"The Little Guy" Reimagined in the Age of Trump

My Dad would talk about “The Little Guy” all the time...  He would say things like: “No one is thinking about ‘the little guy....The unions exist because of the little guy. ..Political parties that cheat and only serve the rich are out to get the little guy....” It’s the idea that the little guy gets shoved aside.

 Richard Nixon talked of the silent majority, and Ross Perot championed the middle class engine that was the middle class worker who drove the economic train. Bernie Sanders speaks of a revolution for the underserved, and Donald Trump spoke to the working class, middle of the road workers in the heartland who were underserved since the Great Recession.

There is a fascination in our country with the underdog and the little guy. Frank Capra spoke to this mythos in “It’s a Wonderful Life” with the creation of George Bailey and the idea that hard work and perseverance are the backbone of the country and the essence of what makes America and Americans Great. That is perhaps why the slogan, “Make America Great Again” is a winning notion, as those who felt disenfranchised could cling to the notion that ‘if only’ there was someone who understood us, we could be great again....

The Little Guy is a phrase that has caught on in past times, with both parties latching on to the mystique and catchy aroma that comes with the territory as we see politicians with rolled up sleeves and wide smiles working to sound ‘off the cuff’ and ‘genuine.’ That is the attraction and the winning argument that still holds in selling yourself to the middle class. The middle of the road, ‘little guy’ still reveals ‘the right stuff’ in campaigners as they work to reach out to this mythical unicorn of a voting sweet spot.

Is it a myth that there was ever a little guy who simply kept his head down and worked hard to put food on the table, raise his kids, and lived a good and unerring life?  And wasn’t it understood that we should all work to emulate this model? This is the model most of us saw in our own fathers, parents and grandparents during our childhoods in middle America. Our parents were, for the most part, representatives of ‘the little guy.’ The World War II era, the depression babies, the post war kids were the ones that carved this mold into our brains.

And then the sixties revealed more about who we were. We protested senseless wars, we wised up about politicians after Watergate and the Kennedy Assassination. We understood the power of America in the Moon Landings and through the end of the Cold War. And we came into our own as a superpower, and a leader in innovation as the Internet exploded and the age of Technology created a boom time that blew up in our faces with another senseless war and major economic downturn.

And now, we are left to pick up the pieces, post-Obama era when the flower children saw the culmination of King’s “I have a Dream” myth nearly deified in the person of Barack Obama. We are now back to the bread and circuses era of promises of some bygone era, sans the shining city on the hill. It’s the ‘Little Guy” who is still there, peeking out from behind the overcoat of a bloated rich man who has dangled the promises of the past in the persona of the average middle class working Joe. And yet, there is a startling difference and a dirty secret embodied in the character of the new-age little guy.

The little guy has morphed into a little girl, and she has a bi-racial child and a black husband. That is the reality of the 21^st Century hitting up hard against the not so shining city that was painted over in the last election. The little guy is still with us in memory and photos. But the little guy is now a middle aged and empowered person of color, or a woman, or a man who has the power of the internet and the knowledge which is power at his or her fingertips. This is a dangerous time, as we know the internet contains trolls and lies and lots of dark corners.

Yet we are still, amazingly enough, a superpower with a history of the rule of law, and the mantra we hear these days is “No man is above the law.” This is part of the idea that the little guy has the power to buy the Mueller Report, and to read and watch cable news and digest information to consume enough to know infinitely more than the little guy that existed fifty or a hundred years ago in America.

We are a nation of laws. The Little Guy is magnified one hundred fold and 300 million strong. We will survive stronger yet, when we recognize the little guy as the new age Little guy who is telling us the truth about ourselves. We have always been stronger when we were united, and that still holds true. The Little Guy magnified times ten means a stronger nation when we still pride ourselves as a nation with long held beliefs in upholding the rule of law and the strong tenets of the Constitution. We will survive as the re-imagined re-birth of The Little Guy in America today.