Coping with Election Shock: Making Sense of Trump’s Win

Half of the nation is struggling with the shock that a former president who staged an insurrection has been reelected. It recalls the shock when Marion Barry, after being imprisoned for smoking crack, was reelected mayor of Washington, DC.

Then as now, the shock can be relieved by finding humility to accept the hard truth of reality. Liberals have been wrong in their hubris and dismissing Trump so easily. We have all misunderstand the significance of this point in American history — and where it can evolve.

Inspiration for making sense of Trump’s win can be found in the ageless maxim: Crisis is the other side of opportunity. In searching for meaning in this “crisis of liberal faith,” we need to reflect on the possible benefits of a second Trump term.

Many worry that the basic fear sustaining Trump’s use of brutal power is already crippling opposition. The GOP drank the Kool-Aid, the courts failed to rule on Trump’s trials for treason, major papers like the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post withheld their Harris endorsements, and corporate CEOs hedged their bets with silence. We may be witnessing what has been called “autocratic capture” — that critical point when sheer power is seized and locked in. Dissent is then crushed. Ironically, the Washington Post warned about this in their now discredited motto: Democracy Dies in Darkness.

This palpable fear can be better understood by recalling the “Reagan shock.” When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, liberals were shocked. It felt like the end of the world. But it wasn’t. In fact, life became better with less government control and more entrepreneurial freedom in a booming economy.

Yes, “Reaganomics” and unbridled capitalism eliminated crucial regulations and led to market crashes and growing national debt. The anti-government taboo still makes it almost impossible to resolve major crises like abortion, gun safety, and immigration. The problem is highlighted by the GOP’s flat-out denial of the climate crisis altogether. The president-elect called it a hoax.

But the Reagan election was not a “mistake.” It was needed historically to mark the end of big government and the rejuvenation of free markets instead. The world moved beyond FDR’s New Deal to the entrepreneurial creativity unleashed by Reagan and Thatcher. For all its faults, the resulting wave of “creative destruction” was a boon to the world.

Could a Trump administration also provide benefits? Perhaps he really can move our present bureaucratic form of democracy into a more tightly controlled and effective version. After all, China and Russia are able to act quickly and get things done, while the US and the EU struggle over gender, abortion, guns, misinformation, polarization, and gridlock.

Possibly our biggest failure has been misunderstanding the fierce concerns of Trump’s 75 million followers over out-of-control immigration and the lack of economic opportunity. Although immigrants pay taxes, use few public services, and are largely law abiding, it remains shocking that 10-20 million immigrants live here without legal status. A Trump administration may be rough, but it’s also likely to solve the immigration crisis.

Economic growth was unchanged from the Obama years to Trump’s first term. The only problem is inflation — which is now back to normal. Yet large swatches of the public feel abandoned and lack high paying jobs. Can Trump’s brashness really cut regulations and spur healthy growth? Despite those draconian tariffs?

Even the threat of autocracy may be overdone. Demagogues have always been with us, and they usually collapse after a few decades. As brutal power isolates dictatorships from truth, they fail to adapt and so doom their regimes. Think of Pinochet in Chile, Berlusconi in Italy, and Chavez in Venezuela. Hitler and the axis powers passed in one horrible decade.

Behind all the issues above, the revolutionary force of technology is driving a new era barely understood. The digital revolution is automating knowledge, driving attention up the hierarchy of thought into the subjective realm of emotion, values, and beliefs that form consciousness itself. The obvious example is the way smartphones and social media allow anyone to broadcast whatever they wish, producing today’s notorious cacophony of “post-factual” noise. The resulting flood of random information forces people to make subjective choices based on what they likeand believe, or even how they feel emotionally. As a result, subjective thought now constitutes a “higher” consciousness that supersedes facts.

The implications are historic, and it’s impossible to understand the election without seeing this crucial new reality. An Age of Consciousness is here now, though it’s dominated by polarization, disinformation, and other threats that form a crisis of global maturity. Whatever one thinks of Trump, almost all would concede that he is brilliant at mobilizing mass media to create alternative realities. He is a master at shaping consciousness. FDR mastered radio, JFK had TV, and Trump exploits social media. This isn’t the consciousness that’s needed, however — and this poses the enormous challenge of altering our global mindset, dramatically.

Written by William E. Halal, PhD.
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