Why Does Myrna Continue to Vote Republican?

From time to time I like to talk with members of the working class, usually whites, to try to understand their political concerns, which are often directly opposed to mine.  I don’t want to argue with them or lecture them; I do my best to try to understand them.  Myrna is representative of these acquaintances of mine.  She is a poor, yet feisty senior citizen. I see her on occasion at the gym, where our discussions take place.

I would like to say at the outset that Myrna is not her real name; she is a composite of several people I know. I would never flout the privacy of anyone, especially in a publicly posted article.  Myrna’s identity is safe here, because she doesn’t exist.  But her opinions do, and they are widespread.

You mention President Obama to her and it’s as if you had conjured up Satan.  She is an avid Trump supporter—still.  What good did Obama ever do?  The Affordable Care Act, health care for millions of Americans who were previously uncovered, I reply.  How can you defend that disaster, she exclaims. It’s awful, it’s a complete failure, it’s a fraud…

Myrna is convinced that governmental social programs—with the exception of Social Security—are there to coddle those who are too lazy to work.  She tells me with pride that no one has ever given her handouts, and if they did, she wouldn’t accept them. She claims to have worked hard to support herself through a long, difficult life that was anything but a multi-decade stroll through a rose garden. 

The last thing I would ever do is mock Myrna. She is fiercely independent and has worked hard all her life. In fact, I like her a lot.  Many of her views, however, seem to me to be poisonous Republican memes which have infected her brain.  She is totally ignorant of how she and those like her have been exploited; she has no idea that virtually the only importance she has for Republican elites is the fact that she votes. Unfortunately for them, the rich are not in the majority; in order to stay in power, they must convince members of the working-class to vote against their own interests. (I am referring here mainly to the white working-class; minority workers are generally immune to Republican lies, since the Party’s disdain for minority members of the working-class has been painfully obvious to them for decades).

Why are these whites so hostile to federal programs that benefit them?  I read somewhere that non-professional whites believe they are headed on the path to success; hard work will inevitably lead to material happiness. They believe that the government is giving minorities unfair advantages; they are getting ahead of them on the line to success not by their own merit, but by liberal largesse.  If you’ve ever waited a long time on a line and witnessed others come from nowhere and get ahead of you, you know how Myrna feels.

The Republicans have been such masters of propaganda that it is very difficult to get Myrna to change her beliefs.  Saying nice things to her about immigrants, for instance, is like saying, take our jobs away and rob us while you’re at it.  Racism is, of course, an underlying contributing cause, but not a sufficient one. We must not forget that a significant number of whites who voted for Trump had voted for Obama in 2012.

There are at  least  two additional factors that led to the political disaster of 2016. First, there has been a troubling lack of progressive legislation; inequality is undoubtedly getting worse. Whites who have not gone to college feel especially affected.  The Democrats, for instance, may talk about the importance of a living wage on occasion, but have done little to realize this goal. The votes in Congress that oppose them are many, but they could have tried harder, no doubt about that.  The second and primary reason for the current Democratic malaise is their refusal to fight fire with fire. Many voters are woefully ignorant; they must be informed, in ways they understand, that voting for Republicans is almost always voting against their own interests.  In the war of memes, Republicans are winning, hands down.

What’s the matter with Democrats?  I will give here one startling example of their failure to fight back: their miserable defense of SNAP (The Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program), which provides food to those who can’t afford to feed themselves and their families on their own.

The Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program

The Farm Bill originated during the New Deal, but has changed a lot since the 1930s. The allocated funds entail subsidies for farmers and nutritional assistance for those in need of it. It is renewed approximately every five years, when alterations can be made. (Republicans, as usual, are currently planning drastic cuts to the program). At present, approximately 20 billion dollars are designated for "farm relief" that support for the most part big business interests; the bulk of the program, approximately 75% of it, is spent on nutritional assistance for low income people.  Approximately 44 million are currently covered, or 14% of the entire U.S. population.  About 45% of those covered are children; 9% are elderly; a significant portion are disabled. Approximately 33% of families receiving benefits have at least one member who is employed. The average benefit for each person is $125.00 per month.  Families receive a card in which a designated sum is deposited by the federal government monthly.

SNAP provides a much-needed service to those on the lower end of income distribution, especially under current conditions of inequality.

What do Republicans say about the program?

They don’t like it-surprise! Senate Majority Leader McConnell has said the following: “We want to move in the direction of a healthy, vibrant, productive society. And you don’t do that by making it excessively easy to be non-productive.” (O those lazy children.) Speaker of the House Paul Ryan wants to limit funding by making it a block grant program. He believes the program encourages dependence and fraud.

Myrna, I think, would wholeheartedly agree.   (She may well be on the SNAP program herself, but would never admit it).  What have the Democrats said in their defense of the program?

I am saving the most important statistic for last.  The Department of Agriculture estimates that for every $5 spent on the SNAP program, $9 is returned to the economy.  Moody”s Analytics, hardly part of a liberal think tank, says the same thing somewhat differently: for every dollar spent on SNAP the economy is enriched by $1.70.

The SNAP program stimulates the economy! The SNAP program creates and maintains jobs—think of the grocers—think of food stores everywhere which accept SNAP funds.  It has (reasonably) been asserted that the SNAP program stimulates the economy better than tax cuts. The rich generally keep and invest the money they receive through tax cuts; recipients of food stamps tend to spend all the benefits they receive every month.  This means that every SNAP penny improves the economy; it provides 70 billion dollars of fiscal stimulus annually and it works.

Republicans must know this, but they certainly don't want the public to know it.

Why aren’t Democrats making voters aware of the fiscal benefits of the program?  “If it weren’t for food stamps, I wouldn’t have a job”—why hasn’t the Democratic Party made one ad in which a grocery worker makes this obviously true statement?  This applies to workers in large chains as well; Walmart, for instance, gets a lot of business from SNAP

Why do Republicans hate the program so, despite the fact that it benefits the economy? Hatred of the poor?  I'm not sure. Disdain for them? Certainly. Hatred on the part of supply siders for any government program that does not involve the military?  Probably.

If Myra understood that the nutritional assistance program is not merely for “those people,” but also for those willing to work hard, she might well change her mind. Presenting the SNAP program in this way smacks of propaganda, since its purpose is to supply food to those in need, and not primarily to keep grocery workers employed.  But it’s honest propaganda, not comparable to the lies of Republicans, since the SNAP program does indeed create and maintain jobs as well.

It will be difficult for Democrats to obtain and maintain a majority without reaching out to working-class whites.  At present, the latter group has been so poisoned by Republican memes that its members consistently vote against their own interests. Fancy pundit talk is a form of preaching to the choir.  It’s not going to reach those with limited education.

The SNAP Program creates jobs!  If we got this meme into Myrna’s head, as well as other “honest memes” regarding other issues, she just might undergo a much-needed tergiversation before the next election, and vote Democratic from then on.

My Maupassant Moment

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Literature and music present many examples of sudden, poignant awareness of the passage of time.  These "pincements au coeur," these sudden jabs at the heart, often occur when protagonists suddenly realize that the ground that underlies experience isn't, and has never been, solid; that the tar pit into which we mortals begin to sink at the moment of birth is inescapable.  We look up at the heavens and recall stargazing during a vacation decades and decades ago; the patterns of the constellations haven't changed--at least to us--but what about the observer?

These intimations of mortality are especially moving when older, active persons suddenly realize they can no longer keep up with the young and the days of wine and roses are coming to an end.  One thinks of the Marschallin in Strauss's opera, der Rosenkavalier.  She has had an affair with Octavian, someone young enough to be her son.  He loves her, but she realizes that they have no future together; she knows he will soon fall in love with someone his age.  Alone, after she has sent the confused Octavian away, she sings one of the most beautiful musical sequences about aging ever written; "Die Zeit ist ein sonderbar Ding," (Time is a strange thing).  For years one is hardly ever aware of the passage of time; and then, suddenly, clocks are everywhere.  And then...

One of my favorite examples in literature of the loss inevitably associated with aging is a very brief story by Guy de Maupassant entitled "Le Menuit".  (Age is  not all loss, mind you.  Mind having become an increasingly dim room, memory's Lost, Lost, Lost and Found, as it were; in this room there is not only room for thought, however. but room for joy and laughter as well. Nevertheless).

2. Le Menuit

The story is told by Jean Bridelle, a fiftyish bachelor, to an unidentified listener.  M. Bridelle has witnessed the horrors of the battlefield, but very few things in his life have moved him as much as the tale he is about to relate.  Many years ago, he had the habit of reading in a formal garden.  He noticed that an old man was making peculiar movements, evidently practicing a strange dance, every day.  They became friends.  M. Bridelle was curious. One day, the old man, in the company of his wife, informed him that the dance in question was the minuet:

"Excuse me," I said to the old dancer, "What is a minuet?"

He was taken aback. "The minuet, Sir, is the queen of dances and the dances of queens.  Sine there are no more kings. there are no more minuets."

Then he began, in a fustian style, a long account about the dance, which I didn't understand. I wanted him to describe the steps, the movements, and the poses.  He appeared confused, nervous, and upset, apparently exasperated by his inability to comply to my request. Then, suddenly turning to his old companion, who remained silent and grave, he said, "Elise, would you like, tell me, would you like for us to show the gentleman what it was? 

She glanced about uncomfortably, then stood up without saying a word and placed herself before the old man.

Then I saw something unforgettable.

They moved backwards and forwards, with ridiculous expressions on their faces that made them look like play-acting children; they smiled at each other, rocked and swayed, bowed and made little jumps as if they were two old mechanized puppets controlled by an apparatus that was slightly broken.

I looked at them with a troubled heart; my spirit had fallen prey to an indescribable melancholy. It was as if I had been witnessing something that was as pitiable as it was comical, the shadow of something out of fashion for a very long time.

They suddently stopped; they had completed the dance.  For a while they just stood there; then they embraced each other in tears.

                    from Le Menuit, by Guy de Maupassant
                    translated from the French by Thomas Dorsett



3. My Maupassant Moment

My Maupassant Moment begins with a prelude.  On the night of February 9, 2018, after working together at Nirmala's office that day, my wife and I attended the Friday Night Swing Dance Club, and danced till a little bit before 11 P.M. (We have been doing this for years.  The music the band plays, mostly rock 'n' roll standards, is as contemporary as the minuet was to Jean Bridelle's ears.  We are somewhat younger--I imagine that the fictive pair was in their eighties--we are also in much better shape).

We were in bed shortly after midnight; the next morning, after our usual breakfast of oatmeal, blueberries, and tea, we were off to the gym.  Every Saturday I take an hour's spinning session conducted by our friend, Sushil Sharma, who is younger than us by a few years and in great shape. During my time on the bike, Nirmala takes a Zumba course--not Zumba Gold, mind you--which takes place next door to the bicycle room.  After that, we usually do some weight training by ourselves; we finish our morning at the gym with an hour's yoga session--yes, most participants are much younger, and no, we do not do "The Crow."

This time we decided to do something different.  I had informed Nirmala that there was going to be a Met Simulcast at a theatre within walking distance.  The opera to be performed was Donizetti's potboiler, L'Eliser d'Amore.  I had seen it performed many times, and wasn't all that keen to see it again.  But it is a potboiler for a very good reason: it is a tuneful, winsome, dramatically effective masterwork. Nirmala  had seen snippets of a performance in the Great Performances public television series, in which Pavarotti sang the tenor lead.  She liked what she had heard, so we decided to go.

When we arrived at the theatre, we realized that we still had the atavistic habit of buying tickets at the box office, instead of ordering them online: there was a long line; nearly everyone on it was in their teens.  When we finally got to the box office, about five minutes before the opera was scheduled to begin, we were informed that all tickets had been sold except for a few in the first row.  Looking up at feet while listening to what the heads, appearing to be bird-sized from our perspective, were up to did not seem like a good idea.  After having made the effort of rushing about and having a very quick lunch at Starbuck's, however,  we decided to attend the performance, nevertheless.

The first row wasn't all that bad.  The seats were comfy recliners--what will they think of next?  At first we must have looked as uncomfortable as Margaret Dumont did in the tipped-back dental chair in that iconic scene from a Marx Brothers film--you remember the one I'm referring to, don't you? We soon settled in and began to feel downright cozy.

The performance was stellar.  Matthew Polenzani sang exquisitely, and brought down the house with his rendering of the most famous aria of the opera, una furtiva lagrima.  Pretty Yende, a South African soprano, who is not only pretty but is in possession of a very beautiful voice, sang the role of Adina.  A dashing young Italian singer by the name of Davide Luciano was very effective in the comic role of Belcore.

It was the singer, Ildebrando D'Arcangelo, who performed the role of Dr. Dulcamara, the quack who sells the snake-oil elixer to Nemorino, pining for Adina; it was he, the Italian bass baritone, who elicited my Maupassant moment.  D'Arcangelo incorporated a classic basso buffo role; Dr. Dulcamara takes the stage--or at least should take the stage--in his scene in the first act, in which he hawks his wares to a gullible public, including, of course, the love-struck Nemorino.  It is a wonderful opportunity for an basso buffo to shine.  D'Arcangelo has a full, sonorous voice; he sang well, but something was missing...

...Zoom!  In a flash, I was transsported to the Metropolitan Opera House, listening to the incomparable Fernando Corena sing this role.  How could I remember the details so well--the performance took place fifty years ago!  I hadn't thought of him, nor listened to a recording of him, for many decades.  My mind's eye didn't see him at first, but my mind's ear heard him as if he returned from the dead--he died of a heart attack in his native Switzerland in 1984, at the young age of 67.

I had heard, in my years as an opera fan, many fine performers, such as James McCracken, Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne, Franco Correlli, Jesseye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Albanese, Pavarotti, Cesare Siepi, etc. etc.; I count Corena among the best.  He did not have a very versatile voice, but he had what Gerard Manley Hopkins attributed to Purcell, a high degree of inscape, that is, a striking singularity.  He was a consummate actor as well, and commanded the stage whenever he was on it.  His phrasing and timing were unforgettable.  Listening to him sing the role of Dulcamara was an unforgettable experience.

Yet I had forgotten it. 

The then of a half century ago became now once more--how could there be such a wide gulf of time between the two events?  What happened to that young man in the standing-room section listening to Corena with rapt attention?  It's as if it were yesterday.  And where will this old man, listening to beautiful music next to his lovely wife of nearly fifty years, be, many years prior to fifty years hence?  Guess.

Nirmala and I are not like the tragic couple in Maupassant's story; we are active and enjoying life.  Tomorrow, in fact, we will be attending a performance of Hamlet in Washington D.C., in the company of her sister, Romila, and our brother-in-law, Sudhir. 

I will leave you with a quote from the second act of Hamlet, in which Hamlet describes the way he feels (at that time) about humanity:

What piece of work is a man--how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals--and what to me is this quintessence of dust?

                                             Hamlet, 2.2, lines 264-269

Adam didn't get a chance to taste the fruit from the tree of Eternal Life. There's the rub; we are mortal. This quintessence of dust--

I don't know what it is, anymore than you do.  Let's not forget, however, that Hamlet is destined to transcend his melancholy: he becomes enlightened in the end, recognizing his own mortality, accepting life as it is, transcending the mere personal with the realization that everything is connected. Not a bad example to follow..

My Maupassant moment jolted back into my awareness the fact  that our time on earth is limited and provided me with a much needed  dose of reality. While alive, we are in possession of the greatest known gift in all creation: consciousness--and the height of consciousness is wisdom. Wisdom and love, while not neglecting the needs of the self, are the only means we have to transcend the limited self and its accompanying "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."  It is a good thing when death reminds us of our mortality--provided that we wake up and use whatever time we have left more wisely and more lovingly.

Whether you will live more than fifty years or less--perhaps much less, who knows?--ask yourself this: isn't it time to appreciate, celebrate, and accept life as it is? Isn't it time to really live, and to help others to really live as well?  If not now, when?  It's later than you think.

They're trying to "make America white again."

That's what the Senate Minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, had to say about current Republican immigration proposals.  It was her "basket of deplorables" moment.  (As many of you know, Hillary Clinton came up with that term and delivered it in a campaign speech.  According to her, Trump supporters could be divided into two groups.  One half consisted of vile racists; the other consisted of those with legitimate grievances who could be won over.  This was quoted out of context, of course--a few days later, a Trump supporter carried a poster that informed us that Deplorable Lives Matter).

There is, of course, more than a grain of truth--perhaps a whole bowlful--in what both women had to say: to pretend that Trump's success--diminishing already, thank God--has nothing to do with racism is like claiming increasing carbon emissions have nothing to do with climate change. (It is true, alas! that many Trump supporters deny both racism and climate change--the world, however, continues to warm while  prejudices continue to harm.)

Still, what Nancy Pelosi said, is what one wearing Democratic ballet shoes might call "unhelpful and misguided," or what one wearing Texas cowboy boots might call "deplorable and stupid."  What an unhelpful, misguided, deplorable and stupid political strategy!  Haven't Democrats learned anything yet?

And it is not only Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton.  Here's how N.Y. Times columnist Charles Blow described Trump in a recent op-ed piece:

He was working-class white America’s rebuff to an erudite black man and a supremely experienced woman. Trump’s defects had been validated. He was loved among those who hate.

Sweeping all working class whites into a basket of deplorables is almost--not quite, there is admittedly a lot of racism involved--like demonizing all immigrants because of the crimes of a few. (This is exactly what Trump does; it is a bad example to follow).

It is also, like all prejudice, unjustified.  Many of those same white people who voted for Trump in 2016 voted for Obama in 2012, proof that hate wasn't foremost on many of the voters' minds last November. 

I view the election debacle of 2016 as another example of "What is the Matter with Kansas?," that is, large numbers of working-class whites voted against their own interests due to economic duress and feelings of marginalization. The resultant anger induces one to vote like a snapping crocodile, that is, using one's brain stem, a more primitive area of the brain, than to vote after a cool analysis of issues. Calling a group of human beings--and we're all human beings--crocodiles, however, doesn't help at all.

Not only is believing that a large swath of the voting public consists of brain-dead, white-supremacist yokels morally unjustifiable, it is--which is the point of this article--a horrible political strategy.

Rural America--Trump's base--is home to many American voters; Democrats ignore them at their peril.

I am firmly convinced that many, with the right political strategies, can be turned around.  These do not include downplaying racism or ceasing to advocate for immigrants; one must reach out to working-class whites for the right reasons.  And in this age of increasing inequality, there are many: threats to Social Security and Medicare; lack of universal health care; lack of a living wage for all those who work, etc.  I recall a town meeting of Trump supporters during which Bernie Sanders spoke.  It didn't take him long to quell their anger by asking them questions such as, "Don't you support Social Security?," after which he exposed Republican plans to rip the already frayed social net even further.

Democrats have much to learn from Republicans.  The latter are expert political strategists.  Some white people feel economically threatened and marginalized.  What better way to get their votes than by blaming everything on immigrants?  Many feel that their way of life is disappearing.  What better way to get their votes than to vociferously oppose gay and transgender rights? What better way to demonize Social Security and Medicare than by calling them "entitlements," implying that they are the fuel for the (imaginary) limosines of "welfare queens?"

These are, of course, evil political strategies, but politically effective ones nevertheless. Politicians often have to stretch the truth to win--this is a fallen world, no doubt about that. Republicans, however, are in a different category.  They are the party of the rich and the rich are in the minority; they therefore have to use deceit as their primary means of inducing the rest of us to vote against our own interests.

The Republicans are winning this war.  It is a sad trait of humanity that scapegoats are sought--and always found--when life becomes especially hard.  Immigrants are to blame for everything!  They're taking our jobs!  They're criminals! Rapists! Anyone who even mentions the word amnesty hates us!

As I write this, Nancy Pelosi is threatening to shut down the government if there is no agreement on DACA.  Regarding DACA, there is only one moral position; Republican strategists have the Democrats just where they want them, however, by pairing granting citizenship to Dreamers with funding for that miserable wall in the same bill.  

If Democrats had been reaching out to working-class whites, mightn't the latter's irrational hate for immigrants have been tempered, reducing Trump's base's support for something so base as opposition to Dreamers? Did it have to come to this?

They're trying "to make America white again."

If that is your response, Madam Leader, the Democratic one should be "You're fired!"