DAVID S. GLOSSER'S: LESSONS FOR TRUMP FROM JOHNSTOWN'S HISTORY (2016)

This was from a graduate of my high school, a year before me.  Very, very, smart guy:

 I re-post my 2016 Johnstown Tribune Democrat essay to remind Trumpists that we all knew who he was. It is my retrospective on how the residents of my distressed post-industrial hometown were lied to by Donald Trump. He and his coterie of opportunists did not invent the old ignorant fears and prejudices that had long simmered in the town, but they capitalized on it, legitimized it, and transformed it into votes. Now, in the most tragic and ironic fashion, the incompetent and heartless Trump public health policy has led to the town being further ravaged by COVID-19. It is a story about largely decent people, hurting from economic dislocation, who don't see a way forward, and who reverted to following a hateful leader's promises to make them great by victimizing other distressed people. It was the BIG LIE that is the beating heart of Trumpism, and it must be addressed and refuted by reason, compassion, and policies that address the legitimate problems of the deceived. Words alone will not do it.

David S. Glosser

The Tribune-Democrat

"Lessons for Trump From Johnstown’s History"

I was sent the link to Chip Minemeyer’s article appearing in the Oct. 22, 2016 Tribune Democrat covering my young nephew Stephen Miller’s presentation at the recent Trump campaign rally. With all familial affection I wish Stephen career success and personal happiness,  however I cannot endorse his political preferences. I am not a Trump supporter. Having been born and raised in Johnstown, and having personally observed and lived through the  events of the past 66 years that have shaped the town, my perspective is bound to be different than Stephen’s.  Allow me to meander a bit.

My Johnstown was a tough little town filled with generally warm-hearted and hard working European immigrants and their offspring.  That was certainly true of the extended Glosser clan.  My beloved grandfather, Sam, and his brothers and sister were all born in the region of Poland near the Russian side of the country.  One by one they managed to come over to Johnstown to escape poverty, war, and ethnic persecution. Starting with exactly nothing, one branch of the family established the scrap yard business, and our branch built Glosser Brother's department store.  The businesses ultimately employed thousands and served the needs of the working man…good stuff cheap in a friendly environment. Until I was about 12 years old I couldn’t reliably tell who among the employees were family members.   Children were born, synagogues founded, and we thrived.  This was the miracle of America.  While there was always a certain amount of anti-Jewish prejudice, it was not universal or state sponsored, we had equal protection of the law, freedom of speech and religion, and we enjoyed good relations with our neighbors.  My late dad, Izzy Glosser, managed some of the store’s departments, and my mom was a school social worker.  Both were life-long Democrats.

The mines and mills were running full blast, and the sky was often darkened by the products of the valley’s industry. I didn’t know for sure that the moon’s natural color was not orange until reaching an age I’m embarrassed to admit. Johnstown’s population was near all time highs, and those dark skies meant good jobs, good paychecks, and good customers for the store. They gave us a good living and sent me and my brother and sister to good universities.  Yes, the rivers ran poisoned by mine drainage and mill discharge, but we didn’t think much about it.  Johnstown was a hustling bustling industrial town full of optimistic promise. Yes, it’s true that black people, and Jews too, were excluded from many kinds of employment and opportunity, but that’s just the way it was.  It was nothing to be proud of, but fortunately times have changed.  

I’ve been living in the Philadelphia area for the last 25 years and last year retired from Jefferson Medical College. My last trip to Johnstown was in March 2016 to attend the funeral of my dad. A kinder more generous, honest and loving man never drew breath.  His death sort of hollowed me out for a while, but no one lives forever, and dad was a happy man.  As our family gathered and walked the streets on the memory tour of our youth; I could not help but see that Johnstown has been hollowed out as well.  There were mostly empty buildings, silent streets, and no young people in sight; the heart-breaking ruins of a town.  

So what happened?  Why didn’t Johnstown make the transition to a dynamic new economic and social future?  How did it stay stuck in the late 19th to middle 20th century economy of heavy industry and raw materials that fueled America’s earlier development?  Pittsburgh is enjoying a renaissance as a high tech center after a long dormant period of industrial decline. Why haven’t other mill towns like Johnstown done so?

There are a lot of reasons, but it didn’t happen over night. My career was in clinical neuroscience not history, but let’s takes a stab at it.  Mr. Trump would have us believe that perhaps the mines and mills closed because the jobs were more or less stolen away to foreign countries because of “bad trade deals” or that coal and steel will come back if environmental regulations are lifted and if we wall off the borders to immigration.  Most of this is wrong-headed and collides with fact and reason. 

The Appalachian soft coal industry around Johnstown died first because cheaper sources of coal and other energy were discovered elsewhere in the country. Moreover, deep coal mining is dirty and dangerous.  Take a look at the mountains of coal ash and the dead rivers around town. People who trumpet the imminent arrival of “clean coal” are trying to sell you something.  Talk to the widows and children of black lung miners. Talk to the families of miners killed in cave-ins and explosions caused by corrupt non-enforcement of government safety regulations.  

What coal extraction continues is no longer done by thousands of low skill diggers entrapped in company towns. It’s mechanized and employs relatively few.  Coal mining took the money out of a region, but didn't leave much of it behind.  Mr. Trump tells us that Chinese leaders fabricated global warming.  I don’t think even he believes it. He’s trying to sell you something.  Every politician blabbers about loving our children.  Do we love them enough to leave them some fresh air, a tolerable climate, and clean water…even if it costs us in the short term?

Why did the mills close down?  It’s really pretty simple. WWII destroyed the heavy industry of Europe and Japan. As they recovered with US help, they built modern state of the art plants and began to make good steel at lower cost. 

Ask Mr. Trump about it. He buys his steel abroad. Back at home protectionist tariffs bought by industrialists artificially kept the mills running for years until the final collapse. Less stuff was made out of steel as other lighter materials came into use. Domestic car and truck sales plummeted because GM, Chrysler, and Ford were slow to wake up and build better cars. American consumers were not stupid and bought the best values they could.

  Mr. Trump seems to favor protectionist tariffs to make America great.  High tariffs isolate us from foreign competition. I’m a capitalist and know that competition is good for the economy. If we keep out foreign goods, our prices go up, foreigners can’t buy from us, and they impose tariffs on us in retaliation. The fabric of international interdependence falls apart, and poverty reigns. 

 The last time “America-first protectionism” was tried was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930; which  respected historians and economists think was a trigger both of the Great Depression and the emergence of European fascism.  I guess you know how that story ended, and it wasn’t pretty. 

Johnstown has geography that is as treacherous as it is beautiful. The town has been beaten up by 3 major floods.  The first of which was the direct result of the callousness of Pittsburgh industrialists who neglected the South Fork Dam and never paid a penny of compensation.  Then, as now the super rich can buy politicians.  

Since the recent Citizens United Supreme Court case, corporations can gin up any amount of untraceable cash to support candidates beholden to them. Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something.  Mr. Trump tells us that the system is rigged. To some extent he is right, but it is rigged by big corporate interests that buy laws and regulations which favor them. Mr. Trump knows this well. He regards us poor tax payers as fools and is proud of his privilege. 

Was Johnstown always well led by its politicians?  Might we have done better as a region if we had consolidated all of the surrounding townships into one political unit?  Could our culture have better emphasized academic achievement and funded schools that directed their graduates into math, science, engineering and other careers of the future?  Might we have been more inclusive of minorities and broken down barriers of discrimination with greater conviction?  Did we believe in our national superiority a bit too much and under-estimate the brains, determination, and energy of the rest of the developing world?  

We must all make our own judgments about this.  Pittsburgh’s rebirth is largely due to its critical mass of excellent universities and the political will to create a workforce and social climate that is moving into the economic future rather than promising to bring back the 19th and 20th centuries. It’s called vision, and its direction must be forward.

The Glosser family escaped Europe as dirt poor immigrants, joined the community, built businesses, and honestly sold goods to their fellow Johnstowners.  Mr. Trump is trying to sell you something too. He sells fear of immigrants, contempt of our daughters, sisters, and wives, and sows discord and anger.  He knows the dictator’s disgraceful sales tricks of  challenging the integrity of democratic elections, he finds an unpopular outside group to blame our troubles on, cooks up false electoral fraud theories if he doesn’t get his way, threatens and bullies his opponents, and tells us that he is the only one that can lead the nation ahead.  He’s trying to sell you something, and it’s not a good product.  

For the first time in my memory a major American political party’s Presidential candidate has proposed that laws and regulations be established solely on the basis of a person’s religion and ethnic background.  The legitimization of this as a basis of serious political discussion is a terrible step into darkness. Remember, what goes around comes around. If today it’s “them”, then tomorrow it may be you. 

Finally, my nephew and I must both reflect long and hard on one awful truth. If in the early 20th century the USA had built a wall against poor desperate ignorant immigrants of a different religion, like the Glossers, all of us would have gone up the crematoria chimneys with the other six million kinsmen whom we can never know. 

With great affection and hope for my home town’s real future, I remain faithfully yours,

David S. Glosser, Sc.D.

Yardley, PA

October 25, 2016