Blue Collar Wisdom

Last spring, when Donald Trump was just beginning to gain traction in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination, I had several emotional exchanges with some of my colleagues at Kennesaw State University.  Trump, I explained, was too arrogant and ignorant to serve in our nation’s highest office.

I further opined that Trump lacked the personal controls and historical perspective to occupy the oval office.  He would surely insult foreign leaders with his brash style, while simultaneously making enormous policy mistakes.  What if he started a trade war that brought about a new depression?

My co-workers assured me I was wrong.  Two, in particular, remained adamant in their support for Trump no matter how elegant my arguments?  These guys were both in criminal justice and both from blue-collar backgrounds.  They thus thought of Trump as one of them.

The bottom line in our discussions always came down to the same thing.  Trump, I was told, would get things done.  Instead of spewing reams of verbal blather, this man of action would act.  As a businessman, he would do what he always did, which was to finish the job on time and under budget.

At the end of these conversations, I usually came away feeling as if I had been talking with my father.  He too had a blue-collar mentality.  Although he eventually worked as an electronic engineer, he was not college educated.  Indeed he started out in carpentry and plumbing.

In any event, my father believed in being practical.  He hated fancy theories and was confident that experience taught him what he needed to know.  As far a as he was concerned, college educated folks were out of touch with reality.  They lived in ivory towers, where they never had to do an honest day’s work.

So here am I a full professor at a research university.  Long before this transpired, however, I was repeatedly warned that I was irredeemably unrealistic.  Despite my book learning, I did not have common sense.  Yes, I could do well on tests, but that did not mean I was able to tie my own shoelaces.

As for me, I was convinced that my father was envious.  When he accused me of living in a dream world, I was sure this revealed his own bitterness.  There was no need for me to pay attention because he was so wrong.

Now I know better!   Whatever my Dad’s motives, he was right that many intellectuals are hopelessly idealistic.  They may be smart, but they have committed themselves to philosophies that make no sense in the real world.  Whatever their rationalizations, their theories are more fiction than fact.

Barack Obama was just this sort of person.  He could use words to make almost any fantasy sound plausible.  The economy could be a disaster, his heath care program a travesty, and foreign affairs descend into chaos, but his soaring rhetoric set millions to cheering.

For a while, it looked like we might get another over-intellectualized president.  Unfortunately for her, Hillary Clinton was not as articulate or likeable as Obama.  Whereas her ideas were every bit as fantastic, they were not as inspiring.

Also confounding Hillary was the emergence of blue-collar wisdom.  Across the rust belt, working class Americans refused to be bamboozled by another liberal promise maker.  These folks wanted a “doer” in the White House.  They wanted someone as practical as themselves.

Many political commentators were puzzled by how everyday working people could have taken to a billionaire like Trump.  What did they have in common?  The answer is that they regarded him as a hands-on achiever.  He got things done.  While he might mangle the language, his strength lay in distinguishing what worked from what didn’t.

People, like might colleagues, might not have been entirely clear about why they trusted Trump, but they sensed that they were kindred spirits.  Moreover, from what we have seen so far, they were probably right. 

If so, we owe them a debt of gratitude.  They might have saved us from yet again trusting our fate to unrealistic politician.  Trump may be just the person we need to fix our economy and straighten out our foreign policy.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University