I’m now calling my political column Common Sense instead of One Man’s Truth. This honors the country’s most significant political commentator and revolutionary, Thomas Paine, my early and current writing hero, who has long inspired me.

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We live in a wild and turbulent time. I understand that many people think our country’s democracy is in terrible peril and is coming apart, but I don’t. We have to step back and think about it; hopefully, that’s why I’m here. I’ll do my best.

Stay out of the fray. Don’t buy the hysteria on both sides. They want your money, all of them.

Our democracy is intact, although you wouldn’t know it from following the mainstream media.

A solid and determined opposition to Trumpism – a new and powerful coalition –  is forming and gaining strength by the day. The Trumpists overreached every time.

We live in a curious era, where so-called significant events have little meaning, and the world changes so fast that the only important thing is what is happening today.

Donald Trump surrendered Thursday in Georgia.

It’s about time.

The worst possible thing is happening to Mr. Trump. He has become tedious and predictable, feeble and frumpy. We are sick of him. Nothing he does is new or changes, and he is getting up in age and losing his orange hair. He doesn’t even lie well any longer.

But what does all this mean? To be honest, very little.

It’s a media circus, a show. It is neither natural nor significant in the short or long run.

Most people want a more secure life for themselves and their children. They have little interest in culture wars or what it means to be “woke.” That’s where the action is and will remain – at home, with families living their lives and struggling to get by and people you won’t see on the news that reporters will never find or look for.

In one sense, the country is in a historic upheaval (and not for the first time); in another, this is how democracy should work: all kinds of checks and balances and raging debates. If you look carefully and apart from the hysteria machine we call modern journalism, it works and will continue to work. Nobody said it would be easy or pretty. This titanic struggle is long overdue.

There is an epic clash of values and morals. Neither side understands the other or gets it right.

It works the way it always does: loudly,  chaotically, peacefully, and with great civic engagement.

There are people with guns everywhere, but this battle is mainly being fought at the polls and in courts and legislatures, not in the streets.

That is a much better way than most countries do it.

This is a mess created by the left and its political party, the Democrats, long before Donald Trump had the great luck to appear on the scene at just the right time.

At the same time, he was walking down those stairs; half of the country was enraged and desperate for a leader. Leaders matter at times like this, and President Biden, for all his decency and patience, is not a good one now. Trump and his messaging seem overpowering. There appears to be nothing on the other side.

It often seems as if there is nothing but Trump and his chaos.

That’s how it feels. But that’s not how it is. We just are rarely shown the rest.

Here’s where I think we stand.

Donald Trump is not electable and is unraveling. He may or may not be the Republican Candidate (I’d bet against it). He will certainly not be our next President.

As of this writing, Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee, although he looks worse every time I see him, and as a fellow older man, I wouldn’t bet on that either. What is happening now has little or no reality to what will happen in six months or a year.

Understanding the origins of this epic political and cultural civil war is essential.

And they have been forgotten.

A generation ago, the Democratic Party (I usually vote Democratic, but not always), led by President Clinton, abandoned working white working-class Americans in favor of what they called Trade Agreements. Wall Street eagerly lobbied to support something they called the New Global Economy, which, we were promised, would unite the world and enrich all of us in ways we never imagined.

That was a big lie.

The idea was to send all our industrial jobs to China, Mexico, and Southeast Asia, where labor costs were medieval and low. We would make it up in trade. It worked well for the corporations, who became more prosperous and got a lot of cheap marketing.

All the money went to the top, and the communities trashed by government policy got nothing but misery, drugs, and ruin. The incredible story of the American worker, toiling in the heartland to make cars, refrigerators, and radios for everyone was shattered.

And people now think it’s all about race and women’s rights and the “woke.”.

Nobody seemed to worry that more than half of the industrial jobs – almost all in rural America – would leave within a decade. People have forgotten about the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2002, which caused 879,000 jobs in America to be lost to Canada and Mexico in just one year. That was before China, India, and Vietnam took many millions more.

U.S. trade deficits with China displaced 956,700 jobs in 2001 when China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the number of jobs lost due to the trade deficit increased to 4,661,400 in 2018, leading to a net 3.7 million jobs lost, and that was more than a decade ago. Those 3.7 million never came back, and 90 percent of all the new wealth went straight to the top, the one percent whose taxes Donald Trump lowered significantly when he took office.

According to the CDC, overdoses in rural areas have shot up to tie city death rates in just a few years.

The white working class, which is to say the rural working middle class, was gutted. None of those jobs have returned, none of those towns have recovered, and almost none of those children can stay and work at home. Tens of thousands have died of drug overdoses.

These jobs lost were not in Manhattan, L.A. San Francisco or Boston.

They were almost all lost in rural America. It was a cultural and economic tsunami, and the Democratic Party and its liberal followers did it and supported it. Overnight, there were too many rich people in cities and poor people in the country. That came to be defined both in politics and in real life.

Sociologists believe this to be a significant factor in the divisions tearing the country apart.

The working-class children had no jobs waiting for them, and the children of the urban course got rich in a hurry. The seeds of vengeance were planted and watered daily.

That was a big lie, this promise of wealth for the blue-colored middle class in rural America.

They were devasted, and it quickly hallowed out most, if not all, of the once vibrant towns in rural America where I live now. The scars are everywhere.

Town after town lost its jobs: small businesses, farms, children, and the community. The urban poor were also gutted, but the Trumps of the world convinced the working white middle class that the urban and immigrant poor were taking their money and robbing them of the resources needed to recover.

That this promise was false didn’t matter; the corporate fatcats live to divide us and let the poor fight with each other. No one is big enough to challenge them. The white working class was persuaded that African Americans, women, gay and trans people, immigrants, and refugees were all thriving at their expense. Nobody was taking pity on them; nobody cared about them.

The latter, at least, was true.

Then, Donald Trump appeared long after the pot had been boiling. He was the Pope of Grievance and resentment. He grew up in Queens, a bastion of white middle-class resentment and struggle.

He knew the language. The enemy was the educated elites who ruined their lives, stole their future, shoved liberal beliefs down their throat, and held them in contempt. Words the white working blue-collar workers had been waiting to hear. The country was astonished. They shouldn’t have been.

As 25-year-old millionaires swarmed San Francisco and other tech centers, working-class people had to drive three miles to find an affordable apartment. Thousands ended up homeless.

I consider myself to be a liberal with some conservative values, but I can see that this goes way past racism and bigotry. The rural working middle class has been sacrificed and cropped.

Racism does not drive the Trump Revolution. It is driven by grievance, resentment, and economics.

Trump talks about the working class while lowering taxes for the one percent. Corporate America loves and funds him; he is doing its dirty work by helping to divide Americans and weaken their political power. He is responsible for the abortion ban. He thinks climate change is a hoax. He is stirring up a firestorm of opposition.

He is one of the most divisive figures in American history.

Donald Trump threatened a violent uprising if he was indicted for his crimes. Where is it? His Army is in hiding, raging online, or in jail. If the FBI knows anything, it’s how to break up a gang of rebels. They’ve been doing it for a century.

There hasn’t been a noticeable demonstration yet anywhere in the country. We don’t love Kings.

A populist revolt is growing on the other side; ironically, Trump got it started, and Trumpism keeps it going. Every time it has been tested in an election, it has lost. That’s how politics work. Upside down and backward.

Women are upending barbaric abortion and health restrictions by organizing voting and winning – something they seem very good at. Trump has sparked a new political coalition to protect their rights, health, and future.

Climate change is now the rallying cry of the young.

They want the rest of us to help them have a world they can live in.

That is fast becoming one of the fastest-growing movements in America. You can learn all about it if you know where to look.

The ever-critical suburbanites, who seem to win or lose elections these days, are uneasy with all this saber-rattling and extremism.

They want some peace and stability, and they can make it happen.

I am no fan of racism, sexism, the persecution of political opponents, or the war on teachers, librarians, colleges, trans people, and their children.

But I’m no fan of poverty and isolation and betrayal either. A political party that abandons its most loyal followers can’t hide from all responsibility for this trouble.

Trump’s followers also make a bad mistake, betting on the wrong horse. They just went too far. That is their problem, their choice, their business.

The Democratic Party and the liberal world ought to think about what they have done to half of the country and what they might do to help repair the damage. That could be the healthiest thing one wishes for in a democracy. The sad part is that Biden seems to know this but seems too feeble to articulate it.

He is no match for Trump and his media skills. Trump will find a way to blow it he always does and he always has.

Greed and indifference are not admirable traits, not for us, not for them.

They sure are not democratic.