Well, what a wild ride.
I knew last night's election would be close, or at least much closer than the polls and the pundits were predicting. As I've mentioned elsewhere, there were a lot of indicators that Trump had much more support than was being reflected in the polls leading up to Election Day. There were traditionally-Democratic manufacturing workers in the Rust Belt who finally saw in Trump a candidate speaking out against trade agreements that have caused them and their families to suffer. There were young people still desperately trying to break into a stagnant workforce that blamed Obama for their troubles, and who were not keen to give his successor the benefit of the doubt. There were women who didn't want to see the momentous opportunity for America's first female President squandered on someone they viewed as corrupt and unsuited to the office. Above all, there were people who rightly viewed Clinton as the status quo candidate, and who valued change, any change, more than stability.
The common thread of these groups is that they've existed since the beginning of the campaign cycle, and their minds had been settled on a Trump vote long before they were in the voting booth. Yet, too, many of these people are not racists. Many of these people are not sexists. Many of these people, despite voting for Trump, do not themselves endorse the hateful, bigoted messages he's been espousing since the dawn of his campaign. Confronted with the disparity between their beliefs and the greatly-condemned social message of the man for whom they nevertheless intended to vote, these people hid. Confronted with the acrimony this most divisive of elections fostered between its opponents, in many cases these people were mum about their true political intentions.
The pundits' comparisons between last night's results and those of the Brexit referendum are plentiful, yet they are also apt. Too often when an easy talking point is repeated ad nauseam, that parroting is an indication that a bigger picture is being missed. In this case, however, I do not believe this to be true. Yesterday's elections bear not a mere surface resemblance to Brexit, as elections the analysts failed spectacularly in calling. Rather, the bigger pictures, too, reflect each other. In each case, the side seen likely to lose was plagued with accusations of bigotry and xenophobia. In each case, that side fingered political elites as the cause of economic and social turmoil. In each case, an assumption was made by stakeholders that cooler heads would prevail. Yet in the end, in each case, the presumed losers won because the hope of the political and economic messages they espoused resonated louder with voters than the fear of the hatred and bigotry they also espoused.
Thrash and Shokkou have expressed a belief that Republican victories last night were the result of leftist elitism. Make no mistake, however: the bane of the Democrats last night was not leftist elitism, it was an elitism of the center. Hillary Clinton was not a left-wing candidate. She was not a progressive candidate. She was a status quo candidate first, and only. She and the Democratic Party relied not on a message of hope, not on a message of progress or change, for victory. She relied instead on not being Donald Trump, on the belief that she didn't need to expand her base to win the presidency, because Donald Trump would expand her base for her. She gambled on centrism and moderatism, and she lost. The Democratic Party gambled on her centrism and moderatism over a truly progressive, truly left-wing candidate, and they lost.
Thrash has further expressed an idea that people like Jorost, disheartened though they are by the election's results, might be pleasantly surprised by a Trump presidency, that, to quote Thrash, 'all the people who deserve it' will be better-off for it. Now, I don't believe Trump's substantive economic policies, such as there are, will be positive for American workers or for the American economy. Yet I am willing to admit that there is a possibility, however slim, that people like Jorost will indeed be pleasantly surprised, much in the same way that I feel people like Thrash might be pleasantly surprised by the effects of democratic socialism. As Jorost expressed in response, however, words like 'deserve' are terribly frightening ones to be hearing.
Let's talk about what people deserve, shall we? Political activists deserve to be able to protest at their opponents' events without being beaten and abused. Muslim Americans deserve to be able to live their lives without being harassed, intimidated, or frightened. Illegal immigrants deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, not bartered over like cattle in legislative negotiations. Transgender people deserve to be able to use public restrooms without fear of being harrassed, assaulted, or prosecuted. Queer people deserve to be able to live and marry and adopt children without politicians passing judgment on their moral capability to do so. Women deserve to be treated as human beings with agency, not as sexual objects to be groped or to fulfill the fantasies of powerful men. African Americans deserve to be able to walk down a city street without being stopped by the police, or shot at for reaching into their pockets.
Trump's presidency may very well be pleasantly surprising to some of his opponents. It may very well be a net positive for Thrash and Shokkou, and even for Jorost and King Biscuit. Every regime has its winners. It's not for any of you that I fear, though. Please don't misunderstand me: I don't envy any of you one bit; there's not incentive enough in the world to make me want to be in your shoes. All told, however, you're well-positioned to weather whatever is brought by the coming storm.
No, it is not for you I fear. I fear for all the people Trump, and more importantly Trump's supporters, have lashed out against throughout the past year. I fear for HordeLorde and other trans people who now have to watch what little support they've been afforded by the federal government in the recent struggles for their civil rights disappear. I fear for Locke's family, Arab-Americans whose lives have undoubtedly already been affected by Trump's race-baiting, and who will only be put in more danger as his message of intolerance becomes the mainstream. I fear for Dua, formerly of LoSS, a Muslim-American woman who yesterday went out and voted, and today has to live with the fear that in a matter of months, the most vitriolic Islamophobe to ever curse the American ballot will be her president. I fear for Sentinal, formerly of TIO, a second-generation immigrant and a queer woman to boot, who now looks upon the country her parents came to for its message of hope and sees foremost the half of that country that valued their own comfort over her human dignity, and the human dignity of all those whom Trump's campaign turned into scapegoats and straw men.
Because in the end, it doesn't matter why you voted for Trump. It doesn't matter if you hate Muslims or Latinos, if you view women as either sex objects or pigs. It doesn't matter if it was Trump's economic message, or his antiestablishment message, or his social message that resonated with you, that swayed your vote. You didn't vote for some of Donald Trump's rhetoric; your caveats to his platform don't count. Trump's presidency, whatever it does for you, will do far more to hurt others, and you have to own that. You have to own all of what you voted for. You don't have to like it, but that's your responsibility now.
The people Trump will hurt, the people Trump campaigned on a promise of hurting, the people Trump's campaign has already hurt: these people aren't just numbers. They're people like HordeLorde, like Locke, like Dua, like Sentinal. People you know, people you've interacted with. They're your neighbors, your coworkers, your children's teachers, your parents' or grandparents' caretakers. They're people who now fear for their lives. Not just because Trump won, but because his message won. President Trump may not attack and kill Muslim-Americans; his supporters have and will. President Trump may not vandalize queer and trans people's property, his supporters have and will.
The message, more than the man, terrifies me. The message, more than the man, won last night's election.