Donald
Trump Is Winning Because White America Is Dying
Noam Chomsky says Trump's rise is partly due to
deeply rooted -- and potentially fatal --
feelings of fear and anger.
By
Matt Ferner
February 29, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Huffington
Post"
- Noam Chomsky, the renowned scholar and
MIT professor emeritus, says that the rise of
Donald Trump in American politics is, in part,
fueled by deeply rooted fear and hopelessness
that may be caused by an alarming spike in
mortality rates for a generation of poorly
educated whites.
“He’s
evidently appealing to deep feelings of anger,
fear, frustration, hopelessness, probably among
sectors like those that are seeing an increase
in mortality, something unheard of apart from
war and catastrophe," Chomsky told The
Huffington Post in an interview on Thursday.
Trump's rise as the Republican presidential
front-runner has been confounding for Americans
across the political spectrum. The bombastic,
billionaire demagogue has won
three of the
first four primary states and
holds a lead in the polls, both nationwide and
in upcoming primary contests. He now appears
poised to take an
insurmountable
delegate lead
over the next several weeks, based on a platform
of hate and vitriol targeted at
women,
Latinos,
Muslims
and
other
minorities.
A
legion of
less educated,
working-class
white men has fueled Trump’s rise. And while
many say the business mogul is capitalizing on
their fears about the
perceived decline of white dominance
in America, Chomsky says there may also be more
existential forces at play.
Life expectancy, in general, has increased
steadily over time. And thanks largely to
advances in
health care,
many people around the world live longer lives.
There are exceptions, of course -- during war or
natural catastrophes, for example. But what’s
happening now in America, he says, is “quite
different.”
Despite vast wealth and modern medicine, the
U.S. has lower average life expectancy than many
other nations.
And while the average has
been increasing recently,
the gains are not evenly spread out. Wealthier
Americans are living longer lives, while the
poor are
living shorter
ones.
Poorly educated, middle-aged American white
males are particularly affected,
multiple
recent
studies suggest. While Americans from other age,
racial and ethnic groups are living longer lives
than ever before, this particularly segment of
the population is dying faster.
A study
on the issue found that the rising death
rate for this group is not due to the ailments
that commonly kill so many Americans, like
diabetes and heart disease, but rather by an
epidemic of suicides, liver disease caused by
alcohol abuse, and overdoses of heroin and
prescription opioids.
“No war,
no catastrophe," Chomsky says, has caused the
spiking mortality rate for this
population. "Just the impact of policies over a
generation that have left them, it seems, angry,
without hope, frustrated, causing
self-destructive behavior."
That could
well explain Trump’s appeal, he speculated.
In an
interview with
Alternet
this week, Chomsky compared the poverty that
many Americans now face with the conditions an
older generation confronted during the Great
Depression.
“It’s interesting to compare the situation in
the ‘30s, which I’m old enough to remember,”
he said.
“Objectively, poverty and suffering were far
greater. But even among poor working people and
the unemployed, there was a sense of hope that
is lacking now.”
Chomsky
attributes some of that Depression-era hope to
the growth of an aggressive labor movement and
the existence of political organizations outside
of the mainstream.
Today,
however, he says the mood is quite different for
Americans who are deeply affected by poverty.
“[They] are sinking into hopelessness, despair
and anger -- not directed so much against the
institutions that are the agents of the
dissolution of their lives and world, but
against those who are even more harshly
victimized,” he said. “Signs are familiar, and
here it does evoke some memories of the rise of
European fascism.”.