The pain many of us elite liberals are ignoring

A Trump presidency has exposed the pain and humiliation of million’s of working people’s unfulfilled American dream. This thought provoking article, written in October 2016, explains how we got here as a nation and suggests some “respectful confrontation” to move us forward. I LOVE that this is not an us vs. them article. The author suggests that Trump’s nomination was a wake-up call to help us face an ugliness of American values, embraced by both the right AND the left, that must be confronted.
In my opinion and maybe the article’s author as well, the ugliness that must be corrected is a shift in American values:
We moved from worshiping love and character to worshiping fame and money.
We moved from being citizens to being consumers (the man with the most toys wins – why isn’t it the man who has provided the most service to his family and community?)
We moved from celebrating character (a man who will help you harvest your crops or stay to true to his word) to celebrating personality (a man who will tell you what you want to hear and be the life of the party)
We moved from identifying with our values to identifying with our possessions.
I’ve used the male pronoun because, as a white man, even if I’m a gay liberal white man, I can empathize with the pain many of us elite liberals are ignoring.

 

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