Scott Brinton

Trump in charge? Blame ‘creative destruction.’

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To have predicted Donald Trump’s stunning Nov. 8 victory, one only needed to rewind time 22 years, to 1994 –– the year low-fi-alternative musician Beck released “Loser.”

Most folks probably don’t recall this disturbing ditty. But among Gen-Xers — those of us born between the mid-1960s and mid-1980s, “Loser” was something of a grunge anthem.

It was a brash, angry, in-your-face, guttural rebel cry that screamed to society, “Hey, you’re ignoring me. Pay a little attention over here.” It juxtaposed a twangy steel guitar against Beck’s rapped, seemingly stream-of-consciousness melody lines, with a frightening chorus: “I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me.”

At its core, the song was about all those whom America had forgotten and left behind –– the so-called dregs of our society. And in the mid-’90s, it was easy to get left behind.

America’s great technological revolution was well under way. We were no longer a manufacturing nation, it seemed. We were the high-tech, consumer-oriented superpower that had won the Cold War. The fledgling internet was a curiosity that many believed could make us all rich.

And, yes, the ’90s made plenty of techies –– and real-estate moguls like Trump –– really rich. All you needed was access to capital and markets –– and computers.

But what about the kids born in trailer parks in the woods? “Loser” spoke about them, for them and to them –– and anyone else, for that matter, who felt like a loser, with a capital “L” branded on your forehead.

In the “Loser” video, Beck, who was then 24 (he’s now 46), is mostly seen hanging out in the woods, doing nothing in particular except rapping. In between, images of stock cars roaring across a dirt track flash across the screen. Every so often, a wooden coffin shuffles magically across a black-and-white landscape. And here and there, the grim reaper pops up.

“Loser” was dark street poetry set to music. It wasn’t intended for Rust Belt assembly-line workers. It was intended for their “slacker” kids.

Those kids are now middle-aged adults, spread across, among other places, rural counties in three key battleground states, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin –– the three states that handed Trump his victory. Twenty thousand votes in those three states made all the difference.

The point is this: The idea that our society is leaving people behind –– the working poor, even the middle class –– isn’t new. The forces of “creative destruction,” to use the economic term, have been at work for decades.

In the 1990s, my generation –– Generation X –– felt much as the millennial generation (those born after 1985 through the early to mid-2000s) does today –– uncertain, unwanted, rejected and dejected. The thing is, there are many Gen-Xers, particularly those whose livelihoods depended on manufacturing jobs that evaporated over the last 20-plus years, who still feel that way.

Like it or not, Trump paid attention to them, if only in passing. Like it or not, he spoke to them. And that, in the end, was why he won, despite his racist, misogynistic, anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic, anti-Muslim rhetoric that infuriated so many of us.

We needn’t rehash the larger debate about the efficacy of our election system. Hillary Clinton trounced Trump in the popular vote –– by 2.9 million ballots. But Trump’s team figured out that, under the Electoral College system, he didn’t need the whole country to vote for him. He just needed to turn three key states. And he did.

Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager and one of his top advisers, is truly a master pollster.

Trump tapped into a deep and profound anger that had simmered since the ’90s (and probably long before that) and unleashed it as rage. He gave permission to all those who felt like losers to speak their minds. And the conversation quickly devolved into one of the most ugly shouting matches in American political history.

Will Trump fix the societal ills that he has identified? Let’s just say that I have my doubts. For one, he’s filled his cabinet with millionaires and billionaires who have no understanding of the daily struggles that average Americans face. How do you save for tomorrow when you’re scraping by today? That isn’t a conversation that the Trumpeteers who comprise the Donald’s inner circle are having, I’m guessing.

Moreover, are the problems truly solvable? Manufacturing jobs disappeared because American international conglomerates moved them overseas, where they hired cheaper labor while winning access to emerging markets. For-profit companies won’t return jobs to the U.S. by the tens of millions just because Trump tells them to. Their aim is to make as much money for their investors as possible, period. It’s Capitalism 101 –– a brand of capitalism, by the way, that Trump himself practices.

The answer lies in re-educating our workforce with high-tech skills that will enable Americans to compete in the new global economy. Clinton failed to effectively convey that message.

And so, on Jan. 20, we will have Trump.

Scott Brinton is the Herald Community Newspapers’ executive editor and an adjunct professor at the Hofstra University Herbert School of Communication. Comments about this column? SBrinton@liherald.com.