Post-Election Blues.... Which way do we go, now???

I just saw this photograph showing the silhouettes of two rhinos walking past each other by wildlife photographer Rudi Hulshof taken in the Welgevonden Game Reserve, South Africa:

I think this photo is the perfect metaphor for the leadership of both of our major political parties in the wake of the recent election:

• For the Republicans — We won, but with Trump. How did we do that? What does it mean for the 2018 elections? How do we hold on to these new voters who supported us? What should we do, now?
• For the Democrats &mdash: How could we have lost? The polls said we had it! What did the Clinton campaign do wrong? How do we correct our mistakes? How do we regain the trust of the Democratic constituency who, in the privacy of the voting booth, chose the opposition candidate? What should we do, now?

My Take:

1. I think the Democratic party erred by selecting Hillary Clinton as their candidate. In the minds of many voters, she represented the past – a cold-warrior from a different era – who has not changed, even though the world (they believe) has changed.
2. Many of my friends and neighbors could not relate to Ms. Clinton. Her message seemed tailored for the East Coast and West Coast audiences, missing the concerns of the Rust Belt, the Bible Belt and the rural and agricultural community. Here, in "fly-over country," she came off as elitist and, as a Washington insider, she appeared more concerned about the Government than about the people.
3. The Democratic party promised a continuation of the recovery from the Great Recession. That recovery, weak as it is, will be one of the lasting legacies of the Obama administration. People across the nation are still living with lower wages, a depressed standard of living and the enhanced inequalities that were the hallmarks of this recession. They want change and they need it now, not five or ten years from now.
4. Donald Trump caught the attention of the "h-u-g-e" portion of the American people still suffering from the after-effects of the Great Recession. He promised these people changes that he probably cannot deliver, such as "bringing the jobs back from overseas." The reality is that if the old factory that closed and eliminated 5,000 jobs comes back, it will be totally automated and employ only fifty, including the gardeners and janitors.
5. Many people think that the Cold War is over. The reality is that it has just shifted phase. The world is still full of "proxy wars," including the Korean peninsula, Syria, India vs Pakistan and now, the Ukraine. Our opponents have grown more diplomatic and sophisticated, but they are still based in Russia, China and North Korea.
6. In many ways, we are still dealing with the collapse of the European colonial era and the double-dealing of our European allies from days gone by. As the European powers withdrew from their colonies, they established "puppet" governments and drew new international borders as lines on a map, without caring for the racial, religious, tribal and ethnic boundaries that historically existed. They lumped traditional and historical enemies into the same new nation, creating governments that are inherently unstable – leaving these nations vulnerable to dictators who promise stability and security.
7. We are also left with the fallout of our own hypocritical meddling in the internal affairs of these new nations. Using both covert and overt force, we have deposed freely elected governments, corrupted foreign officials and established non-democratic governments (see "banana republic") beginning in 1870 and continuing, if Edward Snowdon is to be believed, up to the present day.

All of these issues are tied together at our waistlines – literally – with food and trade. One of our biggest imports and exports is food, in various forms. We export tons of corn, wheat and sorghum. At the same time, we import tons of meat, fruit and vegetables, especially vegetables for our salads. The governmental instability and warfare in many nations disrupts our ability to buy or sell food there. The refugees created often cannot buy our food exports, so just to allow them to eat, we have to give away our food.

The Trump administration and the next few who follow will have to find ways to deal with these issues. We must lead. We must be a strong enough and honorable enough leader that others freely choose to follow us. The use of force, double-dealing and coercion will just create new, more intractable problems down the road.

In this endeavor, our political leaders must be part of the solution. They can no longer sit in their "ivory towers" of privilege and pontificate to us about what is good for us. They are replaceable. If nothing else, both parties have seen that in America, "political elite" is an oxymoron – the "unwashed rabble" who walk into the polls can, and will, "toss the rascals out."

Today, on the website Slate, Jamelle Bouie penned their cover article, How Trump Happened: It’s not just anger over jobs and immigration. White voters hope Trump will restore the racial hierarchy upended by Barack Obama. While she makes many valid points and I am sure that white racism form a significant part of the problem, I think she misses the bigger picture.

When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, we were taught that once you got out of school, regardless of whether it was high school or college, you looked for a job with a good solid company. If the first one did not fit or proved unstable, there were others. You had about five or six shots before recruiters would discount you as a suitable employee. You then stayed with that company until you retired. If you were good, you might get promoted into management and up the corporate chain. We knew that most of us would not make it that far. In return, we expected a steady paycheck with regular increases and the promise of a pension when we reached retirement age.

Sound too good to be true? Not to us! We are the "Baby Boomers!" We saw our parents, especially our fathers or our friends' fathers, do it successfully! Our families moved from the racially and ethnically segregated neighborhoods of the cities into the suburbs. Instead of renting an apartment, our families owned a little piece of land. While most of us were white, there was a sprinkling of non-whites in our suburban blocks (at least in my part of the country) – although I am of German-American stock, the ancestors others within a block of my parents house hailed from Ireland, England, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Romania, Egypt, the Netherlands, the American Midwest and the American South. The non-whites were just like us, with jobs in the defense industries, auto repair, banking, retail, restaurants and teaching. Racism and ethnic-ism were rampant, with derogatory slang for each of us – you learned to live with it and get into fights about it.

Perhaps I am presenting a romanticized version of life when I was growing up. But remember, I was a child. I now know that many families never escaped from the cities, living in much less comfortable surroundings with what is now called "food insecurity."

The first real crack in the bubble was the Vietnam War, when many of my classmates got shipped off to Southeast Asia. Some never returned. Some returned to be interred. The rest came back changed in a way that I, as someone who was not drafted, can never understand.

The next crack was the 1970s, when the "oil shocks" and serious inflation hit. Wages, both for us and our parents, just could not keep up with the cost of living. Major US corporations began to curtail their pension plans and the unions. Unions, who had grown fat on corruption from the 1940s through the 1960s, failed to take notice or take action. Our parents were squeezed out, years before they would be eligible for the promised pensions.

It has been all downhill since then. Instead of secure, stable jobs, the companies we worked for kept hiring, laying off and often, reorganizing in bankruptcy. My own resume is littered with companies that no longer exist. Only two of the companies I worked for will pay me anything in my retirement. Prices keep going up, but wages do not. I currently earn over twice my father's top salary, but that wage buys less than his did.

None of what I have just described is racial or ethnic. We, the Baby Boomers, are now at or beyond the "normal retirement age," but have little to show for it. We cannot wait ten or twenty years for our nation to recover from the last fifty years of stupid, wasteful policies. President Obama is just another politician that says, "Wait, things will get better." We have heard this lie from administration after administration. On the promise of "Hope and Change," we voted Obama into office, but he has left us without either hope or change: the rich got richer, our paychecks are stagnant and, every day in little ways, prices deliberately left out of President Franklyn Roosevelt's Consumer Price Index keep crawling up, especially food and medical care.

Now, eight years after electing Obama, we are more desperate. Who are we to turn to? Hillary Clinton? Her husband's policies led to the "Great Recession" ten years later. Bernie Sanders? He talks a good game and is getting significant Baby Boomer support from those of us who have, in spite of the odds, done reasonably well. Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz? They are too inexperienced – we had that in Obama. Of all of the candidates for this cycle, only Donald Trump is promising to make America great again. Although it is probably pie-in-the-sky, it sounds as attractive to us as FDR's "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage" did to our parents.

To put it succinctly: Trump is offering us hope. It is probably a false hope, but it is hope nonetheless. None of the other candidates, with all their pretty speeches and proposed programs, are offering that. God help us all!