Thoughts on Donald Trump, America and what this all means
So this is reality. I warned myself not to take anything for granted with Trump, 2016 happened, but still I was starting to feel hopeful for a minute there. But nope, this is what America looks like now. For now.
This sucks for a lot of Americans, some are justifiably devastated. A lot is uncertain and we all have to figure out how to navigate this version of the country for, at least, the next 4 years. That's of course part of the insanity, that there are big questions about what happens when Trump's term is over. We kinda know there's going to be some level of a coup attempt, we just don't know if it will be successful.
But for the moment I want to put aside the myriad fucked up social, economic and geopolitical implications and explore what it means from a more ideology and identity sort of angle.
This means that we don't live in a just world. When my partner was crying last night, I think that's what she was feeling the loss of most of all. The idea that despite the imperfections of the world, somewhere underneath there is some form of justice based in the fundamentally good nature of human beings.
Intellectually it seems obvious that there is no inherent justice. But emotionally it's a different story. Speaking for Americans, it's not the story we're told growing up in the shining beacon of democracy. The concept of what America is, and who Americans are, that we translate to our childen is missing most of the nuance. And many of us keep that with us emotionally as adults, even if we know better.
The grown up version, the story we tell ourselves in American culture, has more nuance but not as much as you'd hope for. As an example, we've been pretending that giant corporations, conglomerates and the ultrawealthy can serve the public interest for an embarrassingly long time. We've made materialism into an art. A little light to medium evil in our foreign policy is just something we need to accept.
Of course the nuance isn't lost on everyone, a lot of us have a clear view of what America is, and western capitalist democracy writ large, but Trump is president, in part, because a lot of people do not. Full stop. We, as a culture, are telling the wrong stories about ourselves.
But Trump is president, in spite of his escalating rhetoric and Jan 6th and the nazis on parade and the election wasn't even close. So we have to come to terms with what that means about what America is, and who Americans are.
That's going to take time and processing and I'm not sure how that might or should look. I just want to add that this isn't new. This is the country we've been living in for some time. The only thing that's really changed is that we can't rationally tell any other story now.
It's heartbreaking but after we grieve I think we'll have an opportunity, collectively, to come to terms with what we are, good and bad. Which is of course a vital early step in the process of change.
One thing I'd like to add to the conversation, that's been said a lot and still not nearly enough, is that the enemies here are not just bigotry, or ignorance, or extremist religion or lack of security. Perhaps the biggest reason, directly and indirectly, for Trump's second term is unchecked capitalism.
I hope that, as a whole, we'll learn from this, and focus our energy on the right demons. The ones we maybe have to deal with before we can handle the others.
And also I want to say: this is sad and it feels bleak at the moment... and this grief is shared by millions. We're not alone in this. We'll get through it.
I've been travelling to America for twenty or so years.
Going by Umberto Eco's definition, I believed that many aspects of American culture were ripe for fascism since my first trip.
I don't think it's possible for outsiders to convey to outsiders how jarring the nationalism, militarism, machosimo, and fear running through American society is.
I have been in America when you'd be in danger for saying not only do you not support the wars, but you did not support the volunteer fighting force doing the killing.
I've had my passport stamped by (essentially) a desk clerk who had a shoulder-slung AR-pattern assault rifle in their lap, days after the Las Vegas shooting.
Years later, I went to a baseball game in an ostensibly blue state complete with military demonstrations and people openly weeping at the national anthem and the salute to the troops.
In no other place in the world that I have visited have people - especially men - felt the need to aggressively assert how non-homosexual they are through T-shirts, bumper stickers, military-inspired products, and, of course, trucks. I'm thinking of blue states here, too.
In my last trip - staying in an extremely wealthy enclave, in an extremely wealthy place - it was fear that stuck out to me. Countless signs about how many cameras were watching you. Signs about how if you took a step on somebody's property, you should fear for your life. Signs that were threatening death to people who stole packages. This is in a postcode (full of Harris/Walz signs) where the average house price was well over two million dollars. Still - an obsessive fear of people invading that enclave and taking things.
I'm very interested in American history, and American education places an outsized influence on teaching a version of that history that glosses over genocide, glorifies deeply complicated figures into simple heroes, and places wealthy men at the centre of every major event. Trying to bring nuance to this view doesn't usually end well, because people learn it from the age of 5.
All of that to say, I think America's been trending towards a fascist state for quite a long time. It just seems that many Americans are only just realising it.
Maybe it's because Americans seem less willing or financially able to travel to other countries than most other developed countries, so there is no way to compare.
Maybe it's because the candidate finally felt safe enough to openly espouse fascist policies without masking them.
But this was not some kind of electoral college trickery or the result of voter suppression. The majority of enfranchised Americans who wanted to cast a ballot cast their ballot for fascism. It takes away any pretense of that old American saying - 'this is not who we are'. For the majority, it plainly is.
However, as much as I will condemn people for voting for hate, I find it hard to condemn the circumstances into which they were born. Many, a grinding poverty that the rest of the developed world can't really fathom. A system of government so broken that any optimistic message of change just won't work. I lived in one of the richest states with one of the most 'liberal' governments, and the amount of waste in how taxes were spent may well drive me to believe that government was a fundamental evil, too.
Your system of politics and the media landscape, particularly the unregulated billionaire class, has so divided and destroyed any sense of unity in America that I can understand people voting for Trump purely for better wages. I can understand them being easily lied to, as the electorate does not have critical thinking skills. I can understand them embracing hate as a state policy, as they've been successfully taught that someone else is to blame for everything.
As I think @chocobean said in another thread, someone's womanhood, their minority status, their faith or their convictions might come into play 70% of the time. But humans need food and shelter 100% of the time. That's how your fascist leader came to power. I think he's a figurehead, and this is simply a successful, modern version of the Business Plot, but it doesn't change the reality of what's about to happen.
I hope the Americans who worked tirelessly to avoid this outcome are able to find some way through - or, hopefully, some way out. I can't imagine a future where more organising, more canvassing, trying to run a 'better' candidate through the current system, or any other non-violent solution can address the core problems of a nation built on so many systemic inequalities.
This has been building for decades. This week, the nation had a choice to choose an off ramp, and they chose fascism. If that doesn't tell people what this means for America, I don't know how to put it in plainer English.
You're right about the fear. It's baked in deep, and wealth inequality, and the insecurity that creates, turns it all the way up to 10.
I don't entirely agree with this though:
It's true that functionally that's what happened, but I think the vast majority of Trump voters were either just voting on party lines or voting for what they believed was the candidate who stood a better chance of improving their financial circumstances. They're likely wrong in that belief. But without a larger understanding of economics, it's easy to see inflation as a Biden thing and therefore something else as maybe better.
There were of course people voting for fascism, in the sense that the loud, insecure power male dynamic appealed to them, but I don't think it was the majority. I think many just aren't paying much attention. Lots of ignorance at play. Lots of misinformation.
You alluded to a lot of what I'd respond with later in your post, so I don't think we really disagree. As you say (or quote):
Indeed. Mix financial insecurity with fear and the situation is ripe for people to irrationally act against their own interests.
I'm personally trying to figure out when I should jump ship - and to where. I've moved a long distance before and started over socially. I think I could do it again in a new country.
This has also gotten become far more real for my household.
Given the geopolitical implications, New Zeland and Australia may just be far enough afield to not be as impacted by what could be coming. The probabilities are myriad creating fear and difficulty predicting where may be safest.
Should I not consider Western Europe? There’s the gamble with Russia. But I see them as too weak to make it there. Would a future US, perhaps 10 or 20 years down the road, align with Russia to bully the world? In that case the southern hemisphere is much safer.
It may not be 20 years. Trump adores Putin.
I consider Europe increasingly at risk. Risky, though? It's difficult to quantify.
Relatively speaking, I'd bank on the more liberal Southern Hemisphere countries. Anywhere else seems literally too much in the line of fire or immediately adjacent.
This is a very insightful comment, thank you for sharing this perspective.
I know so many people living there who fall under this umbrella. I am very worried for them.
I think I fully realized in 2016 that I was completely wrong about the country I grew up in. For me, Trump was so obviously bad in every possible way, I though that his supporters were kidding.
Until the most recent election I thought maybe a lot of people were just hypnotized or something, but no, at least a third of people are actually fascists and it's blindingly obvious. "Authoritarian Followers" is not a strong enough term.
Obviously I was just naive, I should have paid more attention in history class to the Trail of Tears, the concentration camps for Japanese Americans during WW2, The Tulsa Massacre. Oh yeah we barely covered most of that stuff. But TV had The Dukes of Hazard having fun adventures with the symbol of slavery on the roof of their car.
For all the damage he's done, and will continue to do, the part that bothers me the most is the blatant injustice. He should be in jail. Now he'll never ever be held accountable. And the horrible evil people around him, like Bannon and Miller and Flynn, all of whom should be in jail for their whole lives, are instead going to tell us all what to do. And we can't even get satisfaction anymore from thinking that if only Moscow Mitch would have convicted him, he wouldn't have been able to run again. BECAUSE HE ACTUALLY FUCKING WON. It isn't Mitch's fault, it isn't Trump's fault, it is 70+million of your stupid fascist countrymen who made this happen, and another 15 million of your checked out dumbass countrymen who couldn't be bothered to take an hour out of their year to do the most minor thing to prevent this.
Mundane comments about the effect of all this on culture in general:
Your part about schooling echoes my thoughts. I was raised with these values, these ideas about how the founding fathers constructed the nation and what we do every day to uphold their ideals.
It's just not the case any more, so public schools teach that it was all a farce? That corrupt or psychopathic assholes have all but destroyed those institutions with the country cheering behind them or do they skip all that to seem impartial? How do you teach the difference between what a justice, judge, or congressman should do in their position vs what our current ones do in reality? Can they even teach that as an objectively bad thing for the country and not some "difference of opinion"?
America has not been a country of fairness in my 51 years. What is moral and what happens here have long been separate. I've only seen that separation grow over my lifetime.
One third of the country is evangelical "Christian". These are people who don't embrace Trump so much as they seem to see him as a means to bring about the Rapture sooner. I do not mean this to read facetiously.
Certainly, there are the self-identifying MAGA individuals. But there are a great many more who see Trump as satisfying their desire to deconstruct a bloated bureaucracy created by decades of flawed compromises by increasingly co-opted politicians, as a means to address wealth inequality (as flawed as that sounds given he and his greatest supporters seem to share a distinctly strong attachment to all of their wealth), and, yes, someone who speaks their language.
Those who voted for him are not so much fascists as much as they are blithely ignorant or indifferent. They simply want more and better even though America's turn at steering the wheel of world affairs appears to be coming to a close. It is a reactionary instinct to bring back the "good ol' days" rather than facing the truth of the aptly named book, "Who Moved My Cheese?"
The world changed. America has failed as a nation to adapt to it. Our leadership has grown milquetoast and our government gamified in the most cynical ways.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, if alive, while both flawed individuals, would be enraged and disappointed to see what we've become. The nation is so far from either's intended state of affairs. Our leaders, back then, had a reflective and philosophical bent evident in their writings. If Jefferson were here, he'd likely say that it's clearly the beginning of another revolution and Machiavellian enough to be a MAGAt himself to solely to realize that revolution, while likely holding his nose to the ignorance driving it. Yet both men were of an intellect that they doubtlessly would have found Trump absurd and utterly unworthy in the extreme. The sadness is how little that matters now.
Our elections are no longer about qualified and not. They are glorified high school government contests: a measure of popularity and their ability to convince the electorate that they can deliver on their absurd promises. Sadly, this is particularly true of the decreasingly accurately named Republican Party.
And half of the electorate either does not understand this or simply does not care so long as they get their bread and circuses.
Now, at least on one side, we have individuals who believe Brawndo has what plants crave. And an electorate who drink it up willingly. Ow My Balls airs on every channel; we simply call it Reality TV.
The experiment is over. It is a failure. It has been for some time. This election was its epitaph for all the world to see.