How did America get to where it would elect someone like Trump?

Sam Smith- We're wisely blaming Donald Trump for a lot of our problems, but he didn't come from nowhere. As the son of a Franklin Roosevelt staffer and a  participant in 1960s movements such as civil rights, I have long been aware that America had gone in  a troubled  direction. In my mind it was the 1980s and the Reagan era that started really changing things.  

One example: In 1971 some 26,000 students got masters degrees in business. By 2022 that number had risen to over 205,000.

The messages of the New Deal and the 1960s have been fading. And it wasn't just the growth of corporate values that did it.  For example, most American households had TVs by the 1980s compared to hardly any in the early 1940s.  And the early 1990s the worldwide web was underway.

Among the cultural changes that occurred was not only a decline in reading a newspaper - which started in the 1970s and 80s and is now down to 1940s levels, but that classic sources of education and information - such as schools, community groups, churches and books - were losing their status and we became increasingly depending on TV and the Internet for information and guidance.

I'm quite aware of this because from my first job as a DC radio reporter to my internet work today, I have maintained an interest in both national and  local matters. In fact, one of my first publications covered the neighborhood right next to the US Capitol and life in these two places couldn't haven't been more different. As the paper expanded to citywide I came across numerous strong neighborhoods and was even elected advisory neighborhood commissioner in one.

There is something our TV and Internet still forgets to tell us about Washington: for many years blacks and whites got along better thanks in part to a number of common interests such as the need for home rule and the plans to run freeway through black and white communities.

So what does this have to do with Trump?  I would suggest that you don't elect someone like him if you still believe in working, talking and even arguing with real people and living in a real community. 

Politics is actually about getting along with people, a lot of whom quite different from you. I learned this being one of six kids. My job wasn’t to lecture or fight them but to find things  things you could talk about or do together.

Community is a larger, but still human, version of this. As I wrote  afew years ago:

Community builds trust, mutual reliance, understanding and sympathy of others, as well collective power. We don’t have to agree on everything, just discover what it is we have in common.

When I think of those who have helped create my passions and values, I find myself quickly leaving my own identity and reflecting on those with whom I worked and enjoyed things including black urban activists and white Maine farmers as well as roommates with all sorts of different stories and neighbors who were also close friends.

Good politics is like that as well. Keep and celebrate your own identity for sure. But share it with others for common goals, such as the new shared national identity we desperately need.

This is the way to offer a working alternative to Trump