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 what is 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.
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.
Last trip - staying in an extremely wealthy enclave, in an extremely wealthy place - the fear stuck out to me. Countless signs about how many cameras were watching you. Signs that were vaguely threatening death to people who stole packages. This is in a postcode where the average house price was well over two million dollars, but 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)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.