Call it stealing shamelessly, opportunism or laziness, or whatever you choose to accuse me of after reading this narrative. Okay, I plead guilty.
You see, when the unexpected results from the recent election settled into our imaginations, reactions were immediate, passionate and all over the place.
Now like the opportunist you may accuse me of, like the hungry grizzly bear wading into the cold Alaskan waters with her pick from hundreds of spawning salmon, as a writer I got to pick and choose kernels from an assortment of writers who poured out their heartfelt reactions to the results.
I start with Michelle Goldberg.
Although not her intent – well, maybe it was – a few days before the recent election, The New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg’s piece, “If Trump Wins” caused me some unwelcomed heartburn. For me, the Trump possibility was unthinkable given the starkly different backgrounds of the two candidates, let alone the undeniable threats, hateful and offensive things that came from his mouth mere weeks before the election. I was foolish enough to think that clear thinking and fair-minded Americans would be repulsed by such vitriol.
But boy was I wrong.
Midway through Goldberg’s column, I had to force myself to finish reading it. You see, what she laid bare and so compellingly were the frightening consequences of elections in North Korea, Russia, China and other places, but surely not the United States. Right?
Given that unsettling thought, I retreated into the possibility that Goldberg’s piece fueled the “Chicken Little Syndrome,” defined by behavioral scientists as typical fear mongering that can sometimes elicit a sense of despair or passivity which blocks the audience from actions. To jog memories needing jogging, the moral of the Chicken Little story is don’t believe everything you’re told and not every person knows everything. I just didn’t want to believe Michelle Goldberg.
However, a few days later I woke up only to discover that Goldberg’s column was not a nightmare, but a reality. There are few things in life more unsettling than waking up and finding yourself living in a version of a nation you dreaded the most.
But let’s hear what others had to say
In his powerful piece, “What The Hell Happened, America?” John Pavlovitz wrote, “Harris’ gender and pigmentation were apparently greater sins in their eyes than the litany of those opponent wore like badges of honor. And that’s why it hurts like hell. To her, America said, “no thanks.” And, in my words not of John Pavlovitz, America said to Trump and his baggage of division, “yes, welcome back!”
“Dear reader,” started Andy Borowitz of The Borowitz Report. “Of course, I have plenty to say about last night’s dumpster fire, but today I want to take a break from jokes. Many of you are in pain and I don’t want to make light of it. You shouldn’t interpret my pause as acquiescence or resignation. We all deserve a moment to curl up in a fetal position. But when that moment is over, I want to do what I can to make life better for my children and grandchildren (not to mention people I don’t happen to be related to). I hope you’ll feel that way too. Remaining silent and surrendering to despair is exactly what fascists want us to do. So, let’s not.”
Columnist Frank Bruni wrote, “As election day neared, Democrats’ hopes sored. I know because I saw it and heard it all around me. – the widening smiles, the bright voices. Vice President Kamala Harris was ascendant. Donald Trump was done. People could just feel it.” As for joy, well, we got that wrong. (That’s a deliberate “we” – I’m including myself). Trump sells terror and he found a robust market for it. That’s because it’s a durable ware.”
“It (the election of Trump) is a disastrous revelation about what the United States really is, as opposed to the country that so many hoped it could be,” wrote columnist Susan B. Glasser.
Of course, there’s no question that the United States has survived stress tests that pushed the nation to the brink before, but in the end almost always relied on its values and sense of democracy to make the right decisions.
But to what happened recently, it was not necessarily Donald J. Trump but the will of the people – millions of them – who I thought I knew but obviously didn’t who wanted us to unsee what we saw and unhear what we heard when we cast our ballots. If we’re honest with ourselves, given the binary humans that we are, many of us saw white and we saw Black, but when the chips were down, we did not hesitate to pull the lever for the former. That suggests the America we have been and continue to be.
You see, we – and like Frank Bruni, count yours truly in that “we” – were somehow lulled into the notion that when it comes to the unthinkable, the unfathomable, as true Americans we’ll rise to the occasion, do what’s morally right and once again show that “we’re better than this.”
In the end, the results and far-reaching implications of this election are hard to comprehend and difficult to rationalize not only to ourselves but to innocent and misguided others who will ultimately bear the full brunt of our failure to live up to our fundamental ideals as a people and as a nation.
That’s something we all are left to grapple with.
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