January 1 - Understanding the People Who Vote For Trump; How the Press Helped Elect Donald Trump; Our Plutocratic Future Under Trump

Full Program

Part 1

On this New Year’s Day we revisit some of the guests who elicited the most praise and gratitude from our listeners. We begin with an interview from September 11 exploring the paradox that the people who will vote for Donald Trump are the Americans who need government support the most, but want it the least, with many living amidst great industrial pollution who nevertheless oppose all environmental regulation. Arlie Russell Hochschild, one of the most influential sociologists of her generation, joined us to discuss her latest book, “Strangers in Their Own Land” Anger and Mourning on The American Right”. Over the past five years, she embedded herself in Lake Charles, Louisiana amongst red state supporters of Trump and went to his rallies to find out why, as liberals often lament, working class white Americans seem to vote against their own interests which they are certainly doing supporting such a manifestly false prophet as Donald Trump who represents an oligarchical system that has left them at the back of the line. We looked into what the emotional or cultural self-interest is that sustains those that feel alienated and betrayed by their own government and what can be done to bridge the gap between patronizing liberals and good-hearted folks who are falling victim to a political huckster.

Part 2

Then we jump ahead to a program after the election of Donald Trump broadcast on November 13 in which we assessed the extent to which the press can be blamed for helping elect Donald Trump. We spoke with Jeff Jarvis, a Professor and Director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at City University New York, who is a national leader in the development of online news and writes an influential blog Buzzmachine.com. He joined us to discuss how the media failed to communicate to the public who Donald Trump is, in spite of the overwhelming evidence he provided to make clear how unsuitable he is for the highest office in the land, and how much the false equivalency of so-called “balance” provided endless coverage of Hillary Clinton’s email server, while Trump was able to get away with not releasing his tax returns and thereby not reveal who he is indebted to and who has influence over him.

Part 3

Then finally we replay a broadcast from November 24 that drew attention to the struggle underway between autocracy and democracy in America as we head into a plutocratic future, accelerated by Trump’s election. Stephan Schwartz, the editor of the daily web publication, Schwartzreport.net and author of “The 8 Laws of Change: How to Be an Agent of Personal and Social Transformation” joined us to examine what can be done to reverse the oligarchical takeover of the world where just 85 families control half of the planet’s wealth. A trend that resembles medieval duchies as we face a future controlled by a few families and powerful multi-national companies, with a shrunken middle class of professionals and a vast global underclass. We discuss the grassroots mobilization of opposition to concentrated global power in the hands of a few, and movements towards local control and cooperative engagement of, by and for the many.