Like many of you, I have spent the last 48-hours oscillating through a barrage of intense emotions, posing deeply philosophical questions internally and externally to my peers and loved ones.
“What does this mean for the country?” - “How did we get here?” - “Should we be afraid?”
We have spent the last 12-months, the last two years for some of the country, bearing witness to the most divisive, hate-fueled, and vitriolic campaigns in modernity. Prior to the early morning of Wednesday, you would have been hard pressed to find someone who truly believed a then nominee Trump would soon hold the office of the most powerful leader in the free world - how could we all have gotten it so wrong?
Perhaps the most poignant explanation I have heard can illuminate: the Nate Silvers of the world made one huge mistake. This election could not be modeled after logic. It was, and is, about affect. People voted how they felt - about the country, about the campaigns, and about the future. This provides some truth to why the pollsters may have been wrong, but it does not elucidate the more substantive issues undergirding that affect - both pre- and post-election. Many over the coming months and years will explore these implications, and we must hope that they can provide frameworks for what an equally affective response should look like.
These analyses however, will primarily be used to improve the campaigns of the future, not to bolster the connection of politicians to the American people. If this is the case, as I suspect, then we will truly miss the point. That affect has driven the upset in the current race should throw out previously lauded methodologies. We should rather seek to understand real-world people, and how they feel, for the sake of making this country a better place - one where more than 49% of the population at any given time can feel heard and supported.
How can we start on that journey of intra-spection and inter-spection? First, we can begin exploring our own affects, our own truths, and their ideological and practical underpinnings. Second, as there is power in naming those things that are happening in real time in this post-election America. 48-hours after the fact, I am ready to do just that. In doing so, I challenge each of you to engage in similar activities at a pace and level that you are willing and able to do.
Grief Is Real
The calls for unity have been unabashedly extreme and persistent since one day after the election. While they likely come from a place seeking to move forward and persevere through the coming years, they are tone-deaf to the reality of half of the country. Personally, I was stricken with grief so real that I was physically sick and mentally tormented most of the day post-election night. My significant and I had spent money, time, and our talent in supporting a candidate that we felt espoused the political stance most similar to our own. In and of itself, the loss was not what caused the severe trauma - it was the shattering of the assumption that our country had moved past a majority of its citizen’s endorsing bigotry, racism, sexism, classism, and xenophobia. While we knew in our hearts that all of these -isms still were alive and well in the United States, we had wrongly assumed they were a minority (sometimes over, sometimes invisible). When that is coupled with the political loss, there is much to grieve. Calling for unity, in the face of what for months had been described as an immediate threat to our way of living as well as to the lives of millions of disenfranchised individuals of various communities, is not only tone deaf - it is unrealistic. We grieve for the loss of hopeful ideals, perceived safety and comfort, and the very physical lives of many of our friends. You would not demand a rapid progression to acceptance from someone who just lost a loved one, was fired from a job, or otherwise lost something invaluable to them. You should not do so here either.
Fear is Justified
The dissolution of a public institution of healthcare; the threat of deportation; the de-funding of critical social programs; the threat of economic collapse; the threat of increase geo-political tensions; the repeal of basic human rights; the challenging of the humanity of millions. All of these reasons (and more) are justifiable reasons to be afraid of what the Trump presidency, a republican controlled congress, and a more than likely conservative Supreme Court, might mean. Assuming that President-Elect Trump and his party will not honor their campaign promises and the party platform, while not naive (many political promises are never realized), is not a justification for a lack of fear. When millions come to rely on the relative safety and liberty afforded to them - and rightly so in this Democracy - the threat of it being taken away is terrifying.
Millennials
A majority of young voters (18-25), at least according to a recent map released by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network voted in a much different way than the larger American constituency. This provides hope that our value systems as a country are drifting away from that of the -isms described early, and more towards a sense of solidarity with all individuals in this country, regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender expression, or other identities. It should be no surprise given these trends, that colleges and universities across the country have been hubs of intense emotion over the last two days. Many have expressed that the faculty and administration among these institutions postponing exams and other assignments is enabling of a “too sensitive politically correct” culture. Those same individuals undoubtedly do not understand the first two points above, and exist within a bubble that lacks the diversity of many of the colleges and universities in the United States. If grief and fear is justified, and exists at higher levels among voting college students, then faculty and administrators should be applauded for not being tone-deaf to the needs of students. At the University of Pennsylvania, where I attend as a Master of Social Work Candidate, I have had the opportunity to participate in multiple town-hall forums and listening sessions. Overwhelmingly, students have expressed very real personal and professional concerns - those that are of much higher priority than educational goals (and mind you, expensive educational goals for these students) given the stakes that are both real and have been engrained in them by the campaigns over the last year. That is not a culture of political correctness, that is a culture of compassion and empathy.
The Racial Contract Is Alive and Well
For those in the dark, the modern Western World lives under a modified social contract, referred to as the racial contract. As the social contract provides for classist oppression, the racial contract provides for hierarchal oppression of classes and races. That millions of Americans can blame black and brown folks for their suffering (evidenced by their votes) points to the fact that the racial contract is alive and well. The silver lining however, is that eradicating the racial contract in this country requires that it no longer be invisible. Post-election America can no longer tell itself that it exists in a color-blind society - it has endorsed overt oppression and racism. The contract, being no longer invisible, can be discussed, analyzed by those ignorant to it, and forever destroyed in this post-election reality.
Complacency and Complicity
There is a thin line between complacency and complicity. This line was crossed by millions of Americans who voted for President-Elect Trump, but at the same time pronounced it had nothing to do with his ideologies. I have no doubt that these individuals believe this about themselves, they are in my own family (who I still love in spite of it). However, to ignore the reality of the rhetoric and actions of a candidate because you want change for yourself does not provide a hall-pass for your conscious, regardless of the reason. Arguing complacent because they do not believe President-Elect Trump will actually fulfill his promises or continue his actions is a fallacy; in truth, it is an act of complicity. You are, by your very expression of support, complicit in what he stands for and the actions he may take over the next four years.
Neo-Liberal is Not Liberal
Democrats are at a cross-roads of monumental importance in this post-election reality. Masking neo-liberalism as liberalism will no longer be adequate in garnering the support of the centrist and left-leaning Americans in this country. For much of my life, I have been guilty of believing these items were equivalent. In fact, despite the well articulated arguments of many of my pro-Bernie Sanders friends and colleagues, I refused to believe different. This was our downfall as a party, and Hillary as a candidate. Liberal social policies are only a part of the platform - when neo-liberalism is the true nature of the platform, the corporate influence on the social welfare is now to great to be viable and authentic (and perhaps it always was). The fact remains that dressing neo-liberal ideals up as true progressive liberalism will kill the Democratic party moving forward. The large portions of voters for President-Elect Trump that voted based on economic hardship and a desire for change, feel that way because of the deluge of neo-liberal influence on this country. If we are going to unite this country, it will likely only be a true unification if we internalize this truth.
The Future
There are likely many more affective and objective truths for each and every one of us - these are merely mine. Many will be contested here, others will say they are the least important of what a post-election America is experiencing. Despite all of this, if we do not each engage in a period of reflection - outside of the rhetoric of pundits and partisan politics - we are likely to fail as a country and as a people, the great American experiment will be doomed. The true crisis is not our new President. The true crisis will be failing to learn, grow, and change.