I’ve been scared to write this article for a long time, I’ve actually been scared to tell this idea to anybody except my editor, and even then with lots of caveats and explanations, because I think there’s a good chance it could ruin my life. It could turn everyone I love and respect against me and turn the hordes of well-intentioned but mean people upon me. It scares me to use my voice to say what I mean, but why else would I have been gifted such a brilliant voice if not to speak?
You’ll notice how I’ve largely avoided directly dealing with the fat orange elephant in the room thus far. Well here we go.
I think the election of Donald Trump is one of the best things that could have happened to America.
Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god. I can’t do this, this is too dangerous.
No. I can do this.
I think America would be in a much worse state in the long term if Hillary Clinton had won the election. Sexual assault we continue to get ignored or assumed as par for course, casual racism towards and the murders of black Americans would continue largely unchecked and without serious social examination, the growing class divide would have reached a point of peak social disenfranchisment without recourse or a voice for those left behind, and the border would continue on as the graveyard and prison camp of so many seeking only access to opportunity and a safe life for their children.
It’s done. I said it. Now comes the complicated and muddy explanation of why, now comes the task of understanding, and I don’t think I’m a good enough writer to do it. That’s why I’m scared to write this, because I deeply worry that I will be maligned, painted in a light I never intended and thrown in the trash heap with that basket of deplorables. Well, here we go.
I have known since I became aware about politics, back in the last year of middle school, that America has some deep sins it cannot face and pretends to ignore. Racist to the point of common-practice discrimination, casually sexist in a way that constantly puts down the “fairer” sex, and classist in a way that speaks to a deep belief in a rigid social order with very few avenues of upward mobility.
Yet when taken to task over any of these grave attacks on the social fabric of all our threads, the response has always been deny deny deny.
Of course this country is not racist, we cured racism in the 1960’s with the passage of the various pieces of civil rights legislation and the elevation of MLK to the national pantheon of saints. Yes there is a racist history, but we fixed it, so quit complaining and move on. How dare you call me a racist. Now sure, more blacks are in jail and suffer at exponentially higher rates the abuses of power by law enforcement, but that’s on them not us. Many whites honestly think how that man at the Mayor Pete event seen here feels, when he says “Just tell the black people to stop committing crime and doing drugs.” America isn’t racist, the black community just has a problem with crime and drugs, so the law enforcement’s reaction is a natural outcome of that. Now any rational thinking person can immediately see the giant, gaping holes in that argument, the complete lunacy of such blanket statements that disregard contrary evidence or facts, but we are not naturally rational beings. We must train ourselves how to think, and many of us are denied that opportunity (which I will discuss a bit later when we get into the discussion on class). So American racism has been allowed to grow largely unabated without any healthy discussion on its presence and effects on American society, because we’ve made the word “racist” so incredibly toxic that it cannot even be spoken. A white person being called a racist is the closest they shall ever feel to being called a nigger. America’s clearly racist, but the national conversation has been so effectively controlled by the white power-elite that from the post-civil rights period onwards, they’ve been able to gaslight the common white individual into believing it is not so, so that when they hear black people demanding justice and fair treatment all they see is someone looking for a handout and a free leg up from the government that they themselves never received. The fact that we cannot even talk about racism is the trump card of the white nationalist movement, for it denies even the right to discussion.
How dare you say I am sexist, I love my mother and my wife, I would die for them and believe I should protect them with my life from the harsh realities of the world. Beneath this belief lies the perceived truth that women are creatures in need of our protection, and only men can duly protect them. This creates a permanent state of victimhood for women, they are relegated to potential victims or realized victims, and scorned at when trying to speak for themselves. How casually men bring up that women are the physically weaker sex, as if that matters. Sure, they are generally speaking weaker than men, but that does not mean they are less fit or less able to learn how to fight and defend themselves, as these are technical skills that only build upon the body, and it’s the technical training that counts. Just because men have more potential for physical strength, doesn’t mean they are guaranteed it. And even if it was true, so what? We are long passed the days of “might is right”, so why should this matter at all? Do I need to be concerned about physical assault every time I enter the common sphere? Well, men are a bit rapey without indication of change, so apparently I do, but let’s worry about protecting the women and not changing the habits and perceptions of men. We all know college campuses are endemic pits of rape and abuse, with so many women facing sexual asssault and battery, but where’s the effort to change it? It’s about as realized as the efforts to change our nation’s racism, by having academic and intellectual discussions about it, and modifying the behaviors of the victims rather than the abusers, but by-and-large leaving it as a shameful secret to be hushed up and ignored.
This is the most free country on Earth where any person can come and make a name for themselves, any serf can become a king in America, for this is the land of opportunity. We’ve long known this to be pretty painting that speaks little to the realities of American life. Social mobility in America in modern times is no greater than most other first world countries on Earth, if not slightly (ok a lot) worse. Sure there are avenues to success, but only if you can overcome all the barriers that stand in the way. Even without the immense barriers of race and sex, there still exists a wall representing access to resources and knowledge. Steinbeck has a famous quote saying something along the lines of “Socialism will never take off in America, because every poor man here thinks they’ll one day be rich.” If I have a good idea, if I do well in life and work diligently, I shall reap the rewards. This is the American myth. With hard work comes the gain. This creates the illusion that those that have deserve what they have through their efforts, or the efforts of their parent or ancestor, while those that have-not deserve nothing because they do not put in the required effort. If they did, they would not be poor. Yet anyone who’s ever been poor knows that it is nothing but work, constant, tireless work that consumes all one’s time and mental energies. This is a deeply pernicious belief, because it turns us all inward when it comes time to blame.
With the active dismantling of the American education system, we strip away the tools that have been established through centuries of bloodshed that guarantee the ability to improve one’s lot. We don’t guarantee a firm foundation in mathematics, which leads us into easy manipulation by financial institutions and the trappings of commercialism. We abandon the necessary use of critical thinking so that we do not question what we are given, or the state of society, or most importantly our own beliefs and where they come from. We are ignorant of history, so do not fully realize the constant struggle to gain each and every one of our rights that we take for granted and casually return back to those from who we first fought to gain them. We are trained to follow instructions, but never to question why those instructions are given, and punished if we do. Any student in a public school in America today knows the feeling of authoritarianism, because it’s the guiding belief of our education’s administration.
The gaslighting of white America was done through the malappropriation of both the religious moral language and the founding American principles, so to challenge them is to challenge American and God itself. In order to defend from these accusing assaults of racism, sexism, classism, and the general social disenfranchisement, we’ve armed the nation to the teeth with personal guns, allowing the perpetuation of domestic terrorism that has reigned in America forever, coming to the fore in the Jim Crow south and never really leaving. It does not need to be state sanctioned terrorism, just state-ignored. To attempt to begin the discussion on these grave American sins is to risk falling victim to the violence that upholds them, regardless of one’s position or power. How many have been gunned down in the streets for speaking up?
Cue Donald Trump.
All the great American sins wrapped up in one person without shame. A man whose political legacy involves paying for a few ads in the New York Times every 5-10 years about his issue of the day, and a sustained push about the illegitimacy of Obama’s birth. Everything he has ever done in American politics seems basically stupid, but it works because the country is basically stupid. Racism, sexism, classism, they’re all evil clearly, all bad for the American evolution, but they’re also incredibly short-sighted and dumb. They actively harm our shared prosperity and hamper the ability to reach American potential in favor of individual growth and power in the hands of the limited few. But they’re incredibly effective. They’re the tools used by certain politicians for leveraging votes. By-and-large and with the heaviest hand, they’ve been the tools used by the American right, but the left is guilty of the same sins, the left has benefitted from leaning on these plights too, and not advocating for the level of change required to remove them from everyday life. The fact that being black all but guarantees that you’ll vote for the Democratic Party means black Americans do not have true political representation outside of the primaries, and the party does not want to make any effort to change this.
Donald Trump’s 2016 candidacy placed all its bets on the fact that these sins run so deep in America that he could win the election off of them. He also bet that Americans were sick of their votes being taken for granted. Hillary Clinton, as EVERYONE knew, was one of the most despised politicians in America. The victim of nearly a quarter century’s campaign of personal attacks, rumor mongering, and fear-baiting, she more than anyone else embodied that which should be feared, according to right. I firmly believe that if she had won the election, violence would soar to unimaginable levels in this country, far in excess of what we’ve seen under Trump. Donald Trump represents the id of the American right, and we’re used to our politicians alternating from the ego and the super-ego, which is why so many of us find him so utterly appalling. He’s saying what is not supposed to be said, giving voice to the unspoken but understood aspects of American life.
It shocked me when I first moved to this country how people discussed Mexicans and immigrants from anywhere south of the Rio Grande. The casual and totally allowed discrimination against these people was widespread and common, an easy joke and common ground based on the universal understanding that they were other and less American because of their skin and their language. It shocks me now when I think back on it, but came to seem normal to me at the time, the utter prevalence of extremely racist jokes against blacks, immigrants, and anyone else, to the point that “racist jokes” became a category wholly unto themselves in grade-school where everyone could name dozens. Every American school child from 3rd grade on could, only as we got older and heard that we were not supposed to say those things did we begin to shut up. Yet where did we hear those jokes to begin with, if not our family and community?
With the election and presidency of Donald Trump, these sins can no longer be denied. A week before the election we heard him say that you just grab women by the pussy, and by-and-large nobody cared. Oh, we all pretended to care, we kicked up a fuss and a storm and made sure that anyone around us knew that we did not condone or believe such horrible words, but we’d heard them all before. Nobody was shocked at the content, they were just shocked to hear it come out the mouth of a presidential candidate. We are used to them lying to us about what saints they really are, despite the fact they’ve all acted as stewards to this clearly broken system.
Would Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the rest of “The Squad” have gotten elected if Trump had not? Would the #metoo movement have blossomed across the globe if the leader of the free world was not a world-renowned rapist? Would the left have rediscovered its progressive voice, advocating for the working-class again after twenty years ignoring them, without the election of an uber rich man by that ignored working-class and the passing of those tax cuts? I firmly believe no to all of the above. Politics would have continued as normal, and the growing white resentment would continue to be ignored, which would have ended in serious use of domestic terrorism. Look at how antagonistically so many in the country responded to the election of Barack Obama, and just imagine how it would have fared under Clinton #2. Instead, Trump won. As a direct response to Trump’s winning, we have begun a serious discussion on race, class, and gender 30 years after Angela Davis wrote the book, and only because now we have no other choice. Only now does the national conversation begin finally to listen to the voices that we’ve long tried to ignore. Could it possibly have happened otherwise?
With his latest tweet controversy, we’ve only finally all admitted definitively what decades of evidence had otherwise told us: Trump uses racism to steer the conversation, or in shorthand, Trump is a racist. We don’t have time to talk about the border crisis, one started under Bush and ramped up under Obama, which ruled the news last week, because this week we’re talking about “go back to your own country”, that oh-so familiar refrain. “Go back to Africa” has been hurled at every “complaining” black person in America since time immemorial. What right do you have to complain when you live in the greatest country on God’s Earth? Only when it comes out of the lips of a clearly evil man do we hear how clearly evil the words sound. Only when he holds a rally after the controversy, and we hear en masse the chanting of his white crowds crying “SEND HER HOME, SEND HER HOME” do we realize the prevalence of this evil still staining our society largely regardless of geographic bounds.
I don’t think we would be reckoning with these national demons had we not elected the Lord of Darkness himself. They are far too touchy of topics and we’ve grown far too sensitive, generally speaking, and weak to hearing these harsh truths. We’ve grown unable to rise to the occasion unless we have no other choice, and now, with Trump, we don’t. In the same way Hitler’s ascension guaranteed the establishment of the liberal international order with which we’d previously only flirted, Trump will bring about the American renaissance we’ve long been waiting for and promised. Hitler confirmed America’s commitment to the global order and the world, and Trump now confirms America’s commitment to itself and its people. Our politics reveal what we’re willing to put up with, and by electing Donald Trump, the United States revealed that it was still willing to put up with quite a lot. Through great pain we experience great growth. Here’s hoping these are the last days of pain, but I’m a sceptic, long trained to keep my optimism in check. Yet life is short, and history is long, and I do firmly agree with King that the arc of the universe bends towards justice.
I naturally find Trump reprehensible, dangerous, an enemy of all the heroes who have died in the name of liberty, justice, and truth throughout time, but sometimes it is only evil that gets us to act. When faced with self-indulgence or wide-spread social empowerment, our voting records show that we skew heavily towards self-indulgence and ignorance to the deeper issues that truly drive mankind. Only when faced with the end-result of that self-indulgent path do we begin to realize the harm it will cause. Only when we have no other choice do we reveal ourselves deep down to be a nation of opportunity and righteousness. Even then, only in small bursts, and even then with continued exclusion. Perhaps in Trump we shall find our redemption, perhaps only in times of evil can we see what is good. Too long has our nation forgotten or ignored it, too long have we allowed evil a comfortable seat at the table. Perhaps only now can we begin to finally give it the boot.