something about when I put this hat on, it made me feel like Superman. You made a Superman," he told Trump.

Many depicted West as a lost soul for having to find a father figure in someone like Trump. But America today is filled with lost boys and men. Most of them, however, are not multi-millionaire rappers.

In previous decades, these are men who would have been working in factories, serving in voluntary associations, starting families or going off to college. Many are, like Sayoc, (described as "a 14-year old in man's body" by Lowy) only marginally attached to the work world.

Since the early 2000s, the labor force participation rate of you men without a bachelor's degree has declined more than any other group . Other disturbing statistics about the plight of American males are a regular feature of articles with headlines like "We're Losing a Whole Generation of Men to Video Games."

These are males who are moving from what should have been a place in mainstream America to the very margins. The decline in church attendance, the disappearance of civic life and the splintering of the family has left many men seeking something beyond even the material. The number of children living with two parents, for example, has declined over 20 percent since 1960. Yet in the past two years stand-in father figures have emerged.

Jordan Peterson, previously an obscure Canadian psychologist, recently rose to fame as a kind of guru for struggling men. He estimates that 90 percent of his 1.5 million YouTube subscribers are male. Part of Peterson's appeal is his broadside against what he terms "cultural Marxism" and politically-correct, postmodern society, which he says ignores the needs of young men. Yet he also mixes the kind of critical guidance that one would expect from a father or a mentor, but it's directed at an audience that perhaps has never heard anyone who they felt really spoke to them. This is also something you can hear from those who identify with Trump and feel he speaks to them.

It's not just Kanye West who has adopted the MAGA hat as a kind of warrior's helmet or mark of American traditionalism. A group known as the Proud Boys, which formed as Trump's campaign took off in 2016, has adopted the MAGA cause. They're causing growing consternation among many on the left as their members engage in street brawls across the country with liberal protesters and members of antifa, a loosely organized group of leftist militants.

The Proud Boys bill themselves as a modern day version of the kinds of clubs and fraternal organizations whose decline Robert Putnam documented in his book Bowling Alone. The Proud Boys are a "men's club," according to founder Gavin McInnes. They have two hard and fast rules for membership: you have to be biologically male and you have to declare yourself a "Western chauvinist."

"I think the Proud Boys, and I think Donald Trump, for the most part, drives people who have been disenfranchised by the public because they don't fit in," said Proud Boy Andrew Bell Ramos during an NBC Left Field story on the group in 2017.

"Most guys my age are basically just interested in sitting at home, masturbating, eating Cheerios and playing video games, smoking weed and trying to avoid responsibility," Ramos explained in another segment on SBS Dateline. The NBC segment shows the Proud Boys bonding over a bonfire, getting tattoos, venerating the role of the housewife, and expounding upon the superiority of the Western world. It isn't your average Knights of Columbus meeting.

"What's it like to be a male chauvinist in 2017? Probably a lot less lonely thanks to these guys," NBC journalist Aurora Almendral somewhat naively explained. They almost assuredly do provide a sense of belonging for some alienated men, but at what cost?

The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the Proud Boys a "hate group." Founder Gavin McInnes has been involved with alt-right websites such as Vdare.com, and a skinhead group called the 211 Bootboys joined the Proud Boys in assaulting protesters after McInnes spoke at the Metropolitan Republican Club in October. "I cannot recommend violence enough," he has said . "It is a really effective way to solve problems."

The Proud Boys are an outgrowth of the alt-right and the land of the "red-pilled." The expression "red-pilled" is borrowed from the imagery of the 1999 film The Matrix. In the film, Neo, the putative hero, is offered the choice of taking either a blue pill or a red pill by the mysterious figure, Morpheus. Though he isn't aware of it, Neo is trapped in a simulation called the matrix.

"You're here because you know something," Morpheus explains. "What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad." If Neo takes the blue pill, he returns to his virtual reality life. If he takes the red pill, as Morpheus explains, he'll discover "how deep the rabbit hole goes."

In the film, the matrix is "the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." Not long after the onslaught the Great Recession, the term "red-pilled" began to be adopted by a very loosely organized group of white nationalists, "men's rights" activists, reactionary conservatives, antifeminists and a host of other groups coalescing in far-right circles on the internet who became collectively known as the alt-right.

To them, the liberal order is the world that has been pulled over their eyes. And for many, it's Trump who is red-pilling more and more of the "normies" among the general public.

A recent analysis of 30,000 Twitter accounts of users who "self-identified as alt-right, or who followed someone who did," found that Trump is "the glue that binds the far right together." And young men (including the Proud Boys) are now an increasing presence at Trump rallies.

"Identity has become the coin of the realm in American culture," writes Angela Nagle , "but one that's not accessible to the heirs of white male hegemony." Although it isn't only white males , as Sayoc, West and others confirm. This is something Trump seems to recognize. His word and deeds are attracting the lost, the damaged and the economically disenfranchised men in America.

These men are searching for meaning and belonging in a country that has long been "Bowling Alone." Some might stop at Jordan Peterson; others will take the red pill. And it's likely that Trump, not Morpheus, will be the one who guides them down the rabbit hole.

The Lonely American

By Sean Posey

In 2015, psychotherapist Traci Ruble started a "community listening project" in San Francisco dubbed "Sidewalk Talk." The project sends trained volunteers to meet strangers on the street and listen to them discuss their problems and concerns. In a promotional video, Ruble is shown with her fellow volunteers, asking people if they'd like to sit for a talk. "You want to be listened to? It feels good!" Sidewalk Talk has apparently caught on and is now in 29 cities across the country.

Are there large numbers of Americans so bereft of friends and confidants that they have only strangers in the street to confide in? There apparently are. New studies are showing that Americans are increasingly lonely, isolated, and unhappy. Unmoored from one another and from a (fading) sense of community. More and more of our fellow citizens are going through life alone. This has devastating consequences for individual health and portends a troubled future for the American experiment.

According to a recent Cigna study involving 20,000 adults, loneliness in America has reached "epidemic proportions." "Most Americans," the report states, "are now considered lonely." When asked how often they feel like no one knows them well, 54 percent responded that they sometimes or always feel that way. Nearly half of respondents report feeling sometimes or always alone. The numbers are even more disturbing when broken down:

"We also see that roughly one in four respondents rarely/never feel as though there are people who really understand them (27%), that they belong to a group of friends (27%), can find companionship when they want it (24%), or again feel as though they have a lot in common with others (25%)." Only 53 percent of American have daily "meaningful in-person social interactions," according to Cigna.

Loneliness and social isolation, both "actual and perceived," have direct consequences on one's health, according to a 2015 study published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. The effects of loneliness on mortality are the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day, which makes prolonged loneliness a bigger individual health risk than obesity.

Loneliness is also connected, perhaps not surprisingly, to mental disorders. According to the National Institute of Mental Health , nearly one in five adults have a mental health condition. Mental health issues are now one of the fastest growing causes of long-term absences from work. More disturbing still is the connection between loneliness and suicide, which recently hit a 30-year high in America. Even the opioid crisis, a main contributor to the country's declining life expectancy, has been connected to the loneliness epidemic. These deaths are increasingly classified by researchers and the media as "deaths of despair."

The World Happiness Report 2017, compiled by a group of independent experts for the United Nations, recently delivered even more bad news for Americans. The introduction to the report (written by John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard, and Jeffrey Sachs) states "Happiness is increasingly considered the proper measure of social progress and the goal of public policy."

The top countries on the list rank highly on six key factors, the report explains: "healthy years of life expectancy, social support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble), trust (as measured by a perceived absence of corruption in government and business), perceived freedom to make life decisions, and generosity (as measured by recent donations)." Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and Switzerland are the happiest nations. The US, on the other hand, finished in 19th place. Rising levels of corruption and "declining social support" are listed among the primary reasons for America's dismal placing.

While the phenomena of decreasing happiness and increasing loneliness are finally getting notice, much of the blame is often placed on recent developments in the country's history, including the rise of neoliberalism (understandable) and the election of Donald Trump as president (equally understandable). However, historical roots and recent developments alike seem to constitute important elements of the country's failure to develop a meaningful sense of community and attachment among its citizenry.

American culture is often described - rightly - as highly individualistic. Despite the Puritans and their quest for " a city upon a hill," as John Winthrop so memorably put it, the first immigrants to the New World often arrived seeking material, not spiritual, prosperity. "Even in the sixteenth century," writes historian Leo Marx, "the American countryside was the object of something like a calculated real estate promotion." This was a "business civilization," as historian Morris Berman refers to it (something Calvin Coolidge echoed during the 1920s when he said, "The business of America is business").

The peerless observer Alexis de Tocqueville saw this during his travels through the country in 1831. While de Tocqueville admired much of the American character, he understood the downside of the relentless individualism that permeated every aspect of social and cultural life: "They owe nothing to any man, they expect nothing from any man; they acquire the habits of always considering themselves as standing alone, and they apt to imagine that their whole destiny is in their hands."

Americans proved to be relentless seekers; first moving beyond the Royal Proclamation line that the British issued to separate their colonies from Indian lands; and then, finally, fulfilling "Manifest Destiny" and closing the frontier in the 19th century. The existence of the frontier in American life nurtured a "dominant individualism," according to historian Frederick Jackson Turner - one that failed to disappear with the frontier itself.

War, however, proved to be a force for increasing civic mindedness, and it provided a boon for voluntary associations - trends that no doubt helped combat the social isolation which certainly accompanied the settling of the country. According to historian Theda Skocpol, the five largest civic associations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries formed between 1864 and 1868.

Robert Putnam found similar evidence for an increase in civic mindedness among the generation shaped by World War II. In the seminal book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Putnam calls the generation that fought the war the "long civic generation," also known as the "Greatest Generation." According to the Cigna study, they're the generation least affected by the epidemic of loneliness. On the other hand, Generation Z (those born between 1995 and 2010) reported the highest levels of loneliness. The civic connectedness and civic mindedness of the Greatest Generation simply did not last. "The [generational] changes are probably part of a larger societal shift toward individual and material values and away from communal values," Putnam writes in Bowling Alone.

There's evidence to support his assertion. In Bowling Alone, Putnam cites a Roper study from 1972 that asked adults to identify essential elements of "the good life." Approximately 38 percent chose "a lot of money," but an equal percentage chose "a job that contributes to the welfare of society." By 1996, the percentage of people who chose making a lot of money had risen to 63 percent. According to current research, 71 percent of millennials place a similar emphasis on making money.

But much like other Americans, outcomes for the wealthy compare poorly to those of their peers in other countries. For example, according to a 2007 study in the Journal of the American Psychological Association, the "richest, healthiest Americans" are as a sick as the poorest citizens in Britain. What's the reason? The study's author, Sir Michael Marmot of University College London Medical School, gives two reasons: Americans worker longer hours, are more stressed than their counterparts in other wealthy democracies, and Americans are apparently more likely to feel "friendless and isolated."

This pervading sense of loneliness and disconnection, while felt particularly by the young, cuts across class, gender and race, according to Cigna. The rise of social media is sometimes blamed for an increase in feelings of loneliness and isolation, but its use did not figure as a major cause of loneliness in the study.

For much of the past century, some American artists and intellectuals have pointed fingers at the country's culture - or what passes for culture - as being at the root of societal anomie. In 1950, playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder stated that a lack of a codification of ideals was making American life difficult to process. Americans, he said, were always on the move - a "very un-European" manner of life.

Famed sociologist Philip Slater delivered perhaps one of the most pointed critiques of American life in his 1970 book, The Pursuit of Loneliness. He declared the human desire for engagement, community, and yes, dependence, were frustrated at every turn by American life. "Americans have created a society in which they are automatic nobodies," he writes, "since no one has any stable place or enduring connection."

And it hasn't only been liberals who have echoed such criticisms. Michael Hendrix writes in the National Review, "Americans conceive of themselves as individuals isolated from others in such a way that it becomes an imperative for them to form their own meaning for their own lives." Clearly, many Americans aren't forming a meaning for their own lives, at least not alone. The dismal statistics tell us as much. But as we have seen - with some exceptions - this is a problem as old as America itself. A country where individuals are adrift and leading lives without meaningful, connective and nourishing attachments is a country with a grim future indeed. And the problem is now accelerating, as levels of loneliness and disconnection rise among the millennials and Generation Z.

How will the country solve its most vexing problems when Americans are no longer capable of holding onto even the most elementary attachments to one another and their surrounding communities? We might find out, too late, that a society of atomized individuals is no society at all.

The Right Comes for the Parkland Shooting Survivors

By Sean Posey

Only hours after one of the ten deadliest mass shootings in modern American history, an outpouring of national grief was accompanied by a concerted attack on the credibility - and even the existence - of the victims at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The assault on a group of underage student survivors encapsulates all the worst traits of the alt-right, in a campaign of hate and disinformation that stretches from the putrid bowels of 8chan to the halls of the nation's capital.

In the days after Nikolas Cruz murdered seventeen students in Parkland, the Washington Post reviewed thousands of posts on 8chan and 4chan (popular message boards for the alt-right and right-wing conspiracy theorists), as well as Reddit. They found an orchestrated disinformation campaign, sometimes referred to as "4chan attacks," aimed at destroying the creditability of news reports about the incident.

That campaign soon spread to attacking the survivors themselves, the Post shows.[1] "They began crafting false explanations about the massacre, the Post explained, "including that actors were posing as students, in hopes of blunting what they correctly guessed would be a revived interest in gun control."[2]

Within a very short period of time, wild alt-right conspiracy theories spread throughout social media and into so-called news outlets. Gateway Pundit, a bizarre, conspiracy-oriented website that actually gained White House press credentials in 2017, tweeted a fake BuzzFeed news story in the wake of the shooting. Reporter Lucian Wintrich, who holds White House press credentials, retweeted an article entitled, "Why We Need To Take Away White People's Guns Now, More Than Ever," which itself emanated from 4chan and was picked up by the Twitter account MagaPill. The account is known for spreading untruths, from the infamous "Pizzagate" story of 2016 to accounts of various so-called "false flag" attacks.[3] Sean Hannity and the Drudge Report, among others, have linked to or referenced articles in Gateway Pundit.

YouTube has played an important role in disseminating false information about the shooting, particularly the idea that students were actually "crisis actors," paid to act out a staged event. Jonathan Albright, research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia, looked at 256 videos on YouTube on the subject of "crisis actors." He then followed the videos suggested to him by YouTube's recommendation engine. This ultimately revealed a network of nearly 9,000 conspiracy related videos. A video that suggested that the Parkland students are crisis actors (paid by George Soros and CNN) actually became the top trending video on YouTube before it was removed. [4]

According to Albright's study, "the view count for 50 of the top mass shooting-related conspiracy videos is around 50 million. Not every single video overlaps directly with conspiracy-related subjects, but it's worth pointing out that these 8842 videos have registered almostfour billion (3,956,454,363) views." [5]

The idea of suggesting that recent mass shootings are either hoaxes or "false flag" attacks, that is attacks orchestrated by the "Deep State" or other forces, dates back at least to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. Perhaps the most well known purveyor of these types of conspiracy theorists is Alex Jones, who runs a daily radio show on Infowars.com. "The Alex Jones Show" reaches millions, and Jones, a close friend of Trump ally Roger Stone, actually hosted Trump on his show in December 2015. After the election, Trump called Jones to thank him for his support.

Jones called the Sandy Hook shooting a "hoax" and has refused to apologize for his assertions.[6] "I've watched the footage, and it looks like a drill," Jones said. [7] He has taken a similar approach to the Parkland shooting. After initial reports that gunman Nikolas Cruz was linked to a white nationalist group were corrected, Jones claimed the mistake was part of a liberal conspiracy against gun owners. "We said the perfect false flag would be a white nationalist attacking a multicultural school as a way to make the leftists all look like victims and bring in gun control and a war on America's recovery, and now, right on time, what we've been warning of, their main card, the thing we said was imminent, appears with all the evidence." [8]

Since then, Jones has run a segment showing footage of Parkland survivor David Hogg speaking with an Adolph Hitler speech dubbed over his voice. Instead of showing footage of the actual crowd at the 'March For Our Lives Rally,' the video instead cuts to historic footage of Germans saluting Hitler with outstretched arms. Parkland survivor Emma Gonzalez, a bisexual woman of color, is also shown spliced together with footage from Nazi rallies. Incredibly enough, Jones goes on to say that he is not actually calling the students Nazis. [9] This is the level of rhetoric going out across the nation from a show that garners an estimated two million listeners a week. One of Jones's followers has even started a website solely aimed at besmirching Hogg's character. [10]

Conspiracy theorist Dinesh D'Souza also quickly got in on the act. "Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs," he tweeted after a bill calling for a ban on military-style weapons failed in the Florida Legislature in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting. Even the blog RedState, edited by Caleb Howe - who has positioned himself as an anti-Trump moderate - published an article that questioned whether David Hogg was actually on campus during the time of the attack. (Journalist Sarah Rumpf later walked her claim back.) Former Congressman Jack Kingston, who now appears regularly as a pro-Trump talking head on CNN, questioned whether students could really organize a march on Washington - instead suggesting that George Soros, Antifa and the Democratic National Committee were behind the rally.

Nor have these kinds of attacks been limited to right-wing media. Benjamin Kelly, an aide to Representative Shawn Harrison (R-Tampa), claimed that surviving Parkland students pictured in the media were not actually students "but actors that travel to various crisis [sic] when they happen." Leslie Gibson, a Republican candidate for the Maine House of Representatives, referred to Emma Gonzalez as a "skinhead lesbian" before a popular backlash led to his quitting the race.

An even more appalling attack came from Representative Steve King (R-Iowa), a darling of the alt-right. A post from King's official Facebook page attacked Gonzalez's heritage and attempted to tie her to Communist Cuba. Conflating Gonzalez's jacket patch of the Cuban flag with support for communism quickly led many to question King's basic knowledge of history, not to mention his decency. Rebecca Bodenheimer explains that the Cuban flag "has been deployed by both sides of the political spectrum and whose meaning has been perhaps more contested than at any other time in Cuba's history."[11]

It should not come as a surprise that King is involved in the assault on the Parkland students. After he quoted Dutch far right-politician Geert Wilders on Twitter in 2017, Andrew Anglin, editor of the Neo-Nazi Daily Stormer, called King a "hero" who "is basically an open white nationalist at this point." [12] "We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies," is the King quote Anglin was referring to. Perhaps that is why King is attacking Gonzalez, who is the daughter of an immigrant.

But the Parkland teens have not taken these attacks lying down. After Fox News Host Laura Ingraham ridiculed Hogg for speaking publically about his having failed to gain entrance into several California colleges, he called for companies that advertise on her show to withdraw their ads. After over a dozen advertisers pulled their ads, Ingraham conveniently began a week-long vacation. Hogg has since rejected her subsequent apology. However, as the Parkland students continue their activism, and as calls for gun control grow louder, there is little doubt that forces on the far right will continue to launch attacks on Hogg, Gonzalez, and anyone else who attempts to stand up to the NRA - regardless of their age. It will be up to us to have their backs.

Notes

[1] Craig Timberg and Drew Harwell, "We Studied Thousands of Anonymous Posts About the Parkland Attack - And Found a Conspiracy in the Making," Washington Post, February 27, 2017.

[2] Ibid.,

[3] See https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/buzzfeed-white-people-guns/

[4] Jefferson Graham, " 'Crisis Actors' YouTube Video Removed After it Tops 'Trending' Videos," USA Today, February 21, 2018.

[5] Jonathan Albright, "Untrue-Tube: Monetizing Misery and Disinformation," Medium, February 25, 2017.

[6] NBC, "Megyn Kelly Reports on Alex Jones and Infowars," NBC News Web site, https://www.nbcnews.com/megyn-kelly/video/megyn-kelly-reports-on-alex-jones-and-infowars-970743875859 (accessed March 30, 2018).

[8] Genesis Communications Network, "The Alex Jones Show," February 15, 2018.

[9] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSdtT_TdkRE (accessed March 30, 2018).

[10] www.hoggwatch.com

[11] Rebecca Bodenheimer, "Emma Gonzalez Isn't Endorsing Communism, She's Living Her Truth," CNN, March 28, 2018. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/28/opinions/steve-king-has-emma-gonzalez-cuba-flag-wrong-bodenheimer/index.html (accessed April 1, 2018).

[12] Andrew Anglin, "Hero Steve King Calls for White Racial Supremacy in America," The Daily Stormer, March 12, 2017.

Is It Nation Time?: The Black Nationalism of Black Panther

By Sean Posey

In the fall of 1992, a unique moment in American cinema captured the attention of the nation. Auteur Spike Lee released his magnum opus, Malcolm X, to wide critical acclaim. But more than that, for the first time, a biopic of one of the central characters in the history of Black Nationalism reached an audience around the country and the world. Hats with the 'X' logo appeared on the heads of black youth everywhere, and the film itself inspired introspection and dialogue among not just black intellectuals but also among African Americans from all walks of life. The film's ending credits merged scenes of Malcolm throughout his life and connected Harlem to Soweto and America to Africa.

A similar moment seems to be upon us with the recent release of Black Panther, a comic book film about an African king/superhero and the fictional nation of Wakanda. Symbols and themes from Black Nationalism and Pan-African history are laced throughout the film, which manages to elevate the comic book genre flick to a visual textbook for not just inspiring black pride, but also for reflecting important elements of the black past and possible future.

Black Nationalism is a complicated concept, one with roots stretching back to the nineteenth century and beyond. The reality of chattel slavery in the West led to the call for the birth of a black nation from men such as Martin Delany, often called the "grandfather of Black Nationalism," and Robert Alexander Young, author of the 1829 Ethiopian Manifesto, which postulated a universal connection between all black peoples.

Young was writing about an old idea - Pan-Africanism. Envisioning a future nation for blacks in North America and beyond (Black Nationalism) - and building connections between African peoples around the world (Pan-Africanism) - are concepts that pulse throughout Black Panther. During the early nineteenth century, Paul Cuffee, a black businessman and abolitionist in America, began bringing African Americans to Sierra Leone. The English had already begun to bring freed slaves to the area after the Revolutionary War to a place called Granville Town, also known as the "Province of Freedom." Cuffee hoped the region could be a future homeland for blacks looking to flee oppression in America.

In the twentieth century, Marcus Garvey, perhaps the most famous of the Black Nationalists and Pan-Africanists, envisioned Liberia as a future homeland for blacks looking to flee violence and discrimination in America. He hoped that such a place would become an advanced country where blacks could prosper and build a power the equal of any in Europe. The Garveyites and other such Black Nationalists saw themselves as indelibly linked to Africa.

In Black Panther, a modern and technologically advanced black nation in Africa has already been realized. The nation of Wakanda masquerades before the world as an underdeveloped state, but hidden behind an elaborate façade is the most advanced country on Earth, powered by a fictional metal known as vibranium. Mined from a sacred mound, the substance powers nearly everything in the country.

In this technologically advanced nation, what Patricia Hill Collins calls the "main ideas" of Black Nationalism - self-determination (political), self-definition (cultural), and self- reliance (economic) - are all fully realized.[1]

Maglev trains, Talon fighters, and vehicles designed to mimic flying animals are among the more wonderful aspects of Wakandan technology that we see in the film. Unlike Western countries, Wakanda incorporates technology that both mimics and exists in harmony with the natural world. Afrofuturistic cities mingle with gorgeous vistas of waterfalls and trees. There are skyscrapers sporting thatched roofs, grass sidewalks, sophisticated public transportation systems, and no visible cars.

There is nary a white face in sight as black vendors sell their wares in the street, and a black king, T'Challa, rules over a country that has never known colonization. According to Carvell Wallace, director Ryan Coogler loosely modeled his idea of Wakanda after the Kingdom of Lesotho, a landlocked country surrounded by South Africa. But Black Panther's kingdom is a futuristic polity beyond the wildest dreams of even Marcus Garvey.

From as far back as the nineteenth century, women such as Maria W. Stewart, a servant turned public figure, espoused the ideas of Black Nationalism on the national stage in America. However, in North America and throughout the African Diaspora, patriarchal structures relegated black women to largely supporting roles in the struggle for black liberation. Such gendered systems of power are absent in Wakanda.

It is easy to see the inspiration of historical figures such as Amy Jacques Garvey and Henrietta Vinton Davis in the characters of Nakia (played by Lupita Nyong'o) and Okoye (played by Danai Gurira).

Okoye is head of the fearsome Dora Milaje, an all-female bodyguard that protects Black Panther and the royal family. They might be thought of as a cross between the "Amazonian Guard" that protected the late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and the Nation of Islam's Vanguard or "Warrior Class" of the Muslim Girls Training and General Civilization Class. The Dora Milaje bring to mind the term "an army of Amazons to lead the race," used to describe women in the United Negro Improvement Association. [2] Indeed, the Dora Milaje have been compared to the all-female African army of the Dahomey Amazons, who once fought the French in what is now the Republic of Benin.

Unlike Okoye, Nakia is a spy, a member of the secretive "War Dog" squad, which operates in a capacity similar to the C.I.A., minus the overthrowing of foreign governments. During the course of the film, she attempts to convince T'Challa of Wakanda's responsibility to help other embattled Africans across the continent. However, it has long been the tradition in Wakanda to avoid any entanglements with the outside world that might draw attention to the country's true power.

The tension between Wakanda's wealth and the impoverishment and agony among black populations throughout the world is symbolized in the character of Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan). Killmonger is the son of a murdered Wakandan spy and prince, N'Jobu. While working undercover in Oakland, California, during the 1990s, N'Jobu witnesses the poverty and racial oppression facing blacks in America. He comes to believe that Wakanda should use its technology to aid the suffering of fellow blacks, wherever they may be.

N'Jobu comes to work with hated arms dealer Ulysses Klaue to in order to smuggle vibranium of out of Wakanda in order to facilitate an uprising among African Americans. When T'Chaka, who is both N'Jobu's brother and also T'Challa's father, confronts him, N'Jobu refuses to come back to Wakanda to stand trial and is killed by T'Chaka.

N'Jobu's son, the young Killmonger, is left behind in America. He grows to become a member of a black-ops unit, training for the day when he might return to Wakanda and seize the throne. There is more than a bit of Malcolm X in Killmonger, who wishes to arm the black people of the world for a final battle against white supremacy. But unlike X, Killmonger descends into violent acts against his own people (especially women) in his quest for power.

When he ultimately does return to Wakanda to confront T'Challa, it is easy to hear the words of Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, a Black Nationalist and Pan-Africanist, who spoke of the plight of blacks in the United States during the twentieth century: "How long shall we have to wait for something to be done for the black people's of this country?" [3]

T'Challa, the Martin Luther King to Killmonger's Malcolm X, rejects the idea of a global war. But he remains torn over Wakanda's policy of isolation from the rest of the world, particularly the black world outside of his country's borders. By the end of the film, T'Challa decides to open outreach centers throughout the United States, bringing Wakanda's technology to those in the African Diaspora - a true act of Pan-Africanism.

The chant of the Black Power movement during the 1960s and 1970s (Is it nation time?) is symbolically answered in Black Panther. For although Wakanda is a fictional African country, its importance extends throughout the diaspora.

The concept of Black Nationalism in modern times goes beyond the idea of creating a physical polity. According to Kate Dossett, "Black Nationalism in the United States has always been closely linked to Pan-Africanism, and can be better understood through an imagined community notion of nationalism rather than a euro-centric state model." [4]

Wakanda's example is one that reaches out beyond Africa to the masses of people of African descent. It is an imagined nation for an imagined community throughout the world.

Black Panther has the potential to help engage audiences with these concepts and with the history of Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism. The beauty of the costumes, characters and the fictional world of Wakanda can do much more than entertain. They could mark the beginning of a new cultural and political awakening in a century where the key questions of black self-determination, self-definition, and self-reliance continue to be part of a needed dialogue.

Notes

[1] Patricia Hill Collins, From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism and Feminism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), 75.

[2] Kate Dossett, Bridging Race Divides: Black Nationalism, Feminism, and Integration in the United States, 1896-1935 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2009), 157.

[3] Keisha N. Blain, Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 181.

[4] Doessett, 6.

The Working Class, the Election, and Trump: An Interview with Sean Posey

By Brenan Daniels

Given the talk of the role of the white working class in the recent election I decided to do an interview with Hampton's Urban Issues Chair Sean Posey on the white working class, seeing as how he is from such an area. In it, we discuss the media, the Democratic Party's relation to the white working class, and end with what the left can do from here.

There is constant talk of how the Democrats lost the white working class. What do you think of this narrative? It seems especially strange when the media rarely if ever brings up the working class and especially the white working class.

It's true. As the New York Times put it, "In the end, the bastions of industrial-era Democratic strength among white working-class voters fell to Mr. Trump." Basically, voters in the Rust Belt states of Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania allowed Trump to breech Clinton's "blue wall" and win the election.

But yes, it's interesting that working class voters-white working class voters, anyway-were a significant part of the media's presidential coverage for the first time in many years. The media's focus on the white working class is predominately because of Trump and the kind of campaign he chose to run.

Trump honed in on what he called "forgotten Americans," largely working class people in "flyover country," as it's often derisively called. Somehow Trump understood the enormous malaise that exists in wide swaths of America where local economies-and cultures-have disintegrated. He tapped a vein of populist rage and channeled it back into his campaign. It seemingly took everyone by surprise, especially the media and the political elite.

It's important to remember how concentrated the media is now-mostly on the coasts around Washington, New York City, Boston, places like that. So it comes as no surprise that many journalists are deeply puzzled by Trump's rise. It's far less surprising to those of us rooted in what you might call "Trump Country."

Although poorly covered by the media, white working class support buoyed Obama in 2008 and 2012. As the New York Times put it, Obama's "key support often came in the places where you would least expect it. He did better than John Kerry and Al Gore among white voters across the Northern United States, despite exit poll results to the contrary. Over all, 34 percent of Mr. Obama's voters were whites without a college degree - larger in number than black voters, Hispanic voters or well-educated whites."

There are those that argue that those who voted for Trump are all racists/sexists? Now, it would be foolish to say that racism and sexism didn't play a role, however, how true would you say these accusations are, being from an area that voted for Trump?

As you mention, it's foolish to discount the importance of race-and racial appeals-along with sexism. However, those who attempt to reduce Trump's win to matters of race and gender alone are kidding themselves. Whites actually lost a net total of 700,000 jobs in the aftermath of the Great Recession-the only racial/ethnic group to experience such losses. White workers aged 25 to 54 lost nearly 6.5 million jobs during those nine years, while Asian, Latino and black workers in the same age bracket gained millions of jobs.

And there are now almost nine million more jobs than in November 2007.

According to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal, during the primary, Trump won 89 of the 100 counties most affected by trade with China. And most disturbingly, life expectancy for whites, predominately in the working class, is actually declining. There's nothing similar in the West to compare it to. It's no wonder that so many found Trump's appeals, which aside from race, centered on trade, jobs, national and cultural renewal.

My home state of Ohio suffered immensely after China's entry into the WTO; that's in addition to the deindustrialization that began in the 1970s. The inability or unwillingness of the Democrats to address the pain of the "hollowed out American Heartland," as I call it, brought them disaster on November 8. Trump won HALF the union vote in Ohio. That's unprecedented for a Republican candidate.

Some would say that those who voted for Trump are getting exactly what they deserve, as they voted Republican. While understandable, isn't that line of thinking a bit of a problem seeing as how these very same people didn't really have any other options besides Republicans or neoliberal Democrats, both of which would have damned them?

Those who say that Trump voters get what they deserve are actually feeding into the Trump movement. It's important to understand where many of these people are coming from. Now, I'm not talking about the Alt-Right or the Klan elements, but I'd clearly place them in the minority. If we write off a huge chunk of the working class, how are we ever going to build a movement of working people?

In his book, Listen, Liberal: Or, Whatever Happened to the Party of the People? Thomas Franks dissects the decades-long movement of the Democrats into the neoliberal camp. The Democratic Party is America's left party; it's why the party exists. Yet Democrats increasingly represent a tiny fraction of Americans, not the top 1 percent, but the top 10 percent. Unions, industrial workers, service workers, etc., have no place left to turn. Many ran to Trump's campaign. Condemning those voters as completely stupid or as a "basket of deplorables" will simply give us eight years of Donald Trump. Liberals would do much better by looking in the mirror.

There seems to be something of a stereotype of poor whites who voted for Trump as these dumb, backwards people who can't figure out their own interests, which doesn't seem true, as Washington Post reported in November that people voted for Trump as they saw him as vital to securing their economic interests . Seeing as how you are from an area that voted for Trump, how would you characterize the people there?

The Washington Post article you mentioned gets to the heart of it. Obama actually carried Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin-twice. The idea that Hillary couldn't win these states is pretty laughable. Trump is the first Republican candidate in 30 years to be really competitive here in Ohio's Mahoning Valley, and he became competitive by running a populist campaign. By contrast, Clinton couldn't even elucidate a reason why she wanted to be president, other than the fact that she wanted to be president. The deindustrialized communities of the Rust Belt voted for disruption. Why? They've clearly gained little from the status quo. Perhaps the Democrats should listen…

What are your thoughts on the attempt by Jill Stein and others to engage in a vote recount or try to pressure the electoral college to vote for Clinton?

Stein's recount effort proved to be a waste of time and resources. It represents one of several misguided efforts (such as the attempt to influence electoral voters to defy Trump) to derail the Trump Train. I see it as one more effort to avoid building a real movement for change. Say what you want about the right, but they understand how to organize and influence power. Liberals and progressives? Not so much.

There is large amounts of anger and frustration at the election of Trump, however, it seems to be being put into marching and backing other Democratic candidates, some of whom such as Bernie Sanders, have said they would work with Trump. Why do you think that people are still pushing for the same old solutions, when those clearly have not worked?

The left is badly fractured and demoralized. The failure of the Democratic Party and the failure of movements such as Occupy have left many on the left confused and bewildered. For decades, communism served as the one great unifier for many leftist movements, but communism is dead. No coherent competing philosophy has emerged to counter capitalism and neoliberalism. You can see this in Europe where nationalism and right-wing populism are on the rise. The left across the West is perplexed about how to deal with it.

What is to be done? No one seems to know at this point, and we don't have time much time left to figure it out.

Why There Will Be Another Trump: Focusing on the Cause, Not the Symptom

By Sean Posey

June was not kind to Donald Trump. After a brief bump in the polls when he secured the status of presumptive nominee, The Donald's numbers began their march to the basement . He now finds himself in a deeply unenviable position. An increasing number of pundits (and, judging by the numbers of them avoiding the upcoming party convention in Cleveland, politicians) are suggesting Trump's candidacy could be a disaster on par with Republican Barry Goldwater's landslide defeat in 1964 or Democrat George McGovern's in 1972.

Writing off Trump might be presumptuous at this point (since the media and other experts missed almost every salient facet of Trump's seemingly improbable rise). Yet even if his campaign encounters electoral bankruptcy in November, the specter of another Trumpian figure emerging in the future remains highly probable.

Consider the numbers : Between 1928 and 1979, the top 1 percent's economic share declined in every single state; between 1979 and 2007, the share of income going to the top earners increased in every state. In 19 states the top 1 percent of earners took in at least half of the total growth in income. The consequences of the 2007-08 financial crisis further exacerbated the situation: Between 2007 and 2010, median family income declined by almost 8 percent in real terms. Median net worth fell by almost 40 percent.

Yet with the stock market rebounding nicely (at least, until the Brexit) and unemployment seemingly on the decline, politicos saw nothing to disrupt a predictable genteel war between the Clinton and Bush dynasties; instead, the face behind The Apprentice, a businessman seemingly straight out of the Gordon Gekko era of the 1980s, emerged to trounce one of the largest fields of candidates in recent GOP history. He's now the second-most likely person to become our next president. And while (not undeservedly) a large measure of reporting fixates on Trump's wild remarks and nativist proposals, the economic dynamics that led to Trump's candidacy are underappreciated.

As Trump expertly demolished the GOP field, a coterie of the conservative establishment rushed to denigrate not just The Donald's quixotic quest, but also his base ( Kevin Williamson ofNational Review singled out ) - a large chunk of the white electorate.

"The white middle class may like the idea of Trump as a giant pulsing humanoid middle finger held up in the face of the Cathedral, they may sing hymns to Trump the destroyer and whisper darkly about 'globalists' and - odious, stupid term - 'the Establishment,' but nobody did this to them," Williamson wrote. "They failed themselves."

Did they? Or did the people for whom they voted fail them? Starting with Ronald Reagan and continuing through the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, recent presidents of both political parties arguably have championed America's globalizing business interests over those of its workers.

While the recovery passes up wide swaths of America, the professional class of the Democratic Party looks to the stock market and to the select parts of the country where life is good and incomes are on the rise. For evidence, we need only to look to President Obama's reassuring (albeit also self-serving) remark in his final State of the Union Address: "Let me start with the economy, and a basic fact: The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world … anyone claiming that America's economy is in decline is peddling fiction."

The fact is that for Trump's voters - and perhaps voters who have yet to decide how they will cast their ballots - that worldview is not fiction at all.

While the American economy is indeed a relative bastion of stability compared with much of the world, a large portion of the population is experiencing a marked reversal of fortune. This is true both in the United States where labor, a traditional part of the Democratic base, is on the decline, and also throughout Europe, especially in places such as the Rust Belt towns of Great Britain that voted for "Brexit." As economist Branko Milanovic points out, "For simplicity, these people may be called 'the lower middle class of the rich world.' And they are certainly not the winners of globalization."

Thomas Frank's poignant analysis captures the class divide for the Democrats:"Inequality is the reason that some people find such incredible significance in the ceiling height of an entrance foyer, or the hop content of a beer, while other people will never believe in anything again."

That kind of despondency has fueled Trump's apocalyptic populism. And despite his many repugnant policy positions, he's hit the pulse of a large portion of America that is aware, quite correctly, that the middle class is fading; the real growing middle classes are in Asia today. When Trump says he'll turn the GOP into a "worker's party" and that NAFTA will be ended or renegotiated, economically left-behind workers in many states listen.

Trump's voters can be found in regions of the country almost entirely bypassed by the post-Great Recession recovery. This covers a lot of territory: Between 2010 and 2014, almost 60 percent of counties witnessed more businesses closing than opening. That contrasts sharply with the period following the recession of 1990-91, when only 17 percent of counties continued to see declines in business establishments. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, a mere 20 counties produced half of the growth in new businesses.

The real danger is that the Democrats will win a runaway victory in November and fail to heed any of the lessons behind Trump's rise. With Clinton's campaign actively wooing disaffected Republicans, chances are considerable that the populist strands of both Trump's and Bernie Sanders' campaign will receive little but lip service. "If Hillary Clinton goes for the Republican support," remarked longtime journalist Robert Scheer, "she will not be better. And then four years from now what Trump represents will be stronger." Paul Ryan's doubling down on austerity politics - the same ones thoroughly rejected by Republican voters in the primaries - will add fuel to the fire.

With the recent decision by Great Britain to leave the European Union, it seems that reactionary populism in the West has won a major victory; it should perhaps come as no surprise. A recent study by the Centre for Economic Policy Research found that far-right parties gain the most politically in the wake of major financial crises. While the research focuses on Europe, it's clear that the mix of populism and nativism brewing there is echoed by Trump here. And even if he loses in November, without a major change from both parties, someone else will tap into the vein of anger and discontentment that he's so expertly mined.

This article originally appeared at billmoyers.com

Gordon Gekko's America

By Sean Posey

On October 19, 1987, a worldwide stock market crash-dubbed Black Monday in the States-interrupted the go-go 1980s. Only weeks after that panic-filled day, Oliver Stone's meditation on the decade of greed, Wall Street, hit the theaters. The story of Bud Fox, a wannabe master of the universe, and his Machiavellian mentor Gordon Gekko, served as a morality tale that America did not want to hear at the time. (The film proved to be far more popular in later years than it was in 1987.) And many who did see the film deeply misunderstood its central lessons.

A generation of future brokers and investment bankers cited the movie as a central influence in their decision to go to work on Wall Street; however, Gordon Gekko, the flashy, glib, and dangerous corporate raider, became a lasting symbol for the economic and moral transition America has undergone over the past few decades. [1] The character's ruthless worldview is now the norm, and not just for Wall Street where the "21st century children of Gordon Gekko," as Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd referred to them in 2007, rule, but for society as a whole.[2] Gekko and Gekkoisms have penetrated the political, economic, and cultural fabric of America. The age of Gekko is a terrifying world where the winners "make the rules" and the losers "get slaughtered."[3]

The late 1980s represented an intoxicating time in American life. Larger than life millionaires and billionaires penetrated the popular imagination like never before. Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Ivan Boesky (the crooked Wall Street insider), Michael Milken (who partially inspired the Gekko character), Donald Trump (who is bringing the spirit of the 1980s back to the presidential stage), and even John Gotti, who brought a flashy 1980s sensibility to the New York Mafia, all represented the fabulous wealth that accumulated to a lucky few. But the machinations of Wall Street's elite in particular, captured the spirit of the era.

Wall Street emerged as a cautionary tale during a time when caution went right out the window. New economic experiments in the realm of government and finance (supply side economics, the deregulation of thrifts, etc.) led to great crises: rapidly increasing inequality and the savings and loan scandal. Stone's film targeted the exotic world of high finance, complete with well-dressed corporate raiders and fortunes accumulated through the destruction of companies.

In the film, Bud Fox (played by Charlie Sheen) comes from blue-collar roots and is looking to leapfrog from the world of a junior broker to the esteemed realm of investment banking. His prospective mentor is Gordon Gekko (portrayed by Michael Douglas), a flashy executive who symbolizes the worst aspects of both Wall Street and American capitalism. Although Gekko is framed as the villain, many audiences responded positively to the charming greenmailer. Both Stone and Douglas later remarked that they met numerous individuals who readily admitted that Gekko inspired them to pursue a career on Wall Street. [4]

Gekko did not just symbolize an era, however; he proved to be a prescient philosopher, introducing America to what would soon be its future. Late in the film, Bud Fox, in a crisis of conscience, begins to turn away from his amoral idol. Gekko, sensing his hesitation, explains to Fox how the world of the 1980s really works:

"It's all about bucks, kid. The rest is conversation… It's not a question of enough. It's a zero-sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn't lost or gained-it's simply transferred from one perception to another."

"The richest 1 percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars… You got 90 percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal: the news, war, famine, upheaval, the price of a paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it."

"Now your not naïve enough to think we are living in a democracy, are you, Buddy? It's the free market." [5]

Gekko's speech was far ahead of its time. The share in national income going to the top decile in the U.S., after dropping sharply following the Great Depression, returned to a rate of 50 percent by the turn of the century.[6] In 2005-2006, a leaked series of reports by analysts at Citigroup described an emerging "plutonomy," that is an economy driven by the spending of a small plutocratic class. [7] In many ways, America has returned to the Gilded Age, and it is once again a zero-sum game where those in the oligarchic plutocracy make the rules.

Government played a central role in the transition to a Gekko-esque economy. While Gekko pined for "the days of the free market" in Wall Street, President Reagan proclaimed, "Government is the problem."[8] This approach led to widespread efforts to deregulate the economy at almost every level, which coincided with reducing top tax rates on the wealthy.

Remarkably enough, the Clinton administration in the 1990s echoed Reagan and Gekko's sentiments: "The era of big government is over," Clinton declared. [9] The deregulation of the financial system proceeded apace with the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, which repealed part of the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall Act, and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which largely freed OTC derivatives from significant regulation. Economic bubbles began to emerge, and the sordid culture of Wall Street continued to thrive.

The days of the corporate raiders waned after the decade of greed, but with the Stock Market reaching new highs in the 1990s, a new generation of Wall Streeters looked to Gekko as a figure to emulate. Boiler Room, released in 2000, tells the story of a misguided young broker (Giovanni Ribisi) who goes to work for a shady chop shop firm during the height of the market. These young wannabes lack any of the charm of Gekko, but they emulate him all the same. When Ribisi's character goes to the home of the firm's head recruiter (Ben Affleck), he encounters a group watching Wall Street, which several characters recite from heart as it plays. And like down-market versions of Gekko, the employees of J.T. Marlin rip-off their clients with aplomb on their way to obscene riches. "There's no honor in taking that after school job at Mickey Dee's, honor's in the dollar, kid," Ribisi's character intones. "So I went the white boy way of slinging crack-rock: I became a stockbroker."[10]

Wall Street began to be used in ethics classes in business school, but judging by the behavior of the financial industry in the first decade of the 21st century, the moral lessons of the film apparently fell on deaf ears. Journalist Philip Delves Broughton describes how he remembers students at Harvard responding to Gekko's speeches: "At my old business school, Harvard, Gekko's speech electrified a snoozy morning class on leadership. By the time Gekko was done berating the board of Teldar Paper, the entire class was grinning and alert. For most MBA students that speech is less a parody than a guiding philosophy."[11]

"Gekko was merciless, but if he were on the Street today, the hedge fund guys would eat him alive," Fortune joked in a cover story on the old character in 2005.[12] The ruthlessness of the new Wall Street was confirmed by the events of 2007-2008. The children of Gordon Gekko brought the financial industry and indeed the country itself to its knees. Just as newly elected President Obama began bringing Wall Street scions like Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner into his new administration during the darkest days of the Great Recession, Oliver Stone readied Gordon Gekko for another appearance on the big screen.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps introduces audiences to an aged Gekko, recently released from prison after a laughable eight years. (Michael Milken only served two years in prison, and no major figures served prison time as a result of the financial meltdown of 2007-2008.) A free man, Gekko goes on a speaking tour in support of his memoirs. Addressing an auditorium of college students, he exclaims that, "Someone reminded me I once said 'Greed is good'. Now it seems it's legal." [13]

Indeed, the extreme views of Gordon Gekko circ. 1987 had been firmly baked into the culture by 2010. The titans of the financial industry knowingly drove their own companies into the ground in the name of short-term (personal) gain. And far from being punished, they were allowed to collect enormous bonuses while millions lost their homes and their livelihoods in a recession that continues to be a haunting reality for much of the country. Once again, a seemingly contrite Gekko plays the prescient sage in the sequel: "The system is insolvent. No one knows what to do next except repeat the insanity until the next bubble blows. That'll be the one, the big one."

Six years after Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, little has changed. According to economist Emmanuel Saez, the top 1 percent of earners received 95 percent of the income gains between 2009-2012.[14] Conspicuous consumption is back on the rise, and Donald Trump, one of the most well known figures from the era of the original Wall Street, is the Republican candidate for president. In a fitting twist, Trump actually appears in a barbershop scene alongside Gekko in deleted scenes from Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

In 2013, Martin Scorsese released The Wolf of Wall Street, another well-timed tale of "greed is good" for post-Great Recession America. The center of the story is Jordan Belfort, one of the most notorious figures in the financial industry during the 1980s and 1990s. Leonardo DiCaprio's portrayal of Belfort represents a 21st century Gordon Gekko reborn as a "financial bro." Belfort, who made a large fortune on the backs of poorly informed blue-collar investors, comes across in an almost glamorous light-one of the chief criticisms of the film. During an advanced screening at the Regal Battery Park Theater in New York City, audiences cheered Belfort's on-screen exploits, including efforts to procure cocaine and prevent the feds from ensnaring criminal members of his own firm.[15]

The blame does not rest solely with Scorsese or the cast of the film, however. Lionizing the lifestyles of the rich and ruthless has become an American pastime. Even though movements like Occupy Wall Street have emerged to challenge the narrative of 'Greed is Good,' the Gekkos of the world continue to remain appealing characters to an American public inculcated into a mantra of success at any cost. Reality television shows are but one of the myriads of ways that a zero-sum society of Hobbesian dimensions is impressed upon us. Considering this, it is no surprise that America appears to be lurching toward accepting a modern day Leviathan, Donald Trump, as president. For a world where the ethics of Gordon Gekko dominate is a world where fear is bred by insecurity, and insecurity followed perhaps by authoritarianism.

Notes

[2] Kevin Rudd, Edited extract of the speech, "The Children of Gordon Gekko," October 6, 2008, The Australian. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/archive/news/the-children-of-gordon-gekko/story-e6frg7b6-1111117670209 (accessed May 24, 2016).

[3] Wall Street , directed by Oliver Stone, 20th Century Fox, 1987.

[4] Philip Delves Broughton, "Gordon's Back," London Evening Standard, September 14, 2009.

[5] Ibid.,

[6] Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Bellknap Press, 2014), 334.

[7] Ajay Apur, Niall Macleod, Narendra Singh, 'The Plutonomy Symposium - Rising Tides Lifting Yachts," Citigroup, Equity Strategy, The Global Investigator, September 29, 2006.

[8] "Inaugural Address," Ronald Reagan, Washington, D.C., January 20, 1981.

[9] "State of the Union Address," Bill Clinton, Washington D.C., January 23, 1996.

[10] Boiler Room , directed by Ben Younger, New Line Cinema, 2000.

[11] Broughton, "Gordon's Back."

[12] Andy Serwer, Fortune, "Is Greed Still Good?" June 2005.

[13] Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps , directed by Oliver Stone, 20th Century Fox, 2010.

[14] Emanuel Saez, "Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States, " UC Berkeley, September 3, 2013.

[15] Steve Perlberg, Business Insider, "We Saw 'Wolf of Wall Street' with a Bunch of Wall Street Dudes and it was Disturbing," December 19, 2013.

The Gathering Storm: Donald Trump and the Hollowed-Out American Heartland

By Sean Posey

During the winter of 2016, the ever-present visage of Donald J. Trump remained burned into television sets and computer screens across America. In the well-manicured lawns of the modest working-class homes of Austintown, Ohio, situated in long-struggling Mahoning County, "Team Trump. Rebuild America" signs began popping up everywhere.

Formerly a sparsely populated farming community, Austintown grew as a working-class suburb in the decades after World War II. Steel and autoworkers could commonly afford vacations and college tuition for their children; the community, in many ways, symbolized the working-class American Dream. By 1970, Austintown, along with the neighboring township of Boardman, was part of the largest unincorporated area in the state. [1] The township's population peaked in 1980 at 33,000. Today, however, it's a very different place. Job losses in the local manufacturing sector and the graying of the population led Forbes to label Austintown as the "fifth-fastest dying town" in the country in the midst of the Great Recession. The township's poverty rate had already reached nearly 14 percent in the year before the meltdown of Wall Street.[2]

The 2016 Ohio Republican primary in Mahoning County witnessed the largest shift of Democratic voters to the Republican Party in decades. "Most of them crossed over to vote for Donald Trump," remarked David Betras, Mahoning County Democratic Party Chairman.[3]

This used to be Democrat country. But like so many other places in America, the brash billionaire's message is remaking the local political landscape. Trump narrowly lost the Ohio primary to incumbent Governor John Kasich. However, he won the majority of Republican primary voters in Mahoning County and in neighboring Trumbull County, home to the city of Warren - one of the most embattled municipalities in the state. Winning his home state should have been a given for Kasich; instead, Trump pushed the twice-elected governor to the brink.

Ohio is not the only place in the heartland the Trump tornado is sweeping through. Scores of America's most insecure communities are joining the once prosperous Buckeye State in flirting with or joining the mogul's camp. Yet, for as much attention as has been paid to Trump and the often controversial movement behind him, far less has been said about the cracking core of a country that is currently looking for a savior, any savior, in such enormously troubled times.

Years before America's most famous real estate and reality television personality descended a gold escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for president, long-time journalists Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson began a cross-country journey to document America in the wake of the 911 attacks.

"On one trip," Maharidge writes, "I drove from Chicago to Johnstown, Pennsylvania. In places like this, the abandoned shells of factories, all broken windows and rust, make this country look like it was bombed in a war. In other places it's as if an economic neutron bomb hit-with trees and houses intact but lives decimated, gone with good jobs."[4]

Traditionally, this part of the heartland represented the economic engine of industrial America, filled with good-paying jobs in manufacturing. However, the great economic dislocations of the past forty-odd years have rendered much of this landscape a void, one more akin to the developing world than that of the United States. Even for the more outwardly normal communities, as Maharidge mentions, looks can be deceiving. Heroin is hitting the inner core of the country with a hammer force, destroying young lives already beset by economic insecurity and the end of upward mobility.

Perhaps even more disturbing is the declining life expectancy for a large swath of working-class whites, one of Trump's key constituencies. For the past sixteen years, death rates have risen for Caucasians between the ages of 45 and 54 and also for those between the ages of 25 to 34. [5] These are notable exceptions to the overall increase in life expectancy for all groups, regardless of race or ethnicity. While working class whites in Europe continue to experience increases in life expectancy, their counterparts in America are dying from drugs, suicide, and despair.[6]

The relationship between growing white death rates and support for Trump appears in the voting data. "Trump seems to represent a shrinking, in part dying segment of America," writes Jeff Guo in a detailed analysis of election results for the state of Iowa.[7] This holds true for other states as well. Guo goes on to demonstrate that, with the exception of Massachusetts, "the counties with high rates of white mortality were the same counties that turned out to vote for Trump." Many of these same voters are located in former industrial centers which themselves, in many ways, are also dying.

The deindustrialization of America first appeared in the Northeast and then in the former "Industrial Belt" (now dubbed the "Rust Belt" for the region's numerous decaying factories), stretching from Central New York to Illinois and Wisconsin. However, offshoring and free trade agreements have also severely damaged manufacturing centers in the "Right to Work" states of the South. Anger over free trade deals is driving much of Trump's populist economic rhetoric; a similar, though smaller effect, is being felt with Bernie Sanders's campaign on the Democratic side.

Despite regional changes, overall employment in manufacturing remained at a steady level until the end of the 1990s. Free trade agreements like NAFTA and the granting of "most favored nation" status to China (along with China's entry in the WTO in 2001) greatly undermined American manufacturing employment, which has almost continually declined over the past two decades. Aside for the traditional Rust Belt states, Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, and Mississippi are among the top ten states in terms of loss of total share of manufacturing jobs.[8] Trump won all but Kansas during the Republican primaries. His campaign also looks to be pursuing a "Rust Belt strategy" for the general election, which could see the wooing of disaffected former Reagan Democrats and independents who will never embrace the Clinton candidacy. So, if Trump were to falter in states with large Latino populations, he could (in theory) potentially take economically troubled swing states like Ohio (no Republican has won a general election without it) and Michigan. Trump's appeal with working class voters could put traditionally Democratic states such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in play as well in November.

Much is being made (rightfully) of the violent clashes at Trump rallies-often connected to the nativist and authoritarian overtones of the campaign itself. Yet far less attention is paid to the outlet Trump is providing by borrowing populist strains from the political left and right. With the exception of Bernie Sanders, who is facing increasing hostility from the party elite, the Democrats appear unwilling to tap into the mounting frustration over inequality, free trade deals, deindustrialization, and stagnant wages.

After their apocalyptic defeat in the 1972 presidential election, the Democratic elite began to push for the transition from a labor-oriented party to one rooted in the professional (upper) middle class. The process greatly accelerated under the auspices of the Democratic Leadership Council and Bill Clinton in the 1990s. It brought the party electoral success, but as the upper 10 percent of the country prospered-including the new elite professional class loyal to the Democrats-economic conditions deteriorated for the party's old base and for the majority of the country at large.

In Thomas Frank's latest book, Listen, Liberal: Or, Whatever Happened to the Party of the People, the acerbic author takes a painful look at the effect of the unmooring of the Democratic Party from its roots in the working class: "Since 1992, Democrats have won the plurality of votes in every single election except one. For six of those years, they controlled Congress outright. But on matters of inequality they have done vanishingly little: They have stubbornly refused to change course when every signal said stop."[9]

It is indisputable that Republican policies during the same period also greatly increased inequality; however, the old liberal class of Franklin Roosevelt's party should have been the antidote to supply-side poison. They failed. And while the Republicans are paying the price for offering disaffected white workers the wages of identity politics (while advancing policies that destroy their livelihoods) the Democrats are likely next in line for the blowback.

"If you read mainstream coverage of Donald Trump, it's all focused on the bigotry and intolerance," Thomas Franks writes, "but there is another element, which is [he] talks about trade and he talks about it all the time."[10] Where is the Democratic Party on trade? It took the Democrats and Bill Clinton to succeed where George H.W. Bush failed and get NAFTA passed, which devastated whole regions and cost the country 700,000 jobs.[11] President Obama and Hillary Clinton both championed the Trans-Pacific Partnership-which will also cost working class jobs-over the objections of labor. (Clinton has since tried to walk back her initial support.) According to analysis by The Atlantic, "The trade pact will increase the importation of competing goods, which will drive down the cost of U.S.-made goods, putting downward pressure on wages." Even Breitbart News, a stalwart conservative publication, condemns the TPP for its likely effect on the working class, while the Obama Administration relentlessly pushes for its passage:

The question that conservatives must answer in the on-going debate over President Barack Obama's proposal to rewrite the rules for the world's economy through the Trans-Pacific Partnership is whether following General Electric's agenda to flatten the world's regulatory regimes to produce efficiencies in manufacturing and labor is in the interests of the United States? [12]

It is difficult to imagine President Obama ever uttering such words about a free trade deal.

Only Senator Sanders has rallied to the defense of labor and the sections of the country hard-hit by trade; Clinton by contrast is seemingly ready to turn her back on the traditional manufacturing heartland in the Midwest and parts of the South. In reality, the Democratic Party's record over the pasty twenty-five years on everything from trade to protections for labor is a fantastically dismal one.

The best strategy to counter Trump's rise would be to focus on the legitimate grievances of much of his constituency while countering his appeal to identity politics. Democratic elites who view the white working class as hopelessly racist are playing into Trump's hands (while also discounting the racism of the professional class). But while they dither, the thunder of a movement inspired by the storm that is Donald Trump continues to coalesce. And even if Trump disappears from the political radar tomorrow, the backlash he has inspired will live on.

From the crumbling factory walls of the Rust Belt to the shuttered main streets of the Deep South, a revolt is underway. The long forgotten "flyover country" is erupting in a paroxysm of anger and despair over the generations of decline that have battered once solid bastions of white working and lower-middle class America. With progressive voices replaced by neoliberal orthodoxy, no constructive outlets remain to channel the cacophony emerging from the heartland. With a fading Bernie Sanders and a rising Trump, the outcome might already be decided. If both parties fail to come up with economic solutions for decaying sections of the country's interior (and if no radical movements emerge from the grass roots), the potential for the worst possible right-wing backlash will remain. It is certain that America will never right itself until it deals with this crisis; if it does not, the forces of nativism and demagoguery will win the day. And from there, we will all reap the whirlwind.

Notes

[1] Charles Etlinger, "Mahoning Valley Faces 70s Crisis," Youngstown Vindicator, September 27, 1970.

[2] "Austintown 5th-Fastest Dying Town in U.S. Says Forbes," Vindicator, December 20, 2008.

[3] Peter H. Milliken, "The Elephant in the Room," Vindicator, March 20, 2016.

[4] Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson, Homeland (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004), xlii.

[5] Wonkblog, Jeff Guo, "The Places That Support Trump and Cruz are Suffering. But That's Not True of Rubio," Washington Post, February 8, 2016.

[6] Olga Khazan, "Middle-Aged White Americans are Dying of Despair," The Atlantic, November 4, 2015.

[7] Wonkblog, Jeff Guo, "Death Predicts Whether People Vote for Donald Trump," Washington Post, March 4, 2016.

[8] Economic Policy Institute, "The Manufacturing Footprint and the Importance of U.S. Manufacturing Jobs," January 22, 2015.

[9] Thomas Frank, Listen, Liberal: Or, Whatever Happened to the Party of the People? (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2016),9.

[10] CBC Radio, "It's not Bigotry but Bad Trade Deals Driving Trump Voters, Says Author Thomas Frank," CBC online site. http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-march-16-2016-1.3493397/it-s-not-bigotry-but-bad-trade-deals-driving-trump-voters-says-author-thomas-frank-1.3493433 (accessed March 22, 2016).

[11] Economic Policy Institute, "NAFTA's Impact on U.S. Workers," December 9, 2013.

[12] Rick Manning, "A Rebuttal to National Review's Claim that White Working Class Communities Deserve to Die," Bretibart News, March 17, 2016.