A Dump of Trump

This past Tuesday something remarkable happened on my street, that reminded me of our national politics. A huge truckload of garbage was dumped in the driveway of one of my neighbors. We're talking the driveway to a double car garage. Plugged. Stuffed. Piled a good six feet high in places. Plus the whole pile, which was full of thin white bags, absolutely reeked. It had the sour smell of dumpsters behind restaurants, or at groceries, or at campgrounds, where food and grease is involved, and where everything is trying to go rancid at once. 

Now I've asked around the neighborhood. This was not a prank. It was an act of revenge. And as such, it's colorful, passionate, almost operatic. It reminds me of an insult in an Icelandic saga, as when someone throws a sheep's head at Steingrimr Ornolfsson in the Reykdoela saga. There's a certain level of anger necessary to activate the logistical imagination in matters like these, which is why for most of us, it never comes to sheeps' heads or dump trucks. Still, imagine the total amount of low grade anger in any given town, or state, or country these days. What happens when the level gets high enough, or when a nice handy sheep's head suddenly appears, right there on the debate stage, with the initials D.T.?

I know that political hand-wringing is all the rage, but I'm not afraid to assert it myself: the unholy trinity of our politics these days is anger, frustration, and despair. People, as everyone keeps repeating, are fed up. With something. It's hard to say what. But for many of us it really doesn't matter. For many of us abstract analysis is beside the point, and if anything the inarticulate nature of the trinity makes it all the more powerfully explosive. The need to get back at the system is rampant. Contagious. It's like a spooky yeast getting into all corners of the dough, making the whole thing rise really ugly and deformed. 

Now, let's be clear. The reasons should not be any big mystery. Huge segments of the population are without meaningful work. Other segments know the robots are coming for theirs. Real wages have been falling for decades. We have students fresh out of school carrying around planets of debt ("don't shrug, little Atlas, or you go to jail"). Ecological limits assert themselves daily in every new report. Health care just gets more expensive and confusing. And everywhere in finance and education we get the same dishonest analytical read: just wait a little longer. Prosperity will come. 

To which the billionaire in the baseball cap, whispering over our collective left shoulder, says: “Stop listening to all them. Listen to your gut. OF COURSE you've been screwed. And no, no one in the establishment cares about you. Only I, among all the rich and powerful, actually care about you. So, this is what you do. Just drive this truck full of all this garbage to the polling station. Pull this lever that says "dump 'em." Then let them smell the result. You'll see. We'll win.”

HB