I think the post-election analysis is very telling: apparently the “Silent Majority” in America had finally had enough and Trump (granted not the best solution) managed to get them riled up enough to stand up and start to roar. After so many years of ignoring that majority, the pollsters and the press simply assumed they would be quiet once again and gave them no credit. As a result, almost all projections were for a Hillary win.
Yes, that quiet majority did consist of mostly white country folk (as opposed to city dwellers) doesn’t mean it was a “racist” vote, as many Democrat analysts are demanding. Rather, I believe this majority was fed up with the total corruption of the government – a topic popular among many Americans. They didn’t vote so much for either Trump or Republicans as much as they voted for drastic change – and that was Trump’s primary message.
I’m one who believes that our government has been so infested with special interests, pulling off funds to feed their own pockets, that, while taxes go up each year, the achievements of the government have continually gone downhill. More bureaucracy, more skimming, more ignoring the reality of what’s being done, more obvious corruption, all feed this disbelief in the government. Up until Trump stirred up the people’s belief that he would make the changes needed (perhaps naively), too many people simply sat back and believed that the system didn’t have the will or ability to change the tracks of the railroad.
Trump stirred up that long lost hope and got people to believe that there might be a light at the end of the corrupted tunnel. They were willing to overlook the flaws of the message carrier, because the goal was so glorious – the return of a government that cared about the people and upheld their fiduciary responsibility to better manage the money taken out of their slow-growing paycheck.
So let’s all hope that he can pull it off without too many casualties.
Paul Hutton
Maple Valley