The Big Winner in American Politics? Memory

A YEAR AGO, HARDLY ANYONE GAVE DONALD TRUMP A CHANCE. And Bernie Sanders? Wasn’t he that old guy destined to be steamrolled by the Hillary Clinton's finely tuned and well-funded machine? Now, with less than a year before the big election it turns out that these two leaders have turned American politics on its head. Not only have they agitated both the Republican and Democratic parties into states of profound introspection, between the two of them Sanders and Trump have recruited millions of new voters.How come nobody saw this coming? Pollsters, pundits, and personalities missed by a wide margin all that we are watching right now on our television screens. It’s becoming more apparent that the great dysfunction in American politics is being mirrored in the polling and media industries.By now the answer should be coming into view: trauma of any kind manifests itself in profound memories that refuse to become dislodged. The Great Recession is remarkably current still and its effects are playing out every day in the political theatre we are observing. It is the narrative of a time when millions of Americans were forced to deal with shattered dreams and unknown futures. The financial rigors of the Great Recession created their own nightmarish lessons somewhat akin to what others experienced from the Depression of the 1930s. Privation is a hard taskmaster and citizens took their lessons to heart. For the first time in perhaps two generations, the American Dream seemed out of reach.Millions lost homes, jobs, and hope. A 2015 Pew Research Centre Report revealed that one-third of Americans making between $30,000 and $100,000 (US) said the Great Recession had a profound effect on their lives and that they haven’t recovered in the years since. And they aren’t oblivious to a contrary narrative highlighted by the New York Times in 2014, that American corporate profits are at their highest in almost 90 years, while employee compensation is at its lowest in 65 years.It was a recession unlike any other and it created memories and stresses that not only crushed millions of citizens by severely tainted their optimism and forced them into survival mode. Their reflections were eerily similar to American president Calvin Coolidge’s observation in 1932:

"In other periods of depression, it has always been possible to see some things which were solid and upon which you could base hope, but as I look about, I now see nothing to give ground to hope—nothing of man."

A new generation of citizens has emerged, driven by memories similar to those of Coolidge, but whose realities are far more recent. It’s tough for them to trust, and that especially includes how they look at politics. They remain furious at the now-thriving financial barons who escaped punishment, but feel there’s little they can do about it. And so they lash out at the one group they feel they can impact: political parties and those who populate them.The anger and disillusionment created by the lean years created millions of angry and distrustful people and somehow the media and political elites dismally underestimated that fallout. They completely missed the reality that behind the reasoned decisions for supporting unlikely candidates was a reason for deciding – betrayal by the elites. And they began looking for leaders who would respect their lingering memories of that abandonment.And now politics is enduring its own fallout, bordering on a kind of catastrophe – the kind that can shake political parties for decades. It isn’t about blue or red states anymore, but about a collective state of mind that consistently mutters that word so feared by political establishment: revolution.What we are presently witnessing in America is the emergence of the great motivator that transcends everything else generated by this election - the agitated and sad memory of a people deeply scarred and disillusioned by those charged with serving them. The fact that their collective voice didn’t register with the political and media elites is proof enough that their feelings of abandonment are confirmed. And so they look to those that hear their pain. Sanders and Trump it is.