[NOTE: This was originally posted on Facebook in response to my father-in-law's comments, two days after the 2016 election of Donald Trump.]
As one of those liberal Dems who’s angry, scared, sad, and
has been physically sick to my stomach for the past 36 hours, I wanted to reply
to your post. (Sorry, it’s long – I had a lot to say as it turned out.) First
of all, thanks for deciding to post your thoughts and for expressing them in
such detail. It really helps to promote understanding and communication when we
take the time to write down how we feel and why we think what we think, rather
than just sharing a meme or clicking ‘like’ on something. I hear you when you
say you are tired of being ignored and feeling looked down on. I think the big message
in this election was largely overlooked, at least by the media and the
Democratic Party, and that’s how much working class folks feel unrepresented.
It’s still a disappointment to me that we nominated Hillary over Bernie. She
was clearly the wrong candidate with the wrong message for this moment, where his
campaign would have spoken directly to those voters. I hope that Bernie and
Trump have a long sit down face to face, discover they have more in common than
you might think, and can work together to find concrete ways to help people who
are hurting or feeling left out. For decades, the Dems have gradually drifted
away from labor unions and working class families, toward Wall Street and the
pursuit of big money donations. I hope the party learns its lesson and changes
its ways for the future.
And I can appreciate that being called racist or sexist or
stupid again and again, when you don’t think you are any of those things, can
get old real fast. I can see how you could start to dismiss it as just kneejerk
libtard noise, if every time you object to policies you are opposed to, you get
labeled racist just because those policies happen to be promoted by a black man.
That’s not fair. But here’s my point – it’s different with Trump. In my
lifetime, I have never seen a major candidate get the public endorsement of the
freakin’ KKK – out in the open for everyone to see. (And it worked! He won! That’s
crazy.) And while he didn’t drop the N word or do anything overtly racist on
the campaign trail, there’s something in his background that has brought the
worst elements of our society – white supremacist, neo-Nazi, hate filled young
men – to come out in droves to vocally and enthusiastically support him. I don’t
know the man and can’t say for sure whether he’s racist, but he seemed
perfectly OK with their support – at least until he got called out for it, and
then issued a lukewarm rejection. If he looks like a duck, acts like a duck,
etc… I’ll let you connect the dots here. As for sexism, I don’t think there’s
any argument that he’s a sexist pig. From his documented behavior, to his
language behind closed doors, to all the accusations of sexual assault, there’s
so much evidence that it’s undeniable. This is the part that guts me the most
by the way, as the father of a 4 yr old girl who’s just starting to pay
attention to the bigger world around her. Not only does she lose out on the
role model of a woman as president for the first time – and regardless of how
you feel about Hillary, that would have been a big deal for impressionable
young girls – but instead, she gets a… (wait for it…) deplorable man who
embodies some of the worst qualities imaginable as far as how to treat others. He
sets a horrific example for our kids IMO, and it saddens me to think that she
and her brother will be too young to remember the grace and dignity of the
Obamas, and that instead this crude man will be their first example of what a
President is. I hope he can change like he says he will and be ‘so Presidential’
– but I’m not holding my breath for this leopard to change his spots. The thing
is, Mike, if you support a sexist and racist (or at least, bigoted) candidate
for his economic or trade or immigration policies, but you don’t vocally criticize
the racism or the sexism part, what are people supposed to think about you?
That at best, you’re OK with it? It doesn’t bother you enough to speak out? How
is that functionally any different than actively supporting it? I have yet to
see anything on your feed, or Lisa’s for that matter, decrying any of the awful
bigotry he’s expressed. If you don’t want to be lumped in with everything he
represents, then it seems to me it’s on you to proactively separate yourself
from the parts you don’t like and call them out – and if you don’t, how can complain
about being called the same names as him? Maybe you have, I don’t know, I’m
just saying I haven’t seen it online.
As for the bitterness and anger you’re seeing, I think there
are two separate issues going on. The initial shock of losing when you fully
expected to win based on almost every indicator, that’s hard to comprehend at
first. It takes a while to accept it. Combine that with the disappointment of
so many women prepared to finally celebrate breaking the glass ceiling, only to
have it slammed back down on them, adds an extra element of sting. So I’m not
surprised that people are angry and bitter, at least in the immediate aftermath.
I expect a lot of that to die down soon - people get on with their lives, after
most elections at least. But this feels different for another reason. I’ve been on the losing side of elections many
times, but never did I feel sick to my stomach and scared afterwards.
Disappointed, of course. Worried, yes. But feeling this fearful is different. I
hope it’s overblown, like so many of the crazy fears the Republicans had about
Obama which turned out to be nothing (he never came for anyone’s guns, he wasn’t
a secret Muslim terrorist born in Kenya, he never declared martial law and
invaded Texas, etc.) I hope that the freakout over a potential nuclear war
started by a 3am tweet, or Nazi-style roundups of all suspicious looking brown
people, or hordes of armed racist men roaming the streets looking to lynch
reporters and critics of the Fascist-in-Chief – I hope it all turns out to be
equally nonsense and silly. But I should point out, Mike, that however ugly
things get with deportations or wall building or whatever, that you and I as
white men are probably gonna feel it the least. Please keep that in mind when
you see bitterness and anger and fear online, especially from Muslims or
Latinos or Sikhs or Pakistanis or anyone else who’s scared because of what he
said during the campaign, and also how his crowds responded to it. Personally I
think he’s been so inconsistent on policy that in many ways we really don’t
know what’s in store after Jan 20. Again, I hope that it’s all way overblown
and looks silly in retrospect. But I can tell you that I see and hear from a
lot of people who are horrified that a man with Trump’s character (his thin
skin, his need for revenge, his propensity to bicker with each and every
critic, his insatiable desire to always even the score and be the WINNER) has
now just been elevated to the most powerful position on the planet, with massive
military force and surveillance powers at his fingertips. He now has the
ability to lash out at basically anyone he deems to be his enemy, and if you
think he might consider you an enemy, that’s terrifying.
All that said, I am hopeful that there are opportunities to
move the ball forward for everyone under Trump. In a sort of Nixon-to-China
way, he could choose to push through an infrastructure jobs package that would
make a huge difference for millions of Americans, and it wouldn’t be shot down
by Republicans as just another Obama/Reid/Pelosi liberal waste of taxpayer
money. It would be great if he really can root out the corruption in Washington
and drain the swamp. (I’m not optimistic about this because it would take more
than term limits to get money out of politics, it would require a change of
direction in the Supreme Court to overturn Citizens United, reject the idea of
money=speech, and root out the bribery / pay to play corruption that’s so
embedded in the system - and based on his values, it seems highly unlikely he’ll
nominate a SC justice who agrees with that. But I’d love to be wrong about
this.) He is our President, for better or worse, and we need him to succeed. I’m
just worried that deep down he’s nothing more than a great con artist who sold
his supporters a bill of goods and talked his way into the job and won’t be
able to or even that interested in actually governing effectively. But I
recognize that 8 years ago, many people felt the same way about the last guy,
so I guess we’ll see.
