Trump has made it clear he's #NotMyPresident

Today, I woke up and realized that Donald Trump really is not my president. Not because I say so, but because he does.

No, Mr. Trump doesn’t know me personally. I like it that way. The people he does know personally tend to become targets for his wrath, sooner or later, because it’s impossible to criticize him without being identified as a threat to his own inflated yet fragile self-image. And it’s equally impossible for any thinking person to avoid criticizing him.

This is why Mr. Trump isn’t my president. He doesn’t represent me — or people like me — because he doesn’t want to.

When the #NotMyPresident hashtag started trending, immediately after the inauguration, I dismissed it as sour grapes. Democrats and, specifically, hardline Hillary Clinton supporters, didn’t like the result of the election and were refusing to accept it.

I didn’t blame them for being frustrated with the outcome of a general election marred by an antiquated Electoral College system. Then again, I didn’t blame Bernie Sanders’ supporters for being upset about a primary election in which Democratic leadership clearly and unabashedly favored Clinton.  

Still, I recognize that, however unfair, Clinton was the party’s nominee and Trump was, ultimately, the nation’s president.

Except he’s not.

The Great Divider

Trump has said he wants the country united … as long as he gets his way and gets all the credit. (Remember his absurd boast to the Republican National Convention: “I alone can fix it.” It’s a statement that contains two assertions: He doesn’t think anyone else can succeed, and perhaps even more telling, he doesn’t think he needs anyone’s help.)

When Trump doesn’t get his way, his response isn’t to work collaboratively toward unity, but just the opposite: He makes new enemies. He lashes out at the Jeff Sessions, Stephen Curry, John McCain or anyone else he perceives as a threat to his personal glory. He picks fights with allies (Mexico) and adversaries (North Korea) alike so he can create or magnify scapegoats for people to hate — all for the sake of getting more pats on the back and attaboys.

Make no mistake, that’s what he’s in this for. Trump pursued the presidency for one reason and one reason alone: He wants adulation. He has neither time nor concern for anyone who doesn’t applaud him and affirm him.

To Trump, politics isn’t a means of public service but of personal aggrandizement.

Philosophical carpetbagger

This is why he consistently “plays to his base” … and ignores everyone else. It’s why he holds campaign-style rallies instead of town halls, long after the election. He’s not running for anything except the imaginary office of messianic control freak.

Trump ignored the conventional wisdom that’s been employed since Richard Nixon that Republicans should “run to the right” in the primaries and “run to the center” during the general election. In fact, he ran away from the center against Clinton, and it looks like he’s still running away from it as president. But for him, “the center” means something different than it does for most politicians. To Trump, the center is, well, Trump. The center of the universe, that is.

“We’re dying here. We truly are dying here. I keep saying it: SOS.”

— Carmen Yulin Cruz, San Juan mayor

He’s not about ideology or principle. This should be plain enough, considering he’s flip-flopped on virtually every major issue, from abortion to DACA to the Iraq War, over the past two decades. He’s the ultimate philosophical carpetbagger: He preaches to whatever choir will sing his praises the loudest.

At present, his choir of choice happens to be the Republican Party. But make no mistake: If the GOP’s rank-and-file members sour on him, he’ll turn on them and take his dog and pony show elsewhere. (Just ask Mitch McConnell, Sessions, McCain and other Republicans who have come under withering criticism for failing to support Trump to his satisfaction.)

Trump’s an expert in one thing: taking his ball and going home. Ask the USFL. Or bankruptcy court.

Most recently, he fired Tom Price as Health and Human Services secretary, not because Price did something wrong by using charter planes on the taxpayers’ dime, but because “I don’t like the optics.” Translation: “I can’t put up with this guy making me look bad.”

Turning his back

Through all this, I resisted the idea of saying Trump is “not my president” — even though I’ve never felt as though he is. I believe in accepting the results of elections I don’t like and respecting the democratic process, even when it’s clearly flawed.

But once the election is over, it’s a public official’s duty to serve all the people, and Trump hasn’t done that. Individual voters can't expect to agree with his every decision, but they should at least get the feeling that he's trying to serve the entire country — not just his cronies and yes men.

I've never been a Trump supporter. I've always thought he lacked what it takes to be president. But I've never used the phrase "not my president" until now.

The last straw for me came when the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, pleaded for more help dealing with the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria. “You have people in buildings and they're becoming caged in their own buildings — old people, retired people that don’t have any electricity. We're dying here. We truly are dying here. I keep saying it: SOS.”

Trump’s response?

Blame the mayor, the people of Puerto Rico, the Democrats, "fake news" — pretty much everybody else.

“Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help. They ... want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort.”

This is not the way you treat someone you’re supposed to represent when that person is pleading for hundreds, thousands of people’s lives.

““They (Puerto Ricans) ... want everything to be done for them ... “”

— Donald J. Trump

It’s a way of saying you’re not their president. Well, Mr. Trump, if you’re not their president, you’re not mine, either. My wife was born on the island of Puerto Rico, and is a “natural born American citizen.” You’ve already indicated by your actions that you represent your base. Period. You’ve said things to alienate huge numbers of women, people of color, Latinos, Muslims … the list goes on and on. Now you’re essentially calling the people of Puerto Rico a bunch of lazy ingrates while they’re trying to cope with a lack of clean water, electricity, housing, health care and myriad other issues.

When a person elected to represent people turns his back on those people, they have every right to turn their back on him. They have every reason not to travel to the White House to accept his congratulations for their sports achievements. They have every right to protest. And they have every right to say he’s #NotMyPresident.

And, Mr. Trump, you’re not.

Not because I say so, but because you’re saying so loud and clear to millions of Americans every day.

What do liberals and conservatives hear when they argue?

My father taught me a good debater is able to argue both sides of a point, and I discovered on my own that it’s a lot more fun to do it with a little (or a lot) of sarcasm throw in.

So, I’m going to be tweaking both liberals and conservatives with this post, but there’s a serious point behind it: We don’t tend to realize how we come across to other people, especially in political conversations. While you’re making those deeply considered arguments for your deeply held beliefs on social media, it’s quite likely that those on the other side of the issue are hearing something entirely different.

What are they hearing?

Maybe something a little like this:

What conservatives might hear when liberals get on their soapbox ... 

1. Men are bad – They’re a bunch of clueless oafs who use their entrenched gender-based privilege to push people around. Besides they’re only interested in sex and beer and football. (What about women who like those things, too? Shhhh. We’re conveniently ignoring that).

2. Pro athletes are bad – We should be paying teachers that much! Screw supply and demand. Besides, the fine arts are the only acceptable form of entertainment. NASCAR? UFC? Boxing? They all gotta go!

3. Faith is bad – Unless it’s faith in myself. (Hey, stop reminding me of how many times I’ve screwed things up, OK? It takes a village, don’t ya know!)

4. Other liberals are bad – Unless they agree with everything on the accepted liberal “Litmus Test Checklist of Acceptable Knee-Jerk Responses.” What’s that? You say liberalism is about thinking for yourself? Puleeez! That’s so 1960s.

5. This chemical is bad – There’s a 0.03 percent greater chance of contracting (insert fatal condition here) if one consumes 200 gallons of it a day. This must be stopped at all costs!

6. Humans are bad – We’re destroying the environment! (But please give us free health care so we can live longer and make it worse.)

7. Success is bad – If you have too much money, it either means you cheated to get it, inherited it from someone who did, or that you’re hoarding it and not giving it to the less fortunate people who deserve it more than a cheapskate like you!

8. White people are bad – Because skin color defines us, don’t ya know. Wait a minute ...

9. Cars are bad – Unless they’re electric. Everyone should ride a bike to work, even if your office is sixty miles away! Or telecommute, even if you work loading goods onto containers in a warehouse. Don’t you know you’re part of the problem? That diesel truck you’re loading is destroying us all!

10. The Electoral College is bad – Because it’s unfair? Get real. No one cares about that. Because we lost! Twice!

What liberals might hear when conservatives get on their high horse... 

1. Immigrants are bad – They take all those dirt-cheap jobs that should go to Americans so the corporate honchos can keep all the money!

2. Government is bad – But elect us anyway! Because it's good for us (we want those speaking engagement fees, do-nothing corporate board seats and seven-figure deal for our memoir)!

3. Taxes are bad – Unless they’re used for the military. Who needs roads, health care, education? You’re on your own with that shit.

4. The arts are bad – Most of that shit was either made by people on LSD, about to commit suicide or trying to brainwash you to give to the DNC. Ever notice how LSD and DNC kinda rhyme? You can’t tell me that’s a coincidence!

5. Science is bad – Especially if it disagrees with my interpretation of my scripture, which just happens to support my financial agenda. Isn’t it nice how that works out?

6. Universities are bad – They fill our young people’s heads with all sorts of perverse ideas about evolution and equality (communism!) and diversity. Egads! There’s a reason they call it liberal arts. (Makes the sign of the cross).

7. Gun control is bad – Because the NRA said so. The gun manufacturers need to sell more guns, and we’re in their pockets (but we can’t admit that).

8. The media are bad – Biased! Fake! Trust only Fox News and Drudge and Rush and Hannity. They’re not biased! No, not at all!

9. Same-sex marriage is bad – Don’t get us wrong. We still believe government should stay out of everything, but sex is different. It’s only in the most private, intimate setting that government has a place! You have to admit that makes sense!

10. Poverty is bad – It means you didn’t try hard enough! It’s all your fault! You want a living wage? So sorry. You want to survive, you gotta play the game, baby. You’re the one who worships Darwin, right? Well, maybe you oughta take a page out of his book. It’s all about survival of the fattest … er… fittest.

And the one they both agree on: a distaste for the First Amendment:

Free speech is bad (conservative version) – We can’t let J.K. Rowling, Mark Twain and John Stewart corrupt our youth now, can we? “Harry Potter” almost ended civilization as we know it: They used that witchcraft to elect that guy from Kenya! We can’t let that happen again!

Free speech is bad (liberal version) – We can’t let anyone offend our delicate sensibilities, now, can we? We need safe spaces to protect our little ears from your bad, bad words.

Now I’m sure there will be some people on both sides who don’t like that I’ve said any of this – which just reinforces my last point about free speech.

Besides, you’re not supposed to like it.

Are debaters these days still able to argue both sides of an issue? Or have we become so addicted to political defensiveness that our debate preparations consist solely of buttressing our own POV – with both reasonable points and kitchen-sink-dumping fallacies?

People on both sides of such “dialogues” are at fault, whether they’re arrogantly pushing their views on others or refusing to listen when presentations are calm and rational. We need to start talking to each other again, rather than spouting talking points and then raising objections before we’ve even heard what the other side has to say.

We might just learn something … if we’re not too busy coming off as such know-it-alls!

Accountability is Trump's Kryptonite, and he knows it

“The president is entitled to his opinion, but we’re a nation of laws.”

— U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., responding to Donald Trump’s assertion that the appointment of a special counsel in the Russia investigation was the result of a “witch hunt”

Ah, Mother Russia. As in the mother of all scandals.

I’m inclined to think Donald Trump’s guilty of something here, but it may not be because he likes the Russians or wants to do them any favors.

It's probably not treason. And, while it may be obstruction of justice, Trump probably doesn’t view it that way.

What Trump is most likely guilty of doing is following through on exactly what he said he was going to do:  Running the government like a business. Or, more precisely, how he would run a business.

That means a lot of back-room bargaining that will, he’s probably sure, result in a "great deal." This is, after all, the guy who wrote a book called The Art of the Deal. He expects to get the best of any rival in the course of negotiations and, if somehow he doesn’t, he counts on being able to cut and run, as he did when various businesses enterprises failed. (Bankruptcy, anyone?)

Getting things done

Many of Trump’s supporters voted for him because they were sick of government gridlock. They wanted a president who could “cut through the red tape” and “get things done” in a government that too often seemed mired in the quicksand of obstructionism.

Who can blame them? Do-nothing Congresses have become the rule, rather than the exception, and each of the two major parties seems more interested in discrediting the other than in accomplishing anything of substance.

California voters put Arnold Schwarzenegger in office for the same reason, but Schwarzenegger, for all his Governator posturing, ultimately worked within the system.

And was, too many, a disappointment.

Trump isn’t doing that. He’s trying to work around the system, the same way he did as a businessman – by finding loopholes, making deals and avoiding responsibility if and when things go wrong.

A lot of people worried, before he took office, that Trump would fail because "you can’t run a republic like a business." You have to cut deals with Congress, make compromises and play the political game. But that was never the issue. Cutting deals is supposed to be Trump’s forte. But here’s the rub: Even if you could run the country like a business, you can’t run it like a bad business … which is what Trump seems to be doing.

Bad business, bad governance

A good business is accountable to its shareholders; a good government is accountable to the people. There’s at least a superficial parallel there, but Trump’s throwing it all to hell by ditching the issue of accountability entirely.

Shunning the media is bad government the same way ducking a financial audit is bad business. The media’s job is to reassure the public that everything’s running smoothly, in much the same way an independent auditor’s task is to reassure shareholders there’s no funny business going on with the company’s books.

Inviting the Russian media to an Oval Office meeting with Russian officials is like inviting your biggest corporate rival’s bookkeeper to examine your finances while telling your own shareholders to take a hike.  

Seriously? This is how you run a business? Not any business that I’ve ever heard of – at least not a successful one.

The problem may be that Trump is simply so cocky about his ability as a dealmaker that he thinks it’s fine to be careless; that it will all come out in the wash. But government doesn’t work that way. We are a nation of laws, and circumventing those laws won’t overcome gridlock, any more than a business can “get things done” by cheating on its taxes.

Accountability is the answer

In an era where “working across the aisle” and “finding common ground” has become next to impossible because of partisan obstruction, it’s tempting to do whatever it takes to restore some level of responsiveness to government. There are elements of the system that clearly cry out for reform. Gerrymandered congressional districts that discourage flexibility and compromise come to mind.

Here’s the problem: Most of the dysfunction in Washington stems from a lack of accountability. Safe congressional seats. Entrenched “red” and “blue” lawmakers answerable only to think-alike constituents. An increasingly politicized Supreme Court. These problems can be resolved only by increasing accountability, not by undermining it – which is exactly what Trump’s back-room shenanigans succeed in doing.

And here’s what’s worse: Overconfidence is perhaps the biggest breeding ground for failure there is. Trump may have experience in real estate, but he’s got none in foreign relations. Ergo, inviting veteran Russian officials to make some sort of under-the-table deal (if that’s what he was doing) is akin to a college debate champion representing himself in court against Perry Mason. And thinking, because he's always won before, that he'll win there, too. 

If this were a real estate deal, Trump might be able to declare bankruptcy and start over. Starting over after you’ve handed over intelligence to a foreign power is a lot harder to do.

If that’s what he did. As I said at the outset, I'm inclined to think Trump's guilty of something. This, and probably other things, as well. But we don’t know that yet, and as Senator Rubio says, this is a nation of laws. Even if Trump doesn’t appear to be respecting those laws, he’s still innocent until proven guilty.

I'll give him that. But it's also precisely why the current investigation must be allowed to take its course. An investigation he doesn't want.

It's worth asking why.

Electoral College: a living monument to slavery's folly

I told myself I wasn’t going to blog about politics again for a while, but since I didn’t tell anyone else (until now), I’m safe, right?

Even if I’m not, I don’t care, because this Electoral College thing is really sticking in my craw – and not because of how it affected the current election. That’s over and done with, but the E.C. is still with us, enshrined in the very Constitution it contradicts (more on that later) and giving rural voters a built-in advantage over those of us in big states and big cities.

I live in one of those big states: California. And the most common argument I hear in favor of the E.C. runs something like this: “We wouldn’t want those people in California deciding the next president, would we?”

Being one of “those people,” I take offense.

Oh, sure, it’s fine the give tiny Vermont and Iowa an outsized say in who gets nominated. Aren’t they cute little states? Don’t they just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? But if, as a Californian, I object that my general election ballot is worth less than half a Wyoming voter’s vote, I’m a big bad bully.

Geography vs. democracy

For comparison’s sake, imagine that each vote cast in Alice Springs, a town of 27,000 in Australia’s central desert, was worth more than a ballot filled out in Sydney, where 21% of the country’s people. Or that a vote in northern Russia was counted more heavily than one cast in Moscow (assuming Putinland had a functioning democracy) just because Siberia covers 77 percent of that nation’s land area.

Unfair is unfair, no matter where you happen to live. And we’re talking about the United States, here, the self-described beacon of democratic freedom.

It can be argued the E.C. was never about democracy. Alexander Hamilton wrote that the Electoral College was meant to reflect “the sense of the people” while entrusting the actual selection to “men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances of favorable deliberation.” He wanted to make sure no one would ever become president unless he was “endowed with the requisite qualifications.”

But if that’s what the founders wanted, they don’t have it now. The modern Electoral College neither reflects “the sense of the people” nor does it allow for any analysis or deliberation. Many electors are compelled by law to vote for candidates based on the popular vote, eliminating any check against an unqualified candidate winning office while, at the same time, potentially forcing them to participate in the election of someone who doesn’t reflect the overall sense of the people.

So, the modern Electoral College is a failure on both counts.

What it does succeed in doing is thumbing its nose at the concept of one person, one vote: the principle of equal protection guaranteed by the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. The argument that it’s meant to reflect geographic influence only amplifies the problem. Geographic areas aren’t people, any more than corporations are, and granting them de facto voting rights makes about as much sense as scheduling a debate between Mount Lassen and Old Faithful.

A Constitution at odds with itself

Defenders of the E.C. try to explain that the Electoral College protects “rural America” from being buried under an avalanche of votes from the big cities. It preserves “geographic diversity,” they say – as though that’s the only kind of diversity that exists in this country. Never mind racial diversity, religious diversity, cultural diversity and so forth.

But wait. Say you want to try inflating the value of a person’s vote based on any of those factors. You can’t, because the 14th Amendment won’t let you. It was put in place expressly to prevent that from happening. Otherwise, there would be nothing to keep people in the majority from depriving African-Americans (or anybody else) of their right to vote, just because they happened to feel like it. The way the old South did.

Nothing, that is, except for the Electoral College. Under this system, votes in predominantly white rural areas do count more than votes from inner cities in densely populated states … where more African-Americans, Latinos and other minorities just happen to live.

Hmmmm.

This shouldn’t be a surprise, because the E.C. was created largely for the benefit of slave owners in Southern states who wouldn’t allow blacks to vote but also couldn’t stomach the idea of being badly outnumbered by free-state citizens in a straight popular vote. The Electoral College allowed them to have it both ways: They could count each slave as a fraction of a voter (three-fifths, to be exact) – even though those slaves didn’t actually vote. It was either ingenious or diabolical, depending on your point of view.

As James Madison put it: "The right of suffrage was much more diffusive (or widespread) in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes."

The Electoral College gave them that influence. Along with such contrivances as the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, it was designed to balance the interests of free and slave states, often by bending over backwards to placate the latter. Even so, the goal ultimately proved unattainable.

The house of cards came crashing down when the South seceded and started the Civil War. Then, when the North won, it granted African-Americans the right to vote and passed the 14th Amendment, enshrining the principle of one man, one vote in the Constitution. Everything that had been put in place to preserve the power of slave owners was swept aside.

Except the Electoral College, because it was already in the Constitution.

The E.C. remained in place even though it could no longer fulfill the purpose for which it was created: to help slave states. There no longer were any slave states. Or slaves. Just a bunch of pissed off former slaveholders who – despite the 14th Amendment – sought to keep blacks from voting by imposing things such as poll taxes, literacy tests and a host of other barriers later deemed to be unconstitutional.

Definitions of diversity

Here’s the upshot: Thanks to its place in the Constitution, the E.C. not only outlived its relevance, it preserved a power structure designed to bolster slavery – which was, most people would agree, an inherently unfair social system.

Is it any surprise that the E.C. is itself inherently unfair?

Rooted in an era before equal protection, it preserves the very framework that propped up the antebellum South. It’s a living relic of the slavery era that still manages to accomplish what poll taxes and literacy tests cannot: maximizing the rural white vote – just as it was intended to do. The Electoral College isn’t about preserving geographic diversity, it’s about constraining the kind of racial and ethnic diversity one finds in urban areas of highly populated states.

Embedded in the Constitution, the E.C. flies in the face of the 14th Amendment – which is part of this very same document.

It’s all but immune to reform, because the Constitution designed to be difficult to change (even when it contradicts itself). We citizens only seem to question it when it doesn’t match the popular vote, and the people it raises to power in such circumstance have less incentive than anyone else to challenge it.

I’m not saying you are a racist if you defend the Electoral College. What I am saying is that it was created in part to perpetuate racial inequality, so we shouldn’t be surprised if it does so. You can be resigned to it or even argue for it, but please don’t pretend it’s either fair or democratic. Land masses don’t vote. Slaves couldn’t, either.

As for California, it never was a slave state, but it and other urban centers remain chained to a skewed system that was designed to perpetuate a slave culture.

The moral of the story: If we want to be a free society, we should damned well start acting like one.

Social justice warriors or voyeur vigilantes?

Don’t call me a social justice warrior.

I like Warriors – as long as they’re named Stephen Curry or Klay Thompson, and they’re draining 3s in the name of Golden State. But real war (off the basketball court) is hell, as the saying goes, and it’s a warrior’s job to win. Period. Which usually involves making someone else’s life hell.

Count me out.

I’m not interested in making anyone’s life hell. But we, as a society, seem increasingly inclined to do so – and that worries me. Thanks to the internet, shaming has become a spectator sport, with self-proclaimed social justice warriors on the lookout for people to condemn.

In a way, they remind me of those highway patrol officers who hide behind billboards, waiting to take off after the next driver who’s going a few miles over the speed limit.

Except they’re worse.

Those roadside cops may be sneaky, but they have an official mandate to stop people from speeding. If you’re exceeding the posted speed limit, they’re perfectly within their rights to pull you over. In fact, they’re doing their job.

Social justice warriors don’t wear badges, haven’t gone through any training and lack any official mandate to do what they do. They are, in a sense, vigilantes, patrolling the social scene and trying to shame people into “doing the right thing” – according to their definition.

A key distinction

“Hold on,” you may object. “Don’t they speak out forcefully against racist and sexist behavior, discrimination against the LGBT community and others. Isn’t that ‘the right thing’?”

Of course it is. But speaking out is one thing, shaming is quite another.

Shaming has been used as a means of social control throughout history, often in ways that today’s social justice warriors would find offensive. People have been shamed for refusing to believe in “the one true faith” – whatever their culture determines that faith to be. They’ve been shamed for the color of their skin, for menstruating, for their sexual orientation. Even today, many people who call themselves social justice warriors decry such actions as “slut shaming” and “body shaming.”

As they should.

But if you’re so quick to condemn others for shaming – a form of bullying – should you really be so eager to use the same tactic? Do the ends truly justify (pun intended, again) the means?

Social justice or social torture?

Before answering that, perhaps we should address what those ends will actually be. People who are shamed wind up being condemned, ostracized and often dehumanized. Branded with scarlet letters, they become convenient scapegoats for public rage and symbols for “everything that’s wrong with the world.” They can lose their reputations, their jobs and worse.

Does it change their minds? It’s doubtful. Shaming is ineffective for the same reason torture is: If someone is hurt badly enough, s/he will say anything to make the pain stop. Recanting when you’re tied to a stake is meaningless; contracts signed at the point of a gun are null and void – for good reason.

Others may be bullied into remaining silent – or going into hiding – because of the example that’s set by public shaming. But is that really a good thing? If we tell them to shut up, we’ve cut off any avenue for dialogue that just might change their minds about a whole range of issues. Perhaps, heaven forbid, the people we were tempted to shame might even teach us a thing or two.

Too often, social justice warriors remind me of Patriot Act proponents: willing to curtail freedoms (in this case, freedom of expression) for the sake of, supposedly, preserving them.

That’s not to say we should start looking the other way when someone uses the “N” word, condemns someone for his/her sexual orientation or harasses another person, sexually or otherwise. What we should do, I believe, is condemn the behavior without shaming the person. None of this is, nor should it be, personal. If we make it so, we expose our own ulterior motives.

War and peace

Are we really trying to make the world a better place, or are we just voyeur vigilantes, actively seeking out people to mock and shame because we enjoy seeing a good train wreck? Or, worse, because we want to prop up our own fragile egos by claiming some sense of superiority? If it’s the latter, we’re merely sinking to the level of those we shame – or lower.

Language matters. There’s an important difference between a social justice warrior and a peaceful protester.

Saying you’re a warrior makes it sound like you’re ready to kick some ass, and to hell with anyone who stands in your way. Saying you’re a diplomat makes you sound like a wimp or, at the very least, someone who’s willing to “compromise your principles” – because compromise has become a dirty word in the modern lexicon.

And that’s too bad, because a willingness to compromise fosters trust, and trust is necessary for dialogue. That’s what I want.

So, call me a diplomat. A proponent of peace. An advocate for equality. A believer in kindness. I’ll take any of those as a high compliment. But please don’t call me a social justice warrior. I have no interest in starting a war; I want to pave the way for peace.

The economy, identity politics and the collapse of neoliberalism

Back in August of 2015, activists with the group Black Lives Matter disrupted two rallies in Seattle for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. The group succeeded in keeping Sanders from speaking about his agenda.

The surreal part of all this is that the agenda in question wasn’t some far-right attempt to marginalize African Americans. It was just the opposite: It included such proposals as free college education and a $15 minimum wage – proposals that, if implemented, would have helped poor and working class African Americans more than anything the other major candidates were suggesting.

As of 2010, the poverty rates for African Americans were 27.4 percent, the highest among any racial or ethnic group. Yet despite this, African Americans overwhelmingly preferred Hillary Clinton over Sanders in the Democratic primaries, 76 percent to 23 percent. Some of this might have been chalked up to name recognition, and Clinton certainly had a stronger ground game among black voters.

But on policy, it’s hard to argue that Sanders’ proposals wouldn’t have done more to lift African Americans out of poverty than Clinton’s.

Meanwhile, Sanders actually won a slightly greater proportion of the white vote than Clinton did, appealing to many of the same working-class white Americans whose votes Donald Trump used as the touchstone for his victory over Clinton in the general election.

Where neoliberalism went wrong

So, what happened? Why did poor and working class blacks vote so overwhelmingly for Clinton in the primary, while poor and working class whites turned out in droves for Trump in the general election.

The answer seems obvious, although it won’t be popular among some of my readers: People on both sides of the racial divide have emphasized that divide to such an extent that racial identity has become more important in defining political allegiances than actual policy - even if that policy might help both sides.

Who benefits? Anyone wishing to maintain the economic status quo … which isn’t really a status quo at all, because the wealth gap between rich and poor has continued to grow. And it’s done so with both a Republican (George W. Bush) and a Democrat (Barack Obama) in the White House.

Before anyone yells “false equivalency” – an increasingly common and often fallacious rejoinder that’s intended to shame people into shutting their mouths – I’m not equating Bush’s catastrophic economic policies with Obama’s efforts, which did succeed in bringing the unemployment rate down substantially and stimulating an economic recovery. Few people would (or should) argue that even a sluggish recovery is better than the worst economic downturn since the 1930s, but neither should anyone turn a blind eye to the increasing wage gap and unabated downturn in quality of life for poor and working class Americans of all races.

Yet that’s precisely what the party regulars on both sides did. Jobs continued to be shipped overseas. Mainstream politicians on both sides of the aisle all but ignored the economically fueled Occupy movement. Everything was business as usual.

Going on the defensive

This might not have been surprising from the right, which has long taken a pro-business, anti-labor stance. What is more surprising is that the left hung working class America out to dry. Tired of being branded “socialists,” they stopped defending unions and started to look more and more like proponents of what might be called trickle-down light.

Then, when Sanders drew a large following not just despite but because of his self-identified socialism, they ignored it. And when Trump took up a populist tone in the general election, they tried to ignore that, too. Neither candidate fit into their preconceived notions about how Americans should behave.

Those preconceived notions originated with their decision to abandon the struggle for equality in favor of a struggle for identity. In doing so, they put a premium on lip service to various racial, ethnic and other groups while putting economic concerns on the back burner – even though it was those very concerns that could have united poor and blue-collar blacks, whites, Latinos, LGBT individuals, women and anyone else struggling to make a living.

The result? Low-income black voters weren’t comfortable with Sanders because, even though his policies would have benefited them more than Clinton’s, he didn’t speak the language of identity that the Democratic Party has spoken for more than two decades now. Low-income whites, meanwhile, were turned off by Clinton’s rhetoric precisely because it did put a premium on identity, rather than addressing their concerns about how to put bread on the table.

Neoliberals aren’t entirely to blame for this. Bigotry plays a huge role. African Americans face troubling issues that most white voters don’t have to deal with: social prejudice; police profiling; unjustly harsh sentencing and disproportionately high incarceration rates. The list could go on. Where neoliberalism has failed is in reacting to bigotry defensively, through identity politics, rather than going on the offensive to improve the lives of those targeted by the bigots.

Clinton and the neoliberal Democrats have spoken to these issues – all the while ignoring the economic issues that facilitate prejudice as much as anything else by locking people on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. As mentioned earlier, African Americans constitute the highest percentage of those at the bottom.

As economic status solidifies, so does social prejudice. Just look at the rigid Hindu caste system if you want to know where this process ends up.

Identity vs. behavior

Putting identity over equality is, of course, an attractive message to people who have been discriminated against based on the color of their skin, their gender, their sexual orientation. But there’s a difference between standing up for a specific group of people and standing up against bigotry, no matter how it manifests itself.

This is a crucial distinction. The former course, pursued by neoliberals, focuses on defending identity, while the latter focuses on ending bigoted behavior that targets people because of their identity, regardless of how or against whom it manifests itself. Ultimately, it’s not anyone’s identity that is – or should be – the issue, it’s the behavior of the bigot.

So, while the neoliberals have been preoccupied with defending something that shouldn’t need to be defended, guess what? The bigotry that’s been condemned for decades has become normalized. It’s still hard for me to imagine that the American people were so willing to elect a candidate such as Trump, who expressed such unapologetically prejudiced views. But even when the Democrats pointed this out, they were viewed by many as doing so not because they were against bigotry, but because they were trying to enforce the identity politics of political correctness. They came across as playing politics, rather than trying to further the cause of struggling Americans.

Voters, not candidates

Trump and Sanders had one thing in common, as pundits have frequently pointed out: They’ve branded themselves as populists, champions of ordinary, struggling, roll-up-your-sleeves Americans. Sanders lost in the primary because he was competing in a party that long ago abandoned its working-class roots for the sake of embracing identity politics. Trump won the general election precisely by repudiating this gospel of identity and focusing on the economy.

He cast himself as St. George, eager to the dragon of politics as usual, and the millions of voters believed him.

Yes, Clinton won the popular vote, but I’ve had yet to hear anyone argue that she did so by presenting a hopeful message to working-class America. The message she did spread in that regard was largely borrowed – reluctantly and less enthusiastically, it seemed – from Sanders. More likely, Clinton won the popular vote not because of her economic proposals, but because of Trump’s glaring deficiencies in experience, character and common decency.

Without these issues to contend with, it’s a fair guess that any candidate without Trump’s monumental flaws who succeeded in addressing working class concerns would have won the election in a landslide. Party be damned.

Not all Trump voters are bigots. Most of them aren’t. But they’re so concerned with an economic situation they actually share with many Democrats that they overlooked the unprecedented divisiveness of Trump’s campaign to vote for him. By the same token, not all Democrats are tone-deaf to the idea that fighting for equality is more important than clinging to the divisiveness of identity politics. If they were, more than 43 percent of the party wouldn’t have voted for Sanders, who remained in the hunt for the nomination into the summer. (This despite being a virtual unknown who lacked national recognition at the outset of the campaign, not being taken seriously by the media for months and facing active opposition from the party apparatus.)

The sad thing about all this is that bigotry and identity politics have succeeded in dividing Americans with shared economic concerns by pitting both ends against the middle. I have no doubt that, had Sanders won the Democratic nomination, he would have won many of the same voters who supported Trump in the general election, not because he and Trump are anything alike, but because so many voters who backed both men shared the same concerns.

If the 2016 election taught us anything, it’s that the candidates themselves don’t matter nearly as much as the concerns of the voters. We ignore them at our own peril.

As a nation, we can recognize that inequality is an issue that concerns us all. Or we can continue to be pawns in a game of divide-and-conquer that sustains both bigotry of the far right and the identity politics of neoliberalism while accomplishing little to address the shared concerns of those who are struggling.

The choice is ours. I hope we make the right one.