Dealing with the unthinkable just takes a little thinking
Disaffection has had its day, but now its morning in America - how do we channel the need for change and at the same time overcome the symbolic flaws of our chosen leader?
The biggest problem many people have with President-elect Donald Trump is who he is - the character flaws do not need to be repeated. The biggest strength of Trump is that those who voted for him were far more concerned with the need to give voice to their disaffection than with those flaws.
Our challenge - yes our, meaning all Americans - is to find a way both to give voice to the frustrations of the Trump following and to meaningfully address their roots. Most of the disaffected feel unable to get ahead - they have reacted to the "feeling" - but the establishment political order has done a poor job of helping them articulate that phrase's unspoken clause in a manner that can lead to progress. Get ahead of whom? Get ahead of what? Our collective failure to articulate those very questions is a pointer to the potential road out of the mess.
Uncertainty and feelings of delegitimization lie at the core of the disaffection. The Trump following is almost unanimous in the belief that the "establishment" has created a "system" in which their concerns cannot even be expressed, never mind attended to. They believe they cannot be heard. That the "system" cares only about "its own concerns" and paying attention to its own "favored interests" and "powers that be." Trump's supporters are sick and tired of being ignored. And they believe that the system has no desire to ever listen.
Those in the lower economic end of this group truly believe that programs such as affirmative action, refugee resettlement, student loans and the like are designed (yes, designed - meaning with intent) to give select groups of "others" a way to get ahead of them. They believe that their hard work is often for naught. Just as they go to pull themselves up the ladder, there goes the government raising the bar or allowing someone else to cut in line.
This is a real issue. Both that they feel this way and that they can tell far too many stories that fit the pattern. Because we have very visible programs for helping some groups (who are seen as getting help getting ahead), our more silent programs for other groups remain unknown. The "who" becomes both our neighbors (in America, getting ahead of the Joneses remains a national preoccupation) and the recipients of these well-promoted programs. (The concern is not with immigrants, per se; it is with the idea that immigrants get help - using resources which could have gone to "me.")
Our economic malaise and the 2008-10 housing crisis eroded our sense of security about jobs and our economic future. When the old "truths" of getting an annual pay raise and "housing prices always go up" held, there was a sense of security. That sense has been smashed.
If a Trump administration is to succeed in creating change, that change needs to address these two concerns: fairness and security. The Clinton voters need to see that these concerns of the Trump majority are both real and legitimate. Both parties need to begin the new administration with a laser focus on these issues - perhaps with simple steps: creating an ombudsman's office to help everyone (not just those with lobbyists) deal with government, taking steps to prevent people from encountering the benefits cliff (where doing better means you lose access to the very programs that allowed you to do better), and encouraging shared equity arrangements in housing and education.
Most important, we need to give our new president many opportunities to proclaim success for all Americans - he relishes that, and in turn, behaves. We all want that.
Michael Lissack is executive director of the Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence, an organizational management think tank, and an affiliate member of the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University.