Trump’s Genius is He Understands There Are No Ordinary People

Where Trump succeeds so wildly is in his understanding that no-one is ordinary. British politicians could do well to copy Trump’s refusal to talk down about ordinary people. Remember that clip of Trump ‘working’ at McDonalds; the way he interacted with the man in the drive-thru was political genius.

Drive-thru man: Ah Mr President, you made it possible for ordinary people like us to meet you.

Donald Trump interrupting: You are not ordinary. You are not ordinary, I can see.

Our politicians on the other hand can’t stop themselves talking about the ordinary as if they were a species apart. Newly powerful Danny Kruger was at it this week when describing the record of the Tories in providing “less of what ordinary people actually wanted”. During a BBC interview about the Unite the Kingdom march Keir Starmer referred to demonstrators as “not ordinary people”, while emphasising that his Government is focused on addressing the concerns of “ordinary, decent, hard-working people”. Are people who are not ‘ordinary’ exceptional or subhuman perhaps? Even a former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, wrote an article about how those in migrant hotels are just ordinary people: “But the truth is that the migrant, too, is an ordinary person.”

This all sounds very plausible and nice on the surface, but as a primate he should have known that it’s impossible for anyone to be ordinary: man is made in the image of God, as far from ordinary as is possible to imagine. And whatever views people have about the Government and its inability to control borders, I’m not sure anyone would agree that someone who has made their way from Eritrea to the UK is ordinary. Brave, criminal, audacious, thrusting – choose your adjective – but it’s not ordinary.

I’ve been wracking my brains to work out if I am ordinary, or if I know any ordinary people. I’ve decided I’m not ordinary as I have green eyes and all wild romantic heroines have green eyes and they are not ordinary, so I can’t be either. With a sock on each ear, my husband does an excellent impression of a spaniel, so he can’t possibly be ordinary. I can’t imagine any mother thinks her children are ordinary, and mine are certainly extraordinary. None of my friends are ordinary, even the ones who vote Liberal Democrat: they are clearly lunatics. Readers of the Daily Sceptic are most certainly not ordinary.

Perhaps when politicians, commentators and primates are talking about ‘ordinary people’ they’re using the word as an idiom. What they actually mean is: boring people, or people who haven’t made a success of their lives like they have. But even then, I can’t think of any truly ‘ordinary/boring’ people I’ve come across. I know a woman called Pam (let’s say) who is painfully boring to talk to, but five close members of her family, including her daughter, died of pancreatic cancer; she has experienced wells of grief that make her far from ordinary.

Or does ‘ordinary people’ mean poor people? Theresa May had a go at coining another phrase for this demographic: ‘Jams’, just about managing. This didn’t really catch on, so ordinary had to be resurrected.

Well, it won’t do.

What most grates about the casual use of the term ‘ordinary people’ is the sense it gives in which these ordinary people are faceless, soulless bodies who can be pushed about, like generals used to shove about armies on maps with long sticks. Ordinary people can be locked down, surveilled, imprisoned, cordoned off, written off, dosed up on junk food and fat jabs, made to install inefficient heat pumps, sacked, housed in ugly new builds, left uneducated, laughed at and looked down upon, because they’re only ordinary.

It was John Locke who first suggested humans were tabula rasa (a blank slate) who lacked any inherent core and instead could be poked and prodded into all sorts of different positions. Progressive politics and its fall out has shown demonstrably this is not true: each human is unique and must be celebrated as such.

In the way that Trump did so instinctively at the McDonald’s Drive-Thru, victory goes to whichever political movement grasps there are no ordinary people. Rather than talking about ordinary people, Trump talks about hard-working Americans, American Patriots, the typical American family and over and over again: beautiful people. Let us hear politicians celebrate unique British individuals, beautiful British small business owners, hardworking British mothers and fathers, tremendous teachers and extraordinary voters.

Tolstoy puts it much better in What then must we do?:

Man is not merely a creature of instinct, like the animals, but is endowed with reason, conscience and a spiritual calling. He is created to live, to think, to suffer, to love, and to seek truth, and in this he is higher than all other creatures. Yet, in our society, so many live in conditions that stifle these divine gifts — labouring without purpose, deprived of thought, love or truth. To restore humanity’s dignity, we must reject the systems that reduce men to mere tools and embrace a life where each person can fulfil their unique purpose.

Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence coach.