In one of his periodic Isthmus opinion columns a couple of weeks ago, former Madison mayor Dave Cieslewicz urged progressives to steer clear of protest marches and identity politics in seeking a way forward in Trump’s America.  At best, he argued, those modes of politics rally the base while giving it a false sense of momentum.  At worst, they alienate the very Midwestern swing voters, particularly former Obama voters turned Trump voters, that progressive Democrats desperately need to win back.

Obligingly—indeed, almost as if on cue—a Midwestern Trump voter (and self-described “deplorable”) has stepped forward to share his own low opinion both of the recent protests and of identity politics.  “I am weary of lectures about what values I should have and how insensitive I am,” writes Jeff Bust of Frankfort, Illinois, adding, further along, that “I don’t carry signs, chant, dress up in clever costumes, vandalize or wear pink hats.” His guest column in Sunday’s Wisconsin State Journal closes with a sarcastic invitation to “rage, riot, demonstrate, burn, dress up, march, protest, pout, sing, make speeches, resist, vandalize and denounce me as much as you want.”

Whether Mr. Bust is a “swing” voter is open to doubt. His embrace of the “deplorable” label, along with a rhetoric positively ringing with Tea Party resonances, suggest probably not. Anyway, progressives had better hope not, since little in the outlook he expresses seems open to the “liberal economic message…about jobs, wages and fairness for everyone” Citizen Dave (and other citizens, including me) considers key.

Mr. Bust does, on the other hand, provide a glimpse into the mind of at least one Trump voter. If it’s at all representative of Trump voters more generally, we—not just progressives but everyone—are in serious trouble. Beneath the thin veneer of plain-spoken practicality and appeal to old-fashioned common sense simmers the anger and hostility of the self-perceived “forgotten” man, of a vengeful silent majority that has finally found its voice in Donald Trump.  What Bust offers is the politics of resentment distilled to its essence and served straight up.

In fairness, he makes a few partial efforts to hide the bitter taste. He assures us he’s not opposed to hard-working, law-abiding immigrants, just those who would burden taxpayers like him.  That might be a more convincing disavowal of Trump’s more toxic anti-immigrant vitriol if it didn’t so clearly echo the “and some, I assume, are good people” afterthought to Trump's evident view that most are not. Bust also appears at least to acknowledge global warming, on the way to claiming a “practical sense of priority” about it.  What the latter means, however, is anyone’s guess. Were I to hazard one based on the rest of the piece I’d guess it’s not an approach that places planet ahead of profits.

Above all, Bust’s main motivation, he’d have us believe, isn’t his own self-interest but consideration for future generations. “My view is that this country does not have the right to spend future taxpayers’ money without their consent,” he avers. Having his tax dollars support undeserving immigrants isn’t the issue; rather: “My grandchildren should make these choices themselves, not the current collection of Washington and state government politicos who use my taxes to make empty speeches and buy votes in the next election.” 

Of course, as this last sentence shows, concern for future generations’ money is hard to separate from protection of his own pocketbook, leaving one to wonder whether those grand-kids aren’t just a human shield for a more conventionally selfish gripe about being taxed enough already.  That’s too bad, because were it genuine and were it to reach beyond the question of who pays for what and consider what kind of planet and society they will inherit, a commitment to the welfare of future generations would seem obvious common ground on which Trump voters and progressives might rally.

The inter-generational tax “injustice" that so exercises him is the closest Bust comes to anything resembling an economic argument, much less one touching seriously on questions of economic inequality, the declining middle class, and manufacturing jobs lost to technology or foreign competition—all the stuff we’re told is key both to understanding Trump's victory and to drawing Trump voters into the progressive fold. Frankly, it’s hard to find, among Bust’s litany of grievances, much that a Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren might speak to.

And while I’m open to idea that economic justice, rather than “identity politics,” needs to be the main focus, Bust’s evident disdain and contempt even for old-fashioned civil rights offers a breathtaking glimpse of why progressives need to be careful in pressing that point:

I understand that Democrats feel the need to atone for their party’s defense of slavery before the Civil War, opposition to Reconstruction immediately after the Civil War and support of Southern racial segregation until the 1960s, but I don’t want my grandchildren’s money spent trying to make this right.

Seriously.  Leave to one side the tired right-wing tactic tying today’s Democrats to the very different party of generations ago.  Disregard the standard refrain of oblivious privilege: I never owned slaves or discriminated, so how am I responsible racial injustice today? As far as Jeff Bust in concerned, any decent concern about racial bias or inequality, indeed the entire civil rights movement, represents little more than a partisan guilt trip.

Which brings us to the intellectual and and civic emptiness at the heart of Bust’s outlook. It’s not just civil rights: a concern for justice more generally (at least any not centered on his or his grand-kids’ taxes), or for that matter any politics of principle, is trivialized as “dorm-room debates on philosophy and injustice,” and “empty values-centered debates about which cause du jour we want to throw money at.”  So much for the disaffected silent majority being driven by a different set of values we progressives need to better understand.

That would be bad enough by itself; worse is how Bust fills the gaping hole in his politics where principles and ideas ought to be with what amounts to little more than a petulant sense of entitlement, grievance, and victimization.  It’s directed at the usual suspects Bust rounds up in his first sentence: “the mainstream media, Hollywood celebrities, educators or Democrats.”

Educators. Let that one sink in for a moment.

He returns to a similar litany of enemies later on. “I voted for Trump,” Bust announces “because he was the alternative to letting a collection of free spenders, organizers, race baiters, intellectuals, tree huggers and professional value arbitrators continue to spend our grandchildren’s money.” And there we have it: the Two Minutes Hate compressed into one minute sentence.

“I voted for Trump,” he continues, because we can’t afford another president we simply like. We need one who does something.”  What that something is isn’t clear, and I’m not sure the specifics matter much to the Busts of the world. What matters is sticking it to the intellectuals, the organizers, the educators, and all the other expositors of maddeningly inconvenient truths and frustratingly complicated realities.

Progressives are told we need to get out of our self-referential “bubbles,” listen to the Trump voters, and grapple seriously with their concerns. Yet when a Trump voter is given several column inches to explain those concerns to us, he uses them to vent a barrage of self-centered complaints nursed within a bubble of his own.

I’ve been reading and re-reading Bust’s column in search of something I can work with. Yet the more I do, the less I find a down-to-earth call by a practical, hard-working, and too-long-ignored middle-American to get back to basics. What comes across instead is the adolescent whine of someone who finds the complexities of an advanced, diverse, and cosmopolitan society just too tiresome to bear; who feels imposed upon and threatened by those who comprise and embrace that society and believe citizenship is about making that society better; and who is prepared to support someone, anyone, to will “do something” to make it all go away, to make it stop.

What’s scary is how close he may yet come to getting his wish, and how high a price the rest of us may end up paying for his and his cohort’s anti-modernity, anti-liberal tantrum, so simplistically anti-government in some senses and yet so frankly pro-authoritarian in others. 

Scary enough, pace our esteemed former Madison mayor, to drive many quite rightly and understandably into the streets.