How did we get here?

Five weeks hasn’t made this election any more palatable, and I have certainly spent copious amounts of time asking myself the above question. Here are three main changes in American culture that I believe contributed to our current sad state of affairs.

Embracing Crassness. In the early 1990s a slew of talk shows began airing that celebrated a strange stew of violence, foul language, and the very baseness of human nature. I’m not naïve enough to believe that people never swore in public before we started bleeping out words on daytime TV, but it was behavior to hide or, at the very least, be a little embarrassed of if someone overheard you. We collectively enjoyed Mel Brooks movies, but we elbowed each other and raised our eyebrows in disbelief when the characters said things we would never dare say out loud. With the rise of the trashy talk shows, it was as though we collectively decided that it had all been pretense. This was how “regular” people talked and behaved. Slowly, but not slowly enough, that thought became the truth.

Accepting Dishonesty. In case you don’t remember, the 2004 presidential election is when “to swift boat” became a verb. While I understood that politicians would bend, spin, and twist the truth, this campaign took it to a whole new level. Of the two major presidential contenders, one was an alleged draft dodger and the other had been awarded a Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts for service in Vietnam. Yet it was the latter candidate’s patriotism that was called into question. Even though the claims against Kerry were false, the voices raised against him were loud enough to make people call his service into question. Our country had started a descent into a terrifying realm where truth could be considered subjective.

Celebrating Mediocrity. Looking again to the 2004 election, one of the criticisms heaped on Kerry was that he was too smart; he didn’t talk like an average dude, he had an Ivy League education, and to top it all off he enjoyed windsurfing. (Yes, this was an actual criticism.) On the other hand, there was W: just about as “regular” as a guy could get. There was no doubt about who America wanted to grab a beer with; it certainly wasn’t that smarty-pants Kerry who probably thought he was better than us. This election was the turning point where America decided that we didn’t want someone better than us to be in charge. The problem with that thinking is that it completely negates the benefit of living in a community. When my car is broken down, I want someone better than me at mechanics to fix it. When I have pain that won’t go away, I want someone better than me at medicine to treat me. When I have occasion to celebrate, I want someone better than me at the culinary arts to prepare a meal. And when we have the privilege of electing a president, I want someone better than me at foreign relations, economic policy, and a whole host of other areas to lead the free world.

All of which leads us to 2016, where America has elected the embodiment of crassness, dishonesty, and mediocrity. He doesn’t pretend to be polite (and disdains those who are), he has at best a very loose relationship with the truth (and continues to lie when confronted with facts), and won the votes of 62 million Americans by convincing them that he was just like them (he’s not; not even a little bit). So, now the question is: how do we get from here to just about anywhere else?