Imagine getting it…beyond Donald Trump

Imagine Donald Trump getting it. Imagine him coming to realize what he must do to serve, not the interests of business, but of the people who elected him to put a stop to their exclusion.

After all, Ariel Sharon was a tough guy who overcame his smugness to change course, for the sake of his country. Donald Trump has certainly shown the proclivity to change course—sometimes daily! And who can doubt his penchant to challenge his “enemies”, whoever they might happen to be? Barack Obama had trouble dealing with real opponents, and too many people doubted Hillary Clinton’s propensity to confront the establishment.

At his recent congressional address, Donald Trump did show a hint of a shift: he stayed on script, and read it with some feeling. Millions of Americans breathed a collective sigh of relief: finally something, anything. Next day, though, it was back to the old shtick.

So let’s try this instead. Imagine if those “enemies of the people”, the liberal press, get it instead, to help all the friends of a free press—doubtless a majority of the people—get it too. I subscribe to one of these newspapers up here in Canada, the New York Times, which should be called The Relentless Rant: article after article, comment after comment, day after day, on the foibles of Donald Trump. It’s become entertainment more than news: look at what this guy did to us yesterday.

OK, I get that. But does this newspaper get it? The New York Times will no more hound Donald Trump out of office than Donald Trump will hound The New York Times out of business. The problem goes far deeper than him.

I look for commentaries in the paper that get into this depth—go beyond those foibles, to the root of what is distressing so many Americans. Instead, here is what I got in the opinion piece on page 1 of the Times the day after that congressional address. Roger Cohen imagined a dinner of Nigel Farage with Donald Trump: “I suppose they disparage Muslims over well-done burgers and Coke. Multilateralism gets a guffaw with ice cream. God help us.” God help Roger Cohen. Here we have a bit of that fake news, its effete snobbery as base as Donald Trump’s ignorant rants. Indeed, this points the way to the problem: the callous exclusion of people who eat hamburgers and drink Coke.

OK, so if it’s not yet time for the Times to get it, how about the people themselves—the well-intentioned, good folks of America who are fed up with what’s been going on, including some who trustingly voted for this man. Imagine them as the silver lining in the dark cloud of Donald Trump.

To appreciate this, think of Donald Trump as one hell of a community organizer, superior even to Barack Obama (at least after his first election). The president has already been doing his country a great service by bringing all those people on to the streets, and thus bringing to a head the fundamental issue. He’s just the extreme manifestation of the problem that has been festering in the country for years. Yet it is surprising how many of even the most thoughtful people don’t get it. The dogma runs deep.

What the Donald Trump presidency makes clear is that the United States of America is not suffering from too much government so much as from too much business, all over government. The country is seriously out of balance.

I intend to elaborate on this in a forthcoming blog of its own. So please stay tuned. Meanwhile, you can get it by reading my little book Rebalancing Society…radical renewal beyond let, right, and center.

© Henry Mintzberg 2017. 

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