The Advent of Donald Trump and the Need for Structural Conflict Resolution
The election of Donald Trump as president was a product of four decades of American system failure. Beginning in the 1970s, vast areas of the country de-industrialized, wages stagnated, inequalities of wealth and income soared, and poverty or near-poverty became endemic. So did criminal activity, police violence, substance abuse, mental illness, community decay, and other ills associated with socioeconomic stagnation and decline. Family and communal bonds frayed under the pressure. Public schools became increasingly dysfunctional. In politics, the two-party system produced little more than partisanship, gridlock, endless foreign wars, and a bureaucracy dedicated to serving favored interest groups. Americans insecure about their declining status felt threatened by the slippage of their influence abroad and changing mores and multiculturalism at home. Discontent finally reached the point that workers and middle class people long associated with the Democratic Party in key states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida abandoned the Democrats in sufficient numbers to hand a new type of Republican – the nationalist/populist Donald Trump – a presidential victory.
In my view, the new President’s personality and governing style are not the primary problems. A system in trouble – a sociopolitical structure that regularly produces shattered hopes and civil violence – must concern us even more. In a recent book (Resolving Structural Conflicts: How Violent Systems Can Be Transformed, Routledge, 2017), I argue that the alternative to systemic criticism and change is partisan moralism – a type of thinking that blames all of one’s social and political problems on the other side’s personal defects. For example, many anti-Trump activists blame the loss of the 2016 election on foreigners (Vladimir Putin, in particular), domestic racists and other misguided “deplorables,” Hillary Clinton’s lack of charisma, and the arrogance of the anti-Clinton Left. Since his inauguration, the President’s belligerent rhetoric and behavior have tempted opponents to counter-attack in kind. Yet playing the personalist game leaves the country very close to where it was in November 2016 – divided roughly 50/50, with at least half the nation aggrieved and alienated by the results of system failure.
Certainly, if the new regime’s policies and actions threaten vulnerable groups, whether immigrants, Muslims, people of color, or sexual minorities, opponents must prepare to resist, if necessary by participating in acts of civil disobedience. But we cannot lose sight of the reality that America’s social problems are systemic, and that solving them will probably mean changing the system in some basic ways. This means that three questions, in particular, need to be deeply and imaginatively reconsidered. These topics are (a) economic restructuring, (b) ethical globalism, and (c) democratic (small “d”) renewal. Each topic requires a different type of public conversation.
First conversation: We need to talk together about alternatives to “economic nationalism” and the current capitalist system.
In winning the 2016 election, Donald Trump appealed to the half-hidden racism, misogyny, and xenophobia of white people fearful of losing social status and political clout. But these appeals would have gotten nowhere without a socioeconomic program designed to capitalize on working class misery – a goulash that can be summed up in two words: economic nationalism. Trump and Steve Bannon promise to restore domestic industries and the workers dependent upon them to health by adopting an “America First” economic program. Their proposals range from compelling big companies to keep their production facilities in the U.S., to slashing taxes on the rich, expanding U.S. military forces, renegotiating trade agreements, and – pièce de résistance – initiating a huge new public works program to rebuild the national infrastructure.
We have not yet seen these proposals put in the form of legislation or executive orders, but that will surely happen. Liberals like Robert Reich have criticized them as “trickle down economics dressed in populist garb,” opining that they will further enrich the wealthy without creating jobs, raising wages, reducing poverty, or mitigating inequality. Many conservatives agree that Trump’s populism will remain a matter of symbolic gestures, while market forces ultimately decide the big economic questions. What these middle-of-the-road opinions ignore, however, is that, if the economy continues to generate inequality, job insecurity, and precarity, Trump’s economic nationalism could turn out to be a lot more like Benito Mussolini’s New Order than Ronald Reagan’s Morning in America. How to devise structural solutions that would put workers back to work, revitalize the economy, and protect the planet? Conflict resolvers are in a position to facilitate conversations about socioeconomic reform among a wide range of discussants ranging from Marxists and social democrats to “cooperativists,” Greens, and libertarians. Unless these conversations take place, I fear that the field of social reconstruction will be left to the “Right-populists.” So let’s organize them pronto!
Second conversation: We need to discuss how to end America’s “culture wars” and counter the current trend towards nation-worship.
Intensifying socio-political conflicts among Americans are not merely the product of presidential pugnacity. Five months before the election, the Pew Research Center reported that, “For the first time in surveys dating to 1992, majorities in both parties express not just unfavorable but very unfavorable views of the other party. And today, sizable shares of both Democrats and Republicans say the other party stirs feelings of not just frustration, but fear and anger.” Following the election, not only were increases reported in acts of politically motivated violence, but also popular dating websites revealed that their clients were insisting that potential dates announce themselves as pro- or anti-Trump. When political differences invade the eroti-sphere, you know that domestic conflicts are escalating!
This situation points to a set of cultural issues urgently requiring discussion. First, we know that intergroup struggles in modern America are rooted in both socioeconomic inequalities and a clash of cultures. The question is what can be done to understand these “culture wars” more fully and to mitigate their causes. Could “problem-solving” workshops help?
The good news is that conflict resolvers have developed several forms of conversation particularly well suited to help parties deal with this sort of conflict. One such form, the interactive or problem solving workshop, is a confidential, facilitated dialogue, repeated at intervals, that permits participants to explore the deep sources of their mutual alienation and to imagine creative new ways of working things out. Participants can be community or group leaders, people in mid-level roles, or grass roots folks. This process, like certain forms of public dialogue, does not aim at ending the conflict immediately so much as at helping the parties to speak directly to each other, analyze their situation, humanize their adversaries, and discover how to prevent their differences from destroying lives, communities, and people’s peace of mind. In some cases, it can even lead the parties to decide to act cooperatively to alter a conflict-generating situation.
A related topic requiring discussion involves the moral and religious implications of “America First.” Many Americans believe that they can love their nation without worshipping it, since we are part of an interdependent humanity, not just inhabitants of a nation-state or members of a cultural tribe.
Even so, when Steve Bannon preaches that American “cultural identity” is endangered by globalism and multiculturalism, few in the opposition respond that this is a wildly exaggerated response to an imaginary threat, and, worse yet, a thinly disguised assertion of American cultural superiority. The problem, they fear, is that expressing their universalist views openly will isolate them and strengthen the most reactionary elements of the nationalist movement.
The conversation needed, then, is how to help our countrymen and women understand that the interdependence of American society with all other societies is a fact, not “fake news.” Along the same lines, how can we make it clear that world society is not a jungle (or a clash of civilizations) in which cultures must either triumph or be sacrificed? A broad discussion, featuring religious and ethical leaders of many persuasions, might help us to reconcile patriotism and universalism in a way that protects threatened identities while keeping alive the ideal of a cooperative global commonwealth.
Third conversation: We need to come together in local and national assemblies to rethink and renovate American democracy.
Why has the U.S. political system worked to exacerbate internal conflicts rather than managing or resolving them. What are the structural causes of this crisis, and how can they be mitigated? Space limitations forbid discussion of these questions here, but it is important to help put scholars and activists in a position to consider the roles of America’s two-party system, its winner-take-all voting institutions, and its adversarial forms of political struggle (among other things) in intensifying domestic conflicts.
“We need to talk,” as Joan Rivers used to say, and not just about what we are against, but what we are for. The controversial presidential campaign and Mr. Trump’s activities in office have generated a great wave of political anxiety and interest in the country, but unless his opponents find ways to focus their thinking on a discrete number of vital issues – and unless they begin to discover creative, practical solutions to underlying systemic problems – the wave could leave them beached.
Let’s start organizing these conversations now!