I woke up on Tuesday morning, Election Day, with a very clear idea of what America was and what Americans stood for. We may have our problems, we may have our divisions, but on the whole, I knew where my country stood. For the most part, we were a fundamentally good, moral country that would do the right thing in the end. We were a country that respects women, that welcomes outsiders with open arms, and a country that stands as a beacon, an ideal, for the world.
That was Tuesday.
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I woke up on Wednesday, the day after Election Day, with none of that conviction.
On November 8th, 2016, the United States of America elevated Donald J. Trump to the White House, with majorities in both the Electoral College and the popular vote (though Clinton may actually still win the popular vote), shocking journalists, politicians, strategists, and the markets. This is a man who has bragged about sexual assault and spoken about countless women in the vilest possible terms, called Mexicans rapists and murderers, mocked the disabled, and insinuated that Muslim-Americans were somehow less American than their white counterparts.
This man, the next President of the United States, has spent the past year and a half running a campaign of thinly veiled racism, stoking the fires of white anger and resentment towards a country that has become more and more diverse and accepting. His candidacy and the ideals on which it stands were endorsed by white nationalists and racists across the whole country.
But America voted for him. The people of America, from coast to coast, overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump to be the next Commander in Cheif.
Trump’s election was a stunning rebuke of political normalcy, a pushback against elites and institutions, but also a slap in the face to every non-white voter in this country. Probably the best description of last night came from CNN’s Van Jones, speaking at around 2am. He said that the election of Trump was a “whitelash against a changing country.” Too many Americans have seen their economic opportunity shrink over the past decade, with a disappearing blue-collar road to the middle class and an economy that seems stacked against them. For many white, non-college educated people this is the fault of the “others,” namely blacks and Hispanics. They lashed out against a changing world, a world that appears increasingly out of their reach, and Donald Trump provided the perfect conduit for that backlash.
I am a white Christian man, so I do not personally feel the fear, the confusion, and the sadness that some are feeling today, but I can understand where those emotions come from. Women, Muslims, LGBTQ individuals, Hispanics, the disabled, they have all been insulted in the basest of ways by the man who is going to lead this country. These men and women now look to the Presidency and see someone who looks down on them, who insults them, who threatens them. To see so many Americans vote for someone who views them as lesser has to be a truly heartbreaking experience. America voted not just for Trump, but against the basic humanity of so many of their fellow citizens.
The policy implications of tonight will no doubt be staggering. Donald Trump controls the White House and has Republican majorities in the House and the Senate. We can almost assuredly expect a repeal of Obamacare, leaving hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans without health insurance. This isn’t just a policy change, this may literally be a matter of life or death for some.
The progress that we have made in the past decade to reduce the effects of climate change may be completely reversed, not just in the US but abroad as the US abandons the Paris Accords. Donald Trump will have the chance to appoint justices to the Supreme Court, justices who may have the opportunity to dismantle protections for LGBTQ Americans, threaten a woman’s right to choose, decimate voting rights, and fail to act on the corrupting influence of money in politics.
Trump’s tax plan looks to balloon the federal deficit, requiring cuts to programs that poor and middle-class Americans rely on just to get by, ranging from Medicare to food stamps. Trump will almost certainly look to roll back some of Obama’s temporary immigration protections and launch deportations the likes of which America has never seen.
Despite the serious ramifications of Trump’s election, however, it is important to remember that this is America and that we are greater than any one man. The Presidency is greater than any one man. So when I see my friends on twitter saying things like #notmypresident, that saddens me. Far too many on the right said similar things about President Obama, that he wasn’t their President, that he was somehow lesser. We have an opportunity to show that we are better than that, that we can move beyond this. That isn’t saying that we should blindly follow President Trump down his dangerous and divisive path, but at the same time there needs to be some sort of acceptance that he did win, and this is a democracy. It falls on those who still oppose Trump, on both sides of the aisle, to work together, to compromise, and to try to heal the wounds that are causing so much pain to so many Americans. I may not want to see Donald Trump’s agenda succeed, but he is still our President. George H.W. Bush put it best in a letter to his successor, Bill Clinton when he said: “your success is the countries success.”
I woke up on Election Day morning confident that Hillary Clinton would win the Presidency. Not because she was eminently qualified for the position (she is) or because she ran a strong campaign (still true) or because I believed that America was finally ready to shatter the highest, hardest glass ceiling in the land. No, I believed that Hillary Clinton would win because I was confident that Americans were better than this. I believed that we would not elect a xenophobic, racist, misogynistic, anti-intellectual, dangerous demagogue to the Presidency. I believed that America was better than that and that Americans cared too much about their fellow citizens to elect such a man.
I hoped to spend the night of Election Day celebrating with my friends as we watched the first African-American President of the United States, a man of poise and grace, congratulate the woman who would succeed him and become the first female President of the United States. I hoped to tell my children about this moment, showing them that America is a land of opportunity and that we welcome and embrace all. Instead, I held friends as they sobbed, asking how America could do this, not just to them but to all women. I spoke to immigrants who said that this is not the America they wanted to move to, that they no longer feel welcome here. I had Muslim friends reach out to me terrified, asking “what should I do?” I spoke to parents who were trying to explain to their children how a bully and a buffoon was now going to be the President. What should have been a historic night, a night for unity and healing, became a night of pain, tears, and fear.
Everyone I spoke to said one thing, something that many in America are asking themselves this morning: “I thought we were better than this.”
Apparently, we aren’t. But that doesn’t mean this is over.
Now comes the real test: where do we go from here?
