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<div class="userStyles" style=" font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; color:
#000000;">I Understand Trump Supporters<br>
<br>
I wanted to give a personal account of my life under the effects of Neoliberal
America. These are only (largely negative) moments that are a sharp edit
referring to the effects that Robert Reich cites in Inequality for All.<br>
<br>
You know, I get it, Really. I'm from Akron-Canton, Ohio, and I get it - why
Trump was elected. (If you don't know where that is, it's the place where
The Daily Show went to a Trump rally and a man said Hillary had AIDS because of
Bill contracting it from Magic Johnson...)<br>
<br>
In 1985, I was a Unix Systems Field Engineer for Tandy Computers in Canton
Ohio. In the late 70's my parents saw my love for my Atari 800, and they said I
should go into Electrical Engineering (Instead of Computer Science like I
should). I had a few years in my backward home town, I was part of a
Star Trek fan club with a lot of people who would become professional, but
something happened.<br>
<br>
I noticed that I had not gotten a raise in 4 years, and our facility has being
downsized. Efficiency needed to be raised to meet projections, and repair need
to be regional. A few months later, the automated troubleshooting of
motherboards and complexity of them turned me into a board-swapper and network
engineer. I saw the writing on the wall, and eventually went into sales,
which lasted for a while until I met the woman who would be my wife for 20
years. <br>
<br>
(Retraining I)<br>
And being that she demanded that I be geographically independent, I quit and
followed my dream of art and design - I started a small firm and freelanced
around the country, first doing graphic design, then screen design. That was
the 90's (Clinton) and they were pretty good. NAFTA came about, but I
never really felt it. We cried when the former Yugoslavia blew up, but
things were fairly good. <br>
<br>
And then Y2K came, which outsourced a lot of computer work to India, and the
Dot-Com crash from the tech sector. My business imploded, and I took the
time to finally get some severe cataracts out - I was still hopeful, but my
wife was having some issues in her professorship in the South from
institutional pressures tied to a chronic illness, and i left to go to graduate
school in 2004 (little did I know that I would continue to leave in 2010;
I honestly thought I was goign to come back and support her)<br>
<br>
(Retraining II)<br>
Grad school in Bowling Green Ohio was bucolic, we worked, set fire to the
fraternity rock monthly and did all those art school things, graduated at the
top of my class, and got a tenure track job in Chicago. Things were OK,
but I saw Detroit crumbling and the rank-and-file people in the rural areas
were starting to hint at Appalachia at times. Still, I was optimistic.<br>
<br>
Chicago was good, but the administration kept talking about the lowering of
scholarships and the raising of tuition, and for a number of years, I had a
decent salary, but it flattened out too. And with my department's
increasing emphasis on Jobs and Outcomes, a massive internal scandal gave the
moment to go entirely professional, and artists or theorists were not welcome,
which I see as an outcome of the de-humanitization of Higher Ed in the US.<br>
<br>
I divorced my wife because I felt the economy was never going to reunite us. My
90 -year old dad, who bemoaned the emergence of LGBT culture in my
Unitarian church, died. I took another position.<br>
<br>
I spent a couple years in Milwaukee under Scott Walker and saw the Walker/Koch
engine attack the Wisconsin Proposition for higher education, and my initial
offer coming to Milwaukee was <em>half</em> what I made in Chicago
for nearly twice the work. The position I got was not even a professorship, but
a lecturer position that had been created from a denial of tenure the year
before. Ironic. My place was a dump compared to Chicago, and I went
bankrupt due to some expenses that the flattening of my wages had allowed to
build up, and the absence of two incomes. For two months, I ate rice one
week a month and took a side gig woodworking chopsticks. My cat died.
Milwaukee was abject. I decided to leave the US.<br>
<br>
(Retraining III)<br>
So, I took a one year position at the American University of Sharjah - wow. Had
no idea what I was doing - the culture, going cold into a RISD-style
environment as an artist teaching Interaction Design; I did OK. Culture shock,
workload, Middle Eastern Students. Still the work came out all right, and -<br>
<br>
I spent the remaining summer in Canada with the sizeable net egg that I
had and expanded my VR/AR skills to come back to Dubai the next year at
Zayed. but I saw a lot of things in Canada, the real emergence of BLM,
postcolonial discourse (which was a shock, as discussion of gender politics in
the UAE is, 'far more restrained'), the emergence of racial tensions in
Milwaukee (not really emergence, but the unsheathing of hostility that I saw
when going to the West Side). I was also told by a friend of mine on
search committees at OCAD that I had little or no chance of getting in because
of age, race, gender, and orientation.<br>
<br>
Being that I am currently in the year at Zayed, I won't say much except the
colleagues are good, pay is decent, the Emirati students deeply respect you as
a professor, and research is encouraged. However, one evening when I was
contributing to my friend Vikram Divecha's (this year in the
Venice) portrait project, I found myself just rattling off the most
colonial, racist, condescending Trump-like stuff during our session, and I
realized that the American, middle aged, middle class white zeitgeist had set
up shop, and I was appalled. It wasn’t the first time I had done something like
that, and I won’t say when, or who; I’ll just state my regret. The election was
one month off, and I had felt marginalized, diminished, afraid for my
precarity, on, and on, and on.<br>
<br>
But then I realized like the United State becoming another country, I
realized that as a middle-aged white man, my privilege had died, and I was just
another person. T<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px;">he
American, middle aged, middle class white zeitgeist had set up shop, and I
hadn't really realized it.</span><br>
<br>
Then I cried. Not in any selfish way for myself, but for the situation of
things. <br>
For the oppressed who have never gotten a good deal (relatively) for
hundreds of years, if any.<br>
For the ones here that have a warped sense of the American Dream here, only to
work for $300/month.<br>
For the ones who are being vectorially exploited in Central Asia and Africa.<br>
For the ones I cannot talk about for any number of reasons. Yet.<br>
For the Nigerian cab driver in Abu Dhabi for not understanding that just
because Trump's rebellious, he isn't the best choice.<br>
For, honestly, decent Middle-Class and Working Class people who have been
ground down in the USA from the Greatest Generation to create the Trump
Nation. <br>
And only a little for myself for having allowed to be sucked into it for a
while without realizing it.<br>
<br>
I get it, and having that Batailleian knowledge is useful, but not
pleasant.<br>
I feel like knowing what I know has put a splinter in my soul the size of a
nine inch nail.<br>
<br>
(Retraining IV)<br>
And I am starting a PhD soon.<br>
<br>
I feel as if I will never be able to live in the US comfortably
anymore,<br>
nor ever return to my home town.<br>
In creating this soft civil war (and that is what it is right now), in
which families are only hoping for the return of Jesus to reunite them, I have
a deep pathos and melancholy for the American Dream, for what parts of it
actually existed, and try to exist. Burroughs’ Thanksgiving Prayer comes
to mind.<br>
<br>
It is for this reason I try to project the world I want now, regardless of
whether I live in it. I have to live in a bubble of strength, kindness
and egalitarianism for nothing else than my own well-being, in hopes that I
might make a Butterfly effect.<br>
<br>
Trumpettes? I get you; you're wrong, but I get you.<br>
<br>
ALAN SONDHEIM REPLIES:<br>
<br>
I agree with you totally here; as you know, I think; I'm from the northern
reaches of Appalachia, with all its problems - Wilkes-Barre PA and actually a
subset of that, Kingston across the river. And I've also tried to move to
Canada - I've tried for years, my brother and sister live in Victoria and
Toronto, but I haven't been successful for precisely the same reasons. And what
you say about not being able to live in the US comfortably, again the same; we
feel as if we're in a foreign country, with a proto-authoritarian for a lead,
but not my leader, and so forth. I also get the Trumpettes (good word); I knew
from the moment he came on the stage of the primaries, that he was going to
win. And what I fear now the most is what will happen to the really poor, for
whom, say, tax breaks for healthcare lead nowhere, for whom there is no hope!
T. pays no attention at all to that class; there is nothing for them. I wish
BLM was also Black Votes Matter; that might have made a difference.<br>
<br>
Much as I like, now, the camaraderie and actions on the left, I fear so much
that they won't make any difference at all. And the problem, fundamental
problem, is how quickly the U.S. changed - inconceivable! A few months ago we
felt there was some sort of progress being made...<br>
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