Dissent

In 1787, Thomas Jefferson, reflecting to James Madison about the nature of government and American independence, said this about the value of dissent: “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical… It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."

Jefferson was referring to actual rebellions, specifically the small ones that the newly independent state governments were dealing with in the turbulent days following the Revolution.  His broader point, however, and one that he reiterated throughout his life, was that occasionally a truly free people, in order to remain truly free, would find it necessary to overturn the status quo in a serious and profound way.

This past week, over sixty-million Americans did just that.  In a turn of events both serious and profound—and, let’s be honest, shocking to most of the planet—Donald Trump was elected as the 45^th President of the United States. 

It’s real.  It has happened.  Fortunately, so far this “rebellion” has been relatively bloodless, and let’s hope it remains so.  Regardless, the world was certainly turned upside down on November 8^th, and it might remain cockeyed for the foreseeable future.

This will be another column, then, about Mr. Donald Trump, and before continuing, it’s important for me to do two simple but uncomfortable things.  For starters, I need to admit I was wrong.  Like millions of Americans, I treated the entire Trump candidacy as a bad joke.  Even when it became obvious that he was not a joke, I still dismissed the entire spectacle as just that: comedy fodder for a nation that was no longer willing to take anything too seriously, including the idea of self-rule.

The second uncomfortable thing I need to do is tell you for whom I voted.  Unlike most voters from this part of the state, I did not vote for Donald Trump.  I couldn’t.  As a father of two girls, as a husband, I could not vote for a person with such an obvious and vulgar disdain for over half the human population.  That doesn’t make me a better person than anyone who did vote for him, however, it’s just means that I believe the way a person talks about other people will ultimately influence the way they treat them, and this belief is simply more important to me personally than questions of policy or rhetoric. 

However, I couldn’t vote for Secretary Clinton and her myriad flaws, either.  Instead I voted for a write-in candidate who did not win.  In Illinois, though, that’s my luxury, isn’t?  I can be all self-righteous and what-not because, due to demographics, we all know that Illinois’ electoral votes are almost surely going to go to the Democrat, as they have since 1984.  Had I lived in Pennsylvania, though, or Ohio, it would have been my civic duty to make a harder choice.

Regardless, I did assume Clinton was going to win the election.  I had resigned myself that we were getting a bad president last week; I just didn’t expect we’d get the one we chose.

Some of my anxiety, though, has been calmed in part by the players themselves.  Clinton came out the next morning and graciously accepted her loss.  President Obama, perhaps the most vilified of all of Trump’s villains, also put on a brave face and told us all what we needed to hear:  the people had spoken, democracy would survive, the peaceful transition of power that has fascinated people for centuries would continue.

Trump, also, to his credit, dropped some of the bombast that had characterized so much of his campaign and began to strike a more moderate tone.

So, like millions of Americans, I am slowly coming to terms with these “strange days that have found us,” and part of me is starting to return to my default setting, which has always been cautious optimism.  The rest of this column, then, will focus on some reasons why.

Most importantly, I think it is crucial that we understand that most people who chose Trump voted for good reasons.  Most people who voted for Trump did not vote for him because they are racist or misogynist or xenophobic; they voted for him for one or two simple and politically legitimate motives.

They voted for him because he advocates their political views.  Regardless of how profane and unsettling a candidate is, if you’re put into a situation where you have the choice of voting for the gross reality star you agree with or the career-politician you don’t, then obviously you’re going to do your best to ignore your candidate’s shortcomings.

Trump voters also chose him because, unlike most Presidential candidates, he seriously took to task a system that everyone knows is broken.  This actually brings me to another reason why I’m optimistic, if not about Trump’s presidency specifically, but about America in general. 

For a very long time, we’ve just kind of assumed the whole thing is rigged, at least to a certain extent.  Throughout his campaign, Trump emphasized the graft behind the power structure in Washington, where sycophants on both sides of the aisle have a vested interest in a status quo President.

Trump’s supporters proved that that power structure is not omnipotent.  Although the idea of a Trump presidency is worrisome for so many reasons, there is also an anxious energy that comes from his victory.  His win proves that there remains an authenticity to self-rule that I think some people, myself included, just kind of assumed no longer existed.

 After all, if someone like Trump can win, with all his baggage, the field is much more open than many of us have quite imagined. 

Returning, then, to our third President, it’s unlikely Jefferson would have been particularly impressed by the idea of Donald Trump running the country.  A man who spent over two weeks writing the first draft of the Declaration of Independence would probably have little use for a guy whose Twitter feed reads like a scorned high school freshmen.  However, the aggressive spirit that put Trump into the White House is basically the same spirit that removed the British from colonial homes. 

 “And what country can preserve its liberties,” Jefferson asked, again in a letter to a friend, “if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance?”