The last time I was devastated by politics was the Orange Crash of 2015, when the New Democratic Party reverted back to its third party status and the late Jack Layton’s work looked to have been undone. But that was purely personal. I was sad for a party that years before had symbolized change and shift in Canada’s political landscape, but I was not disillusioned about the state of my country. I did not fear for my country or for the world.
This time it’s different. A colleague said she has not been in this much of a shocked daze since 9/11. Since I was not old enough or geographically located close enough in 2001, I cannot comment on the soundness of her comparison. But I did, last night, and sporadically today, wonder how we can possibly face the children around us and tell them that Donald J. Trump will be the 45th president of America.
I have to confess that, as a Canadian, I have sadistically enjoyed the gongshow that was this election campaign. But I enjoyed this show because in the back of my mind, I trusted enough people had enough rationality. I enjoyed the show because I could not think anybody, after all the scandals that Trump got himself in, could take him seriously.
How naive I was.
Trump’s triumph is a loss for everybody, including those who voted for him. His triumph, even if he does turn out to be a decent leader, is only a win for hatred, for nationalism, for myopia. These ideals are the oppressors. Not Clinton, not Obama, and not Trump.
Never before have I felt the duty of a teacher. It might be easy for us in Canada to look at the US as a lesson to be learned. It would be easy for me to talk to my students about how terrible the election results are and most of them, having grown up in Canada, without many of the intense racial and class issues that infect the States, would understand. We know that we cannot let this sort of thing happen in our own country. But how, exactly? We can preach unity, peace, love, and all the virtues of the world but our reality is one in which both Brexit and Trump happened.
It’s easy to make fun of Trump and his supporters. Even Hillary Clinton called his supporters “deplorable” (though she rightfully regretted later). Trump supporters have been called xenophobic, homophobic, racist, sexist, and every other word that the progressives can throw out to prove their own moral high horse. But this name-calling is as empty as Trump’s promise to build a wall and make a separate and sovereign country pay for it. Both are equally loud, attention-grabbing, and golden material for late night television.
But both push the real issues aside.
I do not know what calling a homophobic person homophobic is supposed to achieve. I do not know how pointing out someone’s xenophobia is supposed to further the dialogue. We can ridicule and shame, and we have. But this, as any bully’s taunts, would only anger the victims. Yes, these supporters are victims. They are victims of an increasingly progressive and globalized world from which they are excluded. To them, the blacks and refugees and gays and transsexuals are not the marginalized. They are.
This election result shows, more than ever, the need to focus on education. As a teacher, I hope none of my students will ever be a supporter of someone like Trump (I don’t mean this as a jab). I hope none of my students will ever feel so marginalized and disempowered that they would promote segregation and hate in order to feel empowered and have their voices heard.
Education is empowerment. We teach literacy not because we want everybody to be the next Shakespeare, but rather so that everybody can communicate and debate issues and that everybody can see through empty rhetoric and political circus. Education gives us the power to judge, gives us the power to empower ourselves, even when others try to take power away from us. Education gives us the power to see more than one perspective, to see the world in its entirety and also to zone in on specific issues.
I think what hurts the most about this election is seeing just how many people who lack this education. They do not have the means to empower themselves, so they fell victim to Trumpism. They believed that Trump can empower them without seeing that, actually, his words are empty. We talk often about equity in education, how teachers should treat every student and their opinions with equal respect. We have not done so for Trump supporters, sadly. Instead, we made fun of them and tried to bury them with our own noises. Their beliefs matter though, even if we do not agree with them. Their voice matters, even if it is cacophonic.