Notes on the wake-up call
A Drumpf win was impossible because it was unimaginable. Reasonable people respond reasonably to “normal” tragedy. We place blame and mourn in a “normal” way. As Tuesday night was a supernatural tragedy, I felt a primal urge to scapegoat. We were good, we were right, but we lost anyway. Why? It was cruel and mysterious, like “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”
So, in the waking fever dream of Wednesday, I conjured some visions of the opposing voters who “did this to us”:
- Battalions of well-armed racist, sexist xenophobes marching on Washington
- Evangelicals by the pew-full who voted for that Christ-like man who quoted from “Two Corinthians”
- The mainstream GOP— whose only real policy idea of late is screaming REAGAN! into the void—that failed to thwart this tyrant before crawling into bed with him right at the buzzer
(For the record: when I thought of Libertarians, all I could picture were cherubic white dudes in bow ties. For Jill Stein voters, I drew a terrifying blank.)
These phantoms of the Drumpf coalition made me angry in a comforting way. But they arrived a bit too readily; they were too convenient. These images are just run-of-the-mill memes, the products of my particular subculture’s echo chamber. These days, memes—like hashtags, buzzwords, slogans and all manner of things deemed ‘viral’—drive our cultural conversation, for better and worse. But the right and left each now has its own media playplace; Drumpf and Clinton supporters alike could earnestly ‘assemble’—online, in private—to assure themselves of imminent victory. The left’s echo chamber ended up being far too feel-good; the right’s cacophony of hate proved prophetic.
This topic of digital insularity has been well-reported over the past months, but now, like everything, it feels much more sinister. On a personal level, I am embarrassed at how well I fit the trope. Like many well-meaning urban liberals, a steady diet of the Times, ‘data-driven’ polls, Twitter, and pep talks with like-minded friends and family anesthetized me to the seriousness of the threat and kept at arm’s length any meaningful engagement with the enraged voices on the other side of the aisle. We missed the forest for the trees and now the forest is an ash heap.
A few realizations from three days of self-examination and reading and borrowing ideas and commiserating and wondering what to do now:
1)
I hit the genetic and social jackpots. I am a straight white man in America. I have enjoyed every educational, economic and family advantage—and, independent of any of my merits, I will reap the benefits of this random stroke of luck for my whole life. I am very, very privileged.
This too often goes without saying, so it feels particularly important to say right now: nothing fundamental has changed about my life since Tuesday. My grievances, while genuinely felt, are merely symbolic compared those of every other group that feels that their basic liberties—even lives—are threatened…that is, everyone who’s not a straight white male. This election is terrifying for all of our collective futures, but—as always—the least powerful have the most to fear from a resurgent patriarchy. It is crucial for me (and I hope all of my straight white dude cohort) to acknowledge this as fact and behave accordingly, in solidarity.
2)
I have no common ground with the racist, sexist, and otherwise purely hateful people who came out of the woodwork for Drumpf, and nor will I seek it in an attempt at “healing” with them. That would be tacit normalization of such rhetoric—which is already translating into widespread behavior. It is, of course, impossible to separate the worst gutter motivations from other legitimate concerns of Drumpf’s base. Still, the whole nation can’t simply heal itself by ignoring the extreme elements that have surfaced, simply because we are supposed to “come together as Americans.” After all, this election was a referendum on what we think America is and who should be permitted to live here.
We need to reckon with these bigotries, again and again, until they’re back in their holes. Anyone claiming that “it’s all going to be alright” just “because it’s America” is deluding themselves.
3)
I do have tremendous empathy with the people who feel abandoned, in an economic sense, by the “brand” of the Democratic Party. For decades, the so-called ‘party of the people’ has been deprioritizing the concerns of working/middle class as globalization and our old friend the ‘invisible hand’ made their lives bleaker—and worse, made their futures appear out of their control. Meanwhile, our Democratic celebrities, for all of their rhetoric and ideas and intentions, have become less and less in touch with these constituencies. As the historian Thomas Frank has observed, the Obamas and Clintons are much more at home in elite enclaves like Silicon Valley and Martha’s Vineyard than in factories or union halls (what remain of them, anyway.) FDR’s party is now unrecognizable to many of the people in whose interest it was built. That needs to change immediately and radically.
4)
Democracy cannot be something we engage with just once every four years, or we will continue to lose. I failed miserably on this front and am resolved to do much more. A commitment to giving whatever we can give—time, money, talents, conversations, whatever—must become a much bigger part of “mainstream” liberal life (at least what I know of it) than it is right now.
Some ideas:
Become a member of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Become a member of Planned Parenthood.
Become a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples.
Become a member of 350.org to fight for our imperiled planet.
Become a member of any group fighting for justice and equality in your communities.
