Impeachment, identity & resentment: the toxic formula that's pulling America apart By James Bruno
The farcical impeachment outcome that played out in the U.S. Senate brought to the fore the dysfunctionalities of our political system, from a blind tribalism to a president whose model of governance resembles more that of Juan Perón than that of the GOP’s revered Ronald Reagan. Not only did the process confirm that the beltway swamp is gushing under Trump, but it also revealed a perplexing and troubling paradox among many of the president’s supporters.
Those angry at a system rigged in favor of the rich and powerful cheered when fifty-two senators, all but one white, and with a median net worth of $1.4 million, trashed a mountain of damning evidence to acquit the most corrupt president in American history. And the whole effort was spear-headed by a Senate majority leader worth an estimated $27 million. It made the O.J. trial look like a study in Plato’s justice.
Photo by AP
America’s justice system is infamously unequal, with the rich and powerful either escaping punishment, or getting off lightly compared with most everyone else. Justice finally did catch up with Jeffrey Epstein, but only years after getting the kid glove treatment by a sympathetic white male Florida D.A. Thirty-three parents paid $25 million in bribes to get their kids into elite universities in the Varsity Blues scandal. So far, judges have sentenced the well-heeled guilty parents to weeks or months in jail plus fines and community service.
But a homeless African-American mother named Tanya McDowell was sentenced to five years imprisonment for falsely using her babysitter’s address to send her kindergartner to a school in a neighboring district in hopes that her son would get a better education.
The impeachment of Donald Trump is but the most salient example of unequal justice. While impeachment is essentially a political procedure, the principle nonetheless remains the same. A rich and powerful white male caught in an act of malfeasance was tried and sprung by other rich and powerful white males (along with five white females and a sole black male).
Post-impeachment polling showed Trump enjoying a record-level surge of approval – 49 percent of Americans; 94 percent among Republicans. His overall support has since settled back into the low 40’s, where it has more or less been since he took office.
Pew Research showed in 2016 that Trump’s popularity was greatest among those, mostly non-college white males, whose household income was below $30,000 per year. Yet it is precisely this low income/male demographic that predominates in America’s prison population, with white male inmates’ pre-incarceration income lagging their non-jailed counterparts by 54 percent, according to a recent study by the Prison Policy Initiative. Overwhelmingly, this cohort was cut no breaks by the justice system.
Photo from Central Florida Post
Yet, ironically, support for Trump among his non-college, lower–to-middle income base remains solid.
The paradox of stalwart Trump support by aggrieved voters plays out as well with bread and butter issues. The president promised, “We will not be touching your Social Security or Medicare in Fiscal Year 2021 Budget.” Yet two days later, we see the proposed budget includes $800 billion in cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
One can dismiss these contradictions as yet more examples of “low information” voters again willingly conned by the conman in chief. But, as with most things involving politics and society, it’s more complicated than that.
Identity over ideology has emerged as a central factor in defining early 21st century U.S. politics.
Photo by Tom Williams/Reuters
The Republican Party has become whiter, older, poorer and less educated in recent years. Eighty-eight percent of Republican voters in 2018 were white. Thirty-nine percent possessed a college degree. By contrast, 40 percent of Democratic voters in 2018 were persons of color, while 46 percent had a college degree. (One-third of American adults have a college degree, according to Pew.) Furthermore, Trump supporters are more likely to report that their household income is lagging behind the cost of living, Pew Research found.
So, facing unequal treatment before the law and Republican policies that benefit the very rich over the middle class and working poor, more than anything else identity drives Trump supporters. A series of recent insightful studies explain this puzzling paradox.
In his new book, Why We’re Polarized, Vox editor Ezra Klein explains that our cultural, racial, religious and geographic identities have merged into rigid partisan political identities that are stressing our politics to the breaking point and fraying our social fabric:
We are so locked into our political identities that there is virtually no candidate, no information, no condition, that can force us to change our minds. We will justify almost anything or anyone so long as it helps our side, and the result is a politics devoid of guardrails, standards, persuasion, or accountability.
University of Maryland professor Lilliana Mason, in Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, likewise attributes today’s polarization to citizens choosing which party to support not based on policy views. Rather “they alter their policy opinion according to which party they support.” She likens today’s often blind party allegiances to sports team fanaticism – it’s all about identifying with one’s team over any policy content. Therefore, neither hush payments to a porn actress nor incessant lying nor dumping on military heroes nor enacting policies that disadvantage working Americans faze Trump’s adoring backers.
Finally, there is the element of fear. Biopsychologist Nigel Barber attributes Trump’s success to convincing followers of two things: “First, the world we live in is full of threats. Second, supporting {the} leader is the only way of protecting themselves from the threats.” Why else, he asks, would poor people “trust representatives of a wealthy owner class that will likely never include them?”
Americans are hurtling toward an uncertain, perilous future. Our era is increasingly resembling the years leading up to the Civil War when a polarizing society ultimately succumbed to the country’s break-up. Then the driving factors were slavery and states’ rights. Today, the divisive forces are rooted in identity politics driven by populism, itself sprung from income and wealth inequality. Until we choose leadership that can grapple with these underlying negative factors, our society’s centrifugal forces will only grow. And that is why this year’s general election will be so decisive.
James Bruno (@JamesLBruno) served as a diplomat with the U.S. State Department for 23 years and is currently a member of the Diplomatic Readiness Reserve. An author and journalist, Bruno has been featured on CNN, NBC’s Today Show, Fox News, Sirius XM Radio, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Huffington Post, and other national and international media.
