To What Depths

The Trouble with “the Other” in American Politics

I’m still nauseated.

How anyone can support DT after he’s so brazenly espoused his support for white supremacy, bigotry, anti-semitism and hate, I’ll never understand. And, those were my thoughts long before Monday, when DT reiterated — and intensified — his unflagging support for white supremacist groups such as those responsible for the quite recent domestic terrorism incident in Charlottesville, VA. What I do understand is that those who continue to support this regime are revealing themselves as bigots of equal measure as the leader they follow, just as they have done all along. Even further, I understand that — as before — these are not people I have any interest in knowing.

White supremacy, bigotry, hatred, homophobia, antisemitism, and all-out xenophobia are not ideals I ever imagined any future US President would hold, let alone flaunt, at least not prior to November 2016.

I am utterly, thoroughly disgusted beyond words with DT and those who knowingly voted for and supported him all the way into the Oval Office and beyond, because what DT said today was the same message he’s been espousing all along, albeit not always so loudly and unabashedly. The failure of DT’s supporters to think beyond their own self-interests and to examine their desired leader beyond superficial rhetoric is the primary reason that this country has now suddenly been thrust so far backward in time it’s nearly as if it never even existed. The norms and values which our country now symbolizes in the eyes of the world, courtesy of Donald Trump and his supporters, are so far removed from those upon which the United States was founded, then built, as to render even the slightest hint of what this nation once aspired to be unrecognizable.

DT and DT’s supporters are not the only ones responsible, however: this severity of societal decline cannot occur in a vacuum, and it did not. Without those who enabled the swing of the pendulum, DT alone could not have brought us here. Chief among the accomplices are many who vehemently oppose this man’s vision of America, yet used their voices and their votes in a recknless manner which ultimately gave him the necessary momentum to begin the downward journey. The 2016 Presidential election came down to a choice between two candidates, with two extraordinarily incompatible and bold visions for the present and future. Whether anyone likes it or not, then as now, the two-party democratic system was firmly in place at the time of the election. Yet, there were many who knowingly and consciously chose to give their vote to someone other than the only candidate other than DT who had an actual chance of being elected, a candidate who would have lead this nation with the sanity and dignity which ought to be intrinsic to those who hold its highest elected office. The truth is that no matter the impetus for doing so, a vote for Jill Stein, a vote for Bernie Sanders — yes, Bernie Sanders — meant one less vote for the only individual in this Presidential race whose election would have put an end to the rising tide of hate. One less vote for Hillary Clinton was one less vote against Donald Trump, one less vote standing against the hatred and disdain he consistently embraced, and in the end, anyone who was satisfied with their vote being one less vote against Donald Trump is complicit in the downfall of this country equally as much as those who voted for DT.

Many of the reasons cited by third-party candidate voters centered around their personal desire to seek change in our electoral system, wanting a more progressive path for this nation than that proposed by the Democratic nominee, and the sincere wish to create positive change in the United States. These seemed to constitute the primary rationale of those who chose to cast their ballots for Sanders, Stein, or even by not voting at all. In fact, I personally believe a good number of these ideas and ideals would have made outstanding improvements the fairly moderate platform of the Democratic Party. However, this election was neither the appropriate time nor venue in which to air such grievances, and to make such fruitless — and ultimately destructive — stands of conscience. In the end, the only statement made by these groups of voters was that airing their personal grudges and objections to the “system” and the “status quo” was of such importance to their own egos that they were willing to risk the dangers they knew DT posed to their country and to the world. Knowingly, they smugly enjoyed a sense of moral superiority as they cast their ballots, fully aware of the implications of their actions. This can only be termed an utterly self-serving choice, made on behalf of ego and self, a choice made without pause or regard for reality or for anyone else.

The decision, and indeed, the right of the people to vote (or not) for the candidate of their choice — including Stein or Sanders — was exercised by many, and it was this, their collective unwillingness to speak not only for themselves, but for the good of the nation and its inhabitants, which ultimately permitted Trump to narrowly defeat Clinton in the electoral college and to take our county down the disturbing road to where it is now, with untold depths simply waiting for its fall. I wonder if a single supporter of either of these third-party candidates, or anyone who “voted their conscience” by not voting at all, can now comprehend the selfishness and the devastating rippling effect of their decision, or if they’d as equally proudly and eagerly cast that same vote knowing where we would be today.

While Sanders’s core supporters kept their word and cast their ballots for the former Senator from Vermont, their candidate proved to be less trustworthy, failing to follow through on his promise that, if he weren’t nominated as the Democratic Party’s candidate for President, he would endorse and fully support whoever that candidate would be. (Yes, Bernie lied.) Instead, Sanders gave only nominal support while continuing to actively encourage and cultivate the cult of personality he’d established, and this act was the ultimate act of selfishness and betrayal of a nation. Had Sanders cared more about the country than himself, it’s quite likely I wouldn’t be writing this today, and that DT could never have achieved his electoral college victory. And so, Sanders, too, is complicit in the creation of what has become a nation which teeters on an extremely narrow ledge between democracy and fascism.

It’s sickening knowing our country can sink even lower than it already has — there are as-yet untold frightening depths to which it can decline. What’s terrifying is realizing that, if and when that nadir is reached, when so many could so easily, selfishly, and without regret choose the side of themselves over the best interests of others at a time when it is painfully obvious what the impact of their self-serving decision will be, it is logical to conclude that — when it becomes a matter quite literally of life and of death — there’s a high probability their choices will be made the same way as they were in the past, especially when their collective, obvert silence is punctuated only by an occasional, drowning echo of “revolution” or “single-payer” that struggles to the surface, gasping, from a former time when progress was possible, before again succumbing to a tidal wave of hate. In an earlier time, such progress was plausible, but there now is no place for such championing of revolutionary change: there can be no revolution, not when our nation already requires significant evolution to return to the society it was prior to November 2016. If those who could not see beyond themselves then, and who refuse to recognize the reality of now, it’s not difficult to predict in whose interest they’ll act (as history has taught us) if they begin to come for others, as long as they’re not coming for them.

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