Hubris in the Democratic party

Who are the people supporting Donald Trump for a second term as president?

Theory Number One, which I have tended to accept, is that they are people who have been left behind in today’s culture, a culture that has turned a useful human invention, the market, into a demonic force. The divinized market has been immensely successful in allocating to itself an unfair share of the products of labor, and in the process has robbed a growing segment of the population of resources needed for a life of dignity and reasonable security. Theory Number One is that this latter segment, the “left behind” folks, the rust-belt casualties residing in mid-America, is rebelling against the system that is robbing them. Trump is their hero because Trump will blow up the system.

Theory Number Two is that there is another segment of our society that is not at all a casualty of the system. This segment is not disadvantaged. It is people who have done everything right—are blessed with stable marriages, are members of a faith community, have a decent education and a job that provides a dignified living—these people are also leaning towards Mr. Trump. Many of these people—most of the ones I know are Catholic—are speaking favorably about Mr. Trump for a different reason. 

People of faith accept as true the statement that human affairs are not totally under human control. There is something beyond human capability that needs to be taken account of, especially as we face unprecedented environmental disasters. People of faith take a higher power seriously. People of faith take God seriously.

Theory Number Two says that people of faith look favorably at Mr. Trump because his Democratic opponents look down on people of faith, mostly by ignoring them.

The Democratic leadership, and probably a lot of what middle America calls the “coasts,” suffer from a disability that keeps them from appreciating how most people in the world see the world. The sense that we are all responsible to some kind of “higher power” is common to men and women with religious roots in every part of the world.

The theory labeled “secularization” says that as a society becomes more industrialized or “modernized,” religious faith disappears. But as Ryan Burge asks, from his study of survey data about religion, why is it that the poor in our country are the least churched and most secularized among us? And that it is people who have done everything right, “checked all the boxes,” that are more likely to be members of a religious community?

Shaun Casey was appointed to a post in the Obama State Department, a post charged with making government officials aware of how religion can affect political behavior around the world. Mr. Casey, in his book Chasing the Devil at Foggy Bottom, quotes Madeleine Albright, in a book she published five years after her term as Secretary of State in the Clinton administration, a book titled The Mighty and the Almighty, regarding the role of religion in political affairs:

Drawing on her experience, she noted that while religion had played important roles in varied locations, including Vietnam, the Balkans, Iran, Poland, Uganda, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the State Department in her tenure had no experts for her to draw on.

 

Secularization theory has not fared well in explaining and predicting trends in modern history. A theory more accurately telling the story of modernity might be called “hubris theory.” As people become politically and economically successful, they move in circles that reward success, both real and imagined. They feel less responsibility to anything or anyone beyond themselves—they are self-made men and women. It is that attitude, “we can solve any problem,” that religions challenge.

Hubris causes people to think that they are the wave of the future, that the important people are all like them, that their opinions are self-evident. They do not realize that their world is limited in space and time. Not everyone is as self-made as they are.

It is that attitude that is infecting the Democratic leadership. They are discarding important segments of the voting public, segments that accept the idea that there is something or someone beyond themselves to which they are responsible. When those segments feel disenfranchised, they react by throwing bombs—casting their vote for Mr. Trump.

Some observers claim that the Catholic vote will be critical in November’s election. Many Catholics I know are turned off by the confident secularity of Democratic leaders, especially by their full-throated acceptance of abortion. They are influenced by an American Catholic hierarchy that has been cultivated too successfully by Republican leadership.

Abortion is evil. The term “pro-choice” used to mean that a decision about abortion should be made by the woman carrying a child, with or without the support of a physician. A Catholic can accept that as a morally legitimate position, because not all moral evils should be dealt with by governments and their laws. Democratic strategists have discarded choice and replaced it with a claim that abortion is a positive good. That is something that many Catholics see as morally repugnant. It enough to turn them into Trump supporters.

The Catholic vote is not the only such vote, though it is the largest in numbers. There is a huge ex-Catholic population that may be as religious as the Catholic faithful who are still committed to the church, and those two populations, ex-Catholic and Catholic, make up a significant voting bloc, more significant even than evangelical voters.  Democrats should not discard this important group that traditionally voted Democratic, and includes a growing Hispanic segment that, Catholic or ex-Catholic, takes the existence of God seriously.

Christians should not seek to control, but they do wish to be respected and taken seriously.  Few things anger human beings more powerfully than when people disrespect them.