After polls closed Tuesday night, millions turned on their phones, clustered around the TV, mostly got drunk, and waited. Those who followed the election went to bed mostly confident in what they thought would be the outcome. Polls, experts and figures all suggested that now we would have the first female U.S. President.
Because this made sense. Because Donald Trump, the self-professed sexual assaulter and “dangerous part-time clown” who hopes to build a wall around the Mexican border, ‘nuke’ ISIS and ban Muslims from entering the country, was clearly a narcotic narcissist who, according to common sense, was utterly unsuitable to lead the free world.
We hoped that, not just in an electoral context, he would be humiliated. He would stand on stage and be forced to make a concession speech to the woman who he belligerently degraded for being just so. Pointing to her grossly uncontrollable periods, hormonal outbursts and elusive witch-like accrual of secret emails, his “locker room” talk was embarrassing and humiliating, and we all expected he’d somehow get at least a spoonful of his own medicine.
But instead of this cathartic national awakening, it was the media who got humiliated. As the results came in, it soon became obvious that the palpable, anarchic anger of the American people was not going to follow the predictions and forecasts of national news networks, liberals and lefties who attempted to pigeonhole this election as a ‘close-call’.
After Obama’s two-term presidency, we thought traditional American conservatism, with its prioritization of the white radical identity, was out. His position as the first black president made America seem socially progressive.
But on Tuesday, white voters, often dismissed as racist misogynists going extinct, asserted themselves. Trump gave expression to this cohort’s loss of status. While many argue Trump’s success was a product of anti-establishment voting or a result of the secretive sense of duplicitous scandal that branded Clinton’s campaign, something went terribly wrong on Election Night. But it doesn’t seem to be so simple as to correlate Trump’s success with these simple conclusions.
Maybe America is just an unknowable. But I feel like that’s almost an excuse. Trump’s election goes beyond Brexit, but now all of us are going in the same direction. Petty resentments, streams of madness and unearthed prejudices define contemporary politics. Rather than being contained within the battleground of the EU, Donald Trump’s rule will affect everything we do – trade, rights, war, culture, history.
Yesterday, people woke up to the same paralyzing sense of hollow despair. Shock, denial, pain, guilt, anger amalgamated into a dazed despondency. But eventually, a tragic acceptance of this dystopic world is the only option we have. But this seems too soon; now, thousands of Americans take to the streets, shouting the slogan, “Not my President.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2016/nov/09/donald-trump-us-election-2016-live-reactio
Because we can’t pretend like we aren’t angry, hurt or afraid. We all have the right to feel so, for now at least. The only way forward from here is try and make the world less of the place the majority want it to be. In the words of Barack Obama, elections, like arguments, have been lost before. But undeniably, for decades, the world has never looked so bleak.
The only consolation I can somewhat muster for now is that the optimists and disheartened alike won’t stop trying to make the world a little bit less hideous. But if they need time to grieve, I think it’s only right that we let them.