General Discussion

lostnfound

(16,180 posts) Thu Jul 25, 2019, 07:45 PM Jul 2019

Belonging to the Club... Trump created a tribe that fills a human desire to belong and to matter

The red Trump hat.

I have to admit, when I see those, I think “why would someone want to advertise that they are so clueless?” They want to admit that they’re racist? That it’s okay for a rich or famous guy to say “when you’re famous you can grab women by the p***”? That you haven’t grasped that a guy who spent his life enriching himself at other people’s expense, letting businesses go bankrupt and refusing to pay his suppliers, is certainly going to wake up and start doing things to help the little guy?

A relative that I love was wearing one of those red hats when he went out to a restaurant and to a store somewhere in a coastal suburban purple county in Florida. A woman approached him, put her hand on his shoulders, nodded at the hat, and gave him a thumbs up. Another guy came over to him and started a conversation – – how great Trump is, all the good stuff Trump is doing for the economy, ending with something like “Go Trump!” The relative reportedly nodded, gave a big smile and friendly answer, and continued about his day.

Then I GOT IT. The red hat created a tribe. It’s a tribe of people who have chosen to believe in the religion of Trump, or, perhaps, who have chosen to believe in the superiority of their own favorite hockey or football team. At some point it doesn’t matter whether supporting the hockey team yields any tangible benefit to you. It only matters if you are surrounded by other fans, so that you can feel like you belong and like you are part of something bigger.

In the beginning, Trump’s tribe probably believed that they were participating in something that was really making a difference. They were going to restore some old version of America as the land of opportunity, whether or not they were aware that is was just for people like them (whether it was white people, working class, lacking college educations, or men). They were going to stick it to the educated elites that of been running this country for quite a while. Now, it only matters that you get a smile or a wave or a thumbs-up from other people who are fans of the same sports team, because that gives you a feeling of belonging in a world that is pretty atomized in some places in this country.

People voted for Barack Obama for a lot of reasons, but I think one of them was, they wanted to be part of something bigger.

I think we need to find ways in our society to help people find healthy tribes to belong to. Not tribes that are opposed to other tribes, not “tribalism”, not tribes based on race, but tribes to give people a sense of belonging larger than themselves, tribes with a purpose that is positive for the community and society as a whole.

Sometimes family isn’t enough. I’ve seen young men who seem so lost and useless with themselves, desperately wanting to find connection. We as a society, but also we as Democrats, don’t do a great job of giving people a sense of belonging and a sense of concrete purpose. Whoever can find ways of connecting that desire to belong and desire to matter with healthy, effective action and community action will be able to disassemble the Trump cult.