The Tectonic Triumph of Trump.
On November 3rd, 2020, at the stroke of midnight, the residents of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, gathered in the township’s fabled “Ballot Room” and cast their vote for president.
Not a single one of them voted for Donald Trump (don’t worry election truthers, Dixville Notch was home to just five voting-age residents at the time).
But this year, one presidential term and one new voter later, the result was 3-3. From a shutout to a deadlock.
And even though a shift like this should feel dramatic, it feels as if its happening everywhere.
I’m not just talking about Trump’s victory (I’m pacing myself as I suspect I’ll be talking about that for the next four years), I’m talking about the way people view politics and the world and each other.
I’m talking about how difficult it’s become to agree on simple, easily verifiable facts.
I’m talking about how common it’s become for conversations to feel like political interviews, with people either ignoring or point-blank refusing to engage with questions that might knock them off their talking points.
I’m talking about how spiteful and narrow and tribal our discourse has become.
In four years, it’s become routine to hear people talk as if their fellow citizens want to destroy their country or their freedoms or their way of life, as if the future will never recover from whatever is happening right now.
In those same four years, Biden’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan, the financial hangover from COVID and the impact of the war in Ukraine, the reckless support for “wokeness,” and, of course, Biden’s unquestioning support for Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza, made it harder to see him (or his vice-president) as the candidate who could swing the world back to sanity.
And so, in those same four years, people I never would have dreamed would vote for Trump, people who were outraged by Roe vs Wade and disgusted by his casual bigotry and “locker room talk,” people who considered January 6th permanently disqualifying, wrote long, careful, apologetic essays about why that didn’t matter to them anymore.
And in amongst the blur of shock and confusion and immense disappointment, my overriding feeling is curiosity.
Does this shift feel sudden because I wasn’t paying attention? I don’t think so, but I guess people who aren’t paying attention, by definition, aren’t aware of it.
Was this shift partly about forgetfulness? Probably. With the speed that wars and disasters and scandals have come at us lately, especially with social media and especially with Trump on the political scene, who has the bandwidth to remember what happened four years ago?
Was the shift accelerated by social media? Obviously, yes. A lot has been said about how social and traditional media radicalised the political Left: BLM convincing millions of people that white cops were hunting innocent black men for sport, trans activists insisting that a woman is nothing more than an idea in a man’s head.
But many of the same people who noticed it have nothing to say about how insane it is that Donald Trump called a worldwide pandemic “the Democrats’ new hoax” or that he publicly sided with Putin over his own intelligence agencies or the fact that he spent four years claiming that the 2020 election was stolen only to admit, almost as an aside, that he lost “by a whisker.”
Hatred, fear, distrust of the slightest difference of opinion, and especially of the people who hold those differences of opinion, has driven our discourse into a dead-end. It’s a dead end that has led to Trump. But honestly, it’s hard to argue that I’d have been much happier if it had led to a continuation of business as usual.
No matter where you stand, no matter what you believe, no matter how you feel about the election results, we need another shift. A shift away from this divisive, reality-denying tribalism, a shift away from identifying ourselves and each other with our political opinions, a shift away from a world where vitriol and outrage and attempted insurrections are our only means of communication.
Let’s hope, when we look back in four years, that shift feels sudden.
The much needed shift you are longing for is only going to come about when we get to know each other as people and not as members of some party or race or whatever.
A good start to that is to encourage open discussion and dialogue, not just about and with positions you agree with, but with everyone.
So that’s a hard NO to censorship of things and opinions you don’t fancy, and a strong “yes” to getting out of your comfort zone and interacting with people you normally wouldn’t cross paths with.
One Small Step is an actual program that puts together people with allegedly incompatible views and steps back to see what happens.Great idea though I don’t think we need the choreography.
Myself and the regulars down at the pub go through that sort of exercise organically every night . Over a pint, especially one I just bought ya, we don’t seem like such bad people to each other.
From a long life of traveling and talking with people from all walks of life, I can honestly say that most people in the world, absent prodding from so-called experts in the elite who wants to cause trouble, want the same things: enough food and shelter to get by, a better life for their children, and some sort of break from the work cycle. Those things shouldn’t be hard to achieve if we find common cause and stop spending so much money and effort on fending off and protecting ourselves from the “other”.
Hi, I think what happened is that people who are desperate, struggling to get by let alone make ends meet, who have poor quality work and even poorer pay, decided they'd had enough of being "talked down to" by a party they perceive as "elitist". They went all out at the polls and elected a person (and I use the term very loosely!) who projected that he "gets" what they need and made (most likely false and full of hot air) promises to "fix it" and provide what they need. As well, a tremendous dislike of government and authority in general was a contributing factor. My catch phrase to describe the "Trump Triumph" is "Let the wrecking ball swing."
I'd like to see someone draw up a cartoon of Trump swinging on a wrecking ball like Miley Cyrus (but please leave on his suit and red tie), and smashing it into a column topped by Constitution, then Rule of Law, Reproductive Rights, Environment Protection and Education, Anti-Racism, Transgender Protections and any others they would like to add. Because, within two years, the time of the next mid-term elections, these key elements will all be smashed to rubble.
Sign me a Canadian, grateful that I live here and not in your country.