A few weeks ago, my family called and asked if I planned to watch the President’s joint address to Congress. I told them that I didn't, and framed my nonparticipation as an act of political dissent. I said I wasn’t going to dignify Trump by giving him my attention. But the truth is, I had forgotten that the speech was even scheduled, having been so bogged down with other stresses and demands. When I hung up, I turned to face the work that was waiting for me on my desk: a lab report, two reading assignments, a writing seminar essay, and an unfinished article. These tasks would soon be due, and I knew that anything noteworthy that came of Trump’s speech could be found online later. I justified my political apathy as a form of passive protest that was in some way contributing to the goals of the anti-Trump movement while allowing me to finish my economics reading for the next day’s lecture.
Later that night, the Princeton Tory arrived under our door. My roommates’ liberal Pavlovian response, upon reading just the cover, was to grimace at the word “conservative”. They made me, the least politicized of my suite, rip the publication in two and toss its halves in the trash can. After doing this, I asked if they were going to watch Trump’s address, but it turned out that my roommates had forgotten too. Our indignant reaction to the Tory, that only a minute ago seemed so valid and heartfelt, retreated as suddenly as it appeared. Who were we to criticize someone else for making a bold and informed statement about their own political beliefs, if we were not even willing to inform ourselves? If we did not even know what we were in opposition to, and what exactly Trump’s policies actually were, then how could we have anything substantive to say against them?
By not actively studying Trump’s modus operandi and trying to subvert it with intelligent strategies, we are allowing him to gain steam. His populist platform feeds into the disaffection of right-wing conservatives during the Obama years and creates a strong ideological front to back him. The anti-Trump camp remains too broadly defined, scattered among Bernie leftists, Hillary supporters, and moderate conservatives. If politics were a game of chess, then Trump, with his solid army of core backers, has had the opportunity to pull another check mate. Despite setbacks, he will keep barreling ahead, deflecting opposition so long as our dissent remains fractured and lacks any unified, informed argument against him. Knowing Trump’s next move has, for liberals, become the intellectual equivalent of learning a jeopardy fact. It’s interesting, and sometimes manages to up the shock value of whatever happened the prior week, but otherwise seems completely useless given our level of political engagement and awareness.
We have been unsuccessful in attacking his policies not for a lack of flaws, but, on the contrary, because most of our understanding of his platform has been funneled through the entertaining yet highly subjective comedic acts of Alec Baldwin and Lorne Michaels. In some ways, we are no better than Trump himself — we don’t bother to study the empirical facts. Instead, we speak in blanket generalizations and alternatives, about feelings and fears rather than actualities, to hide our ignorance.
Our moral relativism decides in caveman logic that Trump is bad and Obama is good; it shouldn’t be lauded because it doesn’t help the pushback against Trump. It only results in our inability to make critical decisions and nuanced statements about the current state of American politics. Ultimately, our general ignorance, coupled with broad rhetoric that’s too often more anti-Republican than anti-Trump, is fueling this collective sense of disaffection among young Liberals by failing to have any impact on Trump.
The lives of most Princetonians are more adversely affected by a low grade on a problem set than a racially or religiously motivated travel ban. We are submerged in an ironic solipsism, an obsession with the academic and social pressure of Princeton that shields us from the harsh realities of the real world. Our protection from, and ignorance of, these harsh realities causes us to evolve into the very under-informed, pseudo-intellectual yuppies that we like to criticize.
We need to consider why we are here in the first place, beyond problem sets and tests. Are we not attending one of the top institutions in America so that we can meaningfully engage this world? To contribute, we need to be informed. At the very least, we should be able to spare an hour to listen to our President. Clearly we have enthusiasm enough to vehemently oppose conservative speech like the Tory. But we cannot claim to have better, more informed opinions if we refuse to pay attention to what is going on outside our university. Even if the President speaks in alternative facts, our ability to recognize and correct them is a powerful tool in spreading the truth. Civic duty aside, we should harness the power that our position grants us, the power to speak up for those who cannot.
Now, looking back on the night I threw away the Tory, I realize how many missed opportunities I have let pass, even at Princeton, to meaningfully contribute rather than allow my own political insularity to detract from spreading meaningful discourse on campus. I could have started by watching Trump’s speech. Even simply writing an article summarizing what he said might have had the potential to incite a grassroots chain reaction of informed and motivated students. By spreading information, whether through writing, or art, or even the content we learn about in our courses, we can take opposition not only to Trump as a person, but also to the specific ways in which his actions affect us, our peers, our community and our country. This is the kind of unified support that the anti-Trump camp needs to create on our campus in order to effect change in the current political dynamic in our country.
Hayley Siegel is a freshman from Princeton, N.J. She can be reached at hsiegel@princeton.edu.
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