Why I Still Have Hope And Won't Give Up
Why I Still Have Hope And Won't Give Up
Abandoning "Great Man Theory" and hyper-individualism and finding strength in community
“Great Man Theory” is an approach to understanding and teaching history that became popular in the 19th Century. The idea is that history can be best explained and interpreted by focusing on the acts of individuals, typically men, and how those events unfolded and changed history’s course. An example would be the focus we tend to put on American Presidents and their actions in office (i.e. we call popular programs like Social Security and Medicare part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs, respectively).
This approach to history, however, is very myopic. FDR and LBJ, to elaborate on the prior example, didn’t come up with New Deal and Great Society programs out of their own cognizance and great benevolence; these programs were devised by subject matter and policy experts, and the political will to make them a reality came from everyday Americans who were suffering and demanded more from their government. These folks didn’t just write letters and make calls and visit their representatives, either. Blood was shed, lives lost, countless sacrifices made to bring about these policy achievements, however imperfect and narrowly-tailored and overdue.
We find ourselves falling prey to this antiquated theory with regard to presidential politics again today. It’s not the man Donald Trump himself, for example, who makes the Trump persona dangerous. If we’re being honest here, Trump is nothing more than an egomaniacal moron and sexual predator with too much money. The eccentricities of such elderly white men are such a common part of our society that they often get overlooked—when they’re not seated in the Oval Office.
What makes Trump an existential danger to the Republic and to any semblance of democracy the United States has ever known is his no-holds-barred appeal to ideas that, in all honesty, collectively constitute the very cornerstone of American culture, society and politics: namely white supremacy, patriarchy and authoritarian or puritanical Christianity, all stemming from settler colonialism. Trump speaks the language of the white dominance, nativist, Eurocentric theocrats. Capitalism, of course, fuels all of this and Trump is ever the capitalist rhetorically, while, like all capitalists, unashamed to turn to socialism via favorable bankruptcy and tax laws that help him socialize risk and privatize profit.
You see where I’m going with this? Systems and institutions stemming from this nation’s founding are what enable a narcissistic, megalomaniacal buffoon like a Donald Trump to become a threat to this country and by extension to the entire global order. When we ignore those systems and institutions and focus all our attention on this one useful idiot who happens to be louder and more willing to say the proverbial quiet part out loud than his predecessors, we suffer even worse. We’ve got to abandon “Great Man,” even with regard to truly great men, let alone a Trump, and instead concentrate on effecting real and lasting change.
You may feel the need to stop here and observe that we are in such crisis as a result of Trump and his MAGA cult movement that we can’t focus on the larger systemic and institutional changes needing to take place. You’re not wrong, but let’s also think what occurred just eight short years before we were faced with the first Trump presidency. Barack Obama was elected with strong Democratic Party majorities in both houses of Congress. The Republicans at the federal level were on life support, their party epitaph being written. What happened?
Republicans focused on the long game and how to use or change the system and bend the institutions to their will. Republicans knew the only way to restore their influence and control in D.C. was to start in state legislatures. Between 2010 and 2014, they flipped over 1,000 state legislative seats and won back both houses of Congress. By 2016 they took back the White House with what was unequivocally the single most unqualified, downright awful candidate anyone could imagine. Hillary Clinton went a long way toward wrecking her own candidacy, especially in so-called “blue wall” states like PA, WI, and MI, but the path to Trump’s victory started much earlier.
I’d be lying, though, if I said that only Republican efforts led us down this path. Where we are today is as much about what Democrats failed to do as what Republicans have done. Democrats had the opportunity with their congressional majorities and Obama in the White House, at least for two years, to do SO MUCH MORE to prevent our current fate. Election reform, climate legislation, immigration reform, gun control legislation, much more substantive healthcare reform, education reform, on and on and on.
Why didn’t the Democrats act more ferociously, knowing how precarious their majorities could be? To a large extent it was because they shared (and share) the same neoliberal corporatist and militaristic/global hegemonic aims as the Republicans. But, once again, that’s not the whole explanation. Put simply, we the people didn’t exert the pressure. In the 1930s, there was a very real possibility that the capitalist order would topple. There were no collective bargaining rights yet, that was the compromise. Organized labor was striking (both literally and metaphorically) at the heart of capitalism itself, with violence and destruction where deemed necessary.
In the 1960s, the movement was similar, though the socioeconomic aspects are often overshadowed (deliberately) and “Great Man” applied (again deliberately, this time to MLK Jr.) to take away from the class-related aspects of what became known as the Civil Rights Era. MLK was, after all, supporting striking sanitation workers in Memphis when he was assassinated. The ‘60s, though, were obviously also a time of great anti-militarism with the movement against the Vietnam War and a time of struggle for equality, equity, inclusion and justice for all humanity.
The 2020s call for nothing less. While I hope that we can emulate the electoral successes that have just occurred of left-leaning parties and coalitions in the U.K. and France, that won’t be enough, and even that won’t be accomplished without public action outside of the voting booth. That’s why I’m voting (as long as they manage ballot access) for Claudia de la Cruz and Karina Garcia for U.S. President and VP on the Party for Socialism and Liberation ticket in West Virginia. I know West Virginia’s four electoral votes are handily Trump’s, so I’m using my vote for the highest office as a public statement of my will to effect actual change.
I titled this piece with a statement of hope and determination. Why? Because I KNOW we can do what we must. With the police killing of George Floyd came a Movement for Black Lives; with the rise of COVID-19 came a movement for an appropriate government response, sanity in public health and safety, and preparation for worse in the future. Preceding all of this, a movement against the 1% in an era of massive wealth and income inequality began in Zuccotti Park, NY and culminated in two very powerful presidential runs by a candidate (Sen. Bernie Sanders) who embraces a socialist label and helped lift that movement far beyond what many thought possible. A movement has risen since October 2023 opposing Israeli-perpetrated genocide in Gaza and U.S. support of it, and in support of Palestinians who have been brutally oppressed and expelled from their homelands and flagrantly threatened with extermination since 1948. The heart and the will are there.
It’s never easy and it never happens over night, but the change we need now will only be delivered by people power. I myself will remain the same steadfast climate activist and activist for non-theist and secular causes that I have been for the better part of a decade. I will keep up fights for all humanity against the forces of oppression and tyranny. In the end, what else can we really do? Don’t stop with a ballot cast. Do all you truly can. It’s the only way. We need each other and the world needs us. There is no such thing as any “Great Man” acting entirely without others. Rampant individualism only leads to failure and disaster. We deserve better and we will have it…if we refuse to be denied it.