The first time Donald Trump was elected was a painful shock to many of us. The reason was hard to figure out at first, but ultimately it came down to the fact that we’d been lying to ourselves about what America represented, what it wants, and who it is. Don’t get me wrong, every person is different, but nations tend to reflect the majority will of the people who reside in them. Even in dictatorships, the majority will tends to be in favor of the regime that governs and when that stops being the case, the nature of the country changes. That’s what revolution is, a change in the character of a nation, of a people. So, the first Trump presidency was a shock to many of us because over the course of the campaign and then the presidency we were forced to come to terms with the fact that America as we thought of it was a delusion of the minority.
There was some hope that the stark picture painted by Trump and his followers would change some hearts and minds, wake people up to the fact that America was on a road that leads to nowhere good – but somehow that didn’t happen. The horror of the first Trump presidency opened the door to broad sweeping change and made it possible for a new mandate to be placed on the country. The Democratic Party took this opportunity to install a former vice-president, an old white man, a party loyalist. I liked Biden as vice-president. I would have happily voted for him in 2016, but by 2020, it was only because I was given no other choice other than Trump.
Biden’s time in office was no departure from the politics that got Trump elected in the first place. When he decided to run a second time, I knew that Trump would win again. There were moments of hope when he stepped aside and his Vice President Kamala Harris moved on to the ticket, but she played the same party loyalist role as Biden would have. There was no distinct flavor of a Harris administration, it would have simply felt like more lackluster politics as usual from the Clinton, Obama, Biden party. People needed a change and the Democrats, as they always do, put more importance on maintaining the power of the party than on creating a better America for everyone – which would require a radical rethinking of everything.
Trump, unfortunately, had no compunction about offering that. He abandoned the Republican Party, smashed it, and then rebuilt it how he wanted it to be. He offered the chance to change everything that is wrong with America to everyone who voted for him. The tragic part of that is that the vision he offers isn’t one that makes changes in the way that many of the deepest thinkers would like to see. Trump offers a kind of unrestrained land rush, winner take all, dog eat dog, dystopian world where the winners are allowed to crush the skulls of the losers. It’s exactly the fantasy that most American’s feed on in their sports tribe merch while they play a game of winner take all with housing, the environment, education, and everything else. If you ask most Americans if they drive better than average, something like 90% of them will say yes. It’s the same with everything else. I’m not sure what to call that. Dangerous overconfidence might be one term. Stupidity is certainly another.
I’m not surprised at Trump’s victory. I expected it. I would never have voted for him but this time, I didn’t bother voting at all. It was clear he would win. It became especially clear when the richest Americans all began making concessions towards a Trump administration even while the race was supposedly on. Zuckerberg decided to become apolitical. Musk went on the campaign trail for Trump. Ellison was backing him all along. Bezos stopped his newspaper, the Washington Post from doing an editorial endorsement of Harris. The list goes on. They all knew he was going to win even while naive Democrat voters started (again) speaking glibly about the victory they were sure was going to be theirs. It’s not just Republicans who think they drive better than average.
It’s not a painful shock to see Trump elected again. It’s painful but not shocking because, frankly, America has shown the world exactly what it is for most of its history. There have been some amazing moments of astounding enlightenment, but they have been brief. Mostly America has been a country built on the backs of slavery and the corpses of indigenous people. It has been a country of unbridled colonialism, predatory capitalism, and monopolistic hegemony. America is a country that has taken what it wants and given what it had to in order to keep surviving. But those moments of enlightenment – they count, they shine, they in some sense light up the world. The Declaration of Independence, The Emancipation Proclamation, The Civil Rights Movement, the ramp up of industrialization and production to help the world defeat Nazism, the Apollo program, public libraries and free universal education – the list goes on. There is so much that Americans have to be proud of.
The sad truth, however, is that if America were an individual and she crossed the river styx and her deeds were measured to determine whether she should go to heaven or hell – the scale would certainly fall on the side of genocide, greed, exploitation, torture, heartlessness. The atrocities and sins of America far outweigh her contributions to the betterment of man. And so, now, here we are – entering a dark period. A period that many are ecstatic about – just as they were ecstatic about tobacco plantations, manifest destiny, dropping nuclear bombs on Japan, and fighting colonialist wars in countries where the people only wanted a chance to eat and work and raise their children in peace. This is the same America that existed at all those times. It’s the same America it has always been.
Maybe this is a chance for something new to emerge. Not America, not Democrat, Not Republican. Maybe this is the opportunity for something to emerge that doesn’t have to beg forgiveness for the sins of the fathers. Maybe this is a moment when seeds that have long been dormant can awaken and begin to grow.
Am I sad that America chose this road? Yes. Am I excited about the future? Yes and terrified of it as well.
It might be time to turn around and walk in a different direction. Leave the past glories behind. Start from the now. Start from the here. That flag, that anthem, that system of governance. They are not mine. They never have been. I was fooling myself to ever think they were. So many of us were. Turn around, walk away, define a new way and leave the old behind. This is what needs to be done. The old symbols, the old words, the old names – it’s time to let them go and move on to something new and not so stained and tattered with blood.