BY ED FELIEN
First, what they got wrong.
This whole white male privilege thing is way out of date. The last time that worked was before the Civil War. Is the antebellum South the “Great” era that Trump says he can “Make” for “America Again”? Birth of a Nation, D W Griffith’s classic film about a “heroic” Ku Klux Klan saving the white race from his caricatures of corrupt and degenerate African-Americans, was shown in the East Room of the White House in 1915. Is that the kind of birth of a new nation that Trump is talking about when he says he will Make America Great Again? Trump must know the film. It’s popular with Klan members, and Trump’s dad, Fred Trump, was very active in the New York chapter of the KKK. 
He was arrested in Queens in 1927 for refusing to take off his hood and for fighting with the police at a Klan march and rally that got violent when 100 cops tried to arrest 1000 Klansmen.
When Trump was asked by Jake Tapper in the 2016 campaign about his endorsement by David Duke, the titular head of the KKK, Trump said, “I know nothing about David Duke; I know nothing about white supremacists.” Which is a coded message to other organized racists and KKK people who understood that the phrase “I, Know Nothing” was a reference to the Know Nothings that were an America First, racist and anti-immigrant political faction, popular just before the Civil War.
Those ideas are dead now. There is no life or validity in them. We know there is no such thing as different races. We’re all part of the human race. We all evolved from the same roots—starting out as amoebas, single-celled animals that eventually split and formed two separate living creatures, that eventually, after four billion years, become primates and then humans. Of course, there are people who don’t believe that. Some people, like Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, say they believe their god created the earth and human beings in six days. This demonstrates a tragic failure in public education.
Many men, of all colors and cultures, say they’re pro-life. That means they believe any sperm they deposit in a woman’s womb is sacred. A woman’s womb is their safety deposit box, and, once it’s in there, no one is allowed to touch it. And they have the same religious conviction about the sacred quality of their sperm that they have about the creation of life on earth in six days. Another sad failure in public education.
But there are some things the Trump people get right.
It is true that there’s a smart-ass intellectual elite that’s running things. They do things, change things around, get rid of familiar things and replace them with things you can’t understand, and then they tell you it’s better for you.
The City of Minneapolis is going to tear up 10th Avenue this month. They’re going to change a two-way street with parking on both sides into a one-way street with parking on one side, and bike lanes on the other half. This revolutionary change is being done without a public meeting to discuss it, without any explanation of what it will be and why it’s good for us. And the people most affected by the change haven’t even been told about it. The forty to fifty young Latino men who come to Powderhorn Park to play volleyball after working all day were not consulted or even considered. This change will dramatically affect their access to the park. The parking and traffic problems will discourage them. They’ll stop playing volleyball. It is a loss for all of us. This is, perhaps, the most tragic failure of public education.
Why haven’t the neighborhood organizations held public meetings to tell people about these changes? Why haven’t city officials met with the neighbors? Why haven’t Park officials met with the Latin men and families and showed them alternative sites?
This arrogant indifference by the government at all levels to the concerns of people most affected by change is the principal public complaint of Trump people. Tayler Rahm (who gave up a run for Congress to work on Trump’s Minnesota campaign) said, “it is my honor to join President Trump as he fights for the forgotten men and women of this country.”
The elitist government officials who believe they know better than us what’s good for us, have left us all behind. Whatever happened to the notion that “Governments are instituted among Men [and Women], deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”—from the Declaration of Independence? We have a right to be consulted about changes that will affect our lives, and governments have a responsibility to ask for our consent.
The fact that so many Trump voters feel abandoned and dictated to by local, state and federal governments, by schools and libraries, means there has been a very serious breakdown in communication.
If our elected officials want to stop the alienation of Trump supporters, then it is their job to talk to them and explain the reasoning behind government programs and policies. Otherwise, we go back in time to Make America Great Again by reviving old prejudices and superstitious taboos.
That is the task before all of us—to educate everybody about how their government will change their lives.
