Cause for Relief not Celebration

This past week, after several days of nervousness, a large segment of the U.S. population broke into apparent celebration. Friends told me they were crying with joy. Images of celebrations appeared in news and social media. As far as I can glean, some people were glad that Trump had lost, some were glad that a historical barrier was being broken by the first-ever Asian and African-American and female vice-president, and probably some people even thought that a Biden-Harris administration would be good for the country. But none of these things brought me anything approaching joy.

First let’s address Trump losing. To me, Trump himself is not the greatest danger. A massive racist,¹ nationalist, proto-fascist, anti-science movement, which for convenience we can call “Trumpism,” and which knowingly or unknowingly is a death cult, is the danger that scares me. Its membership numbers in the tens of millions, and from my own observations, is nearly impervious to factual information as a result of a long exposure to pervasive misinformation. I find it natural to be skeptical of information, including doctored images and videos, but my response is to analyze very carefully what information is more or less plausible and which sources are more or less reliable; whereas it seems to me that many are choosing their information based on what conforms to their world view.

In any case, the defeat of Trumpism did require as a *first step* the defeat of Trump himself in this election. And one of the few satisfactions I could take from this election was his defeat. I anticipate the further damage his administration would have done in the next years is far greater than the horrors the Biden-Harris administration will perpetrate. But while Trump suffered a blow in this election, Trumpism was essentially unharmed.

Despite four years of getting to know Trump and his gang better — the cynical “let them die while we profit” of their coronavirus response, the 15 years of tax evasion, many instances of “maybe inject bleach” level stupidity, locking children in cages, supporting white nationalists, scapegoating minorities as rapists and criminals (ironically the accusers themselves are), fostering violence against peaceful opponents, ravaging the environment worse than every other environment-ravaging administration, paying off and silencing women, revealing that his favorite people are murderous dictators (Putin, Kim, Erdogan, MBS) and supporting them — 70 million Americans voted for him. This is a horrifying and shocking tally for those wishing to estimate the extent of Trumpism.² Accomplices like Lindsay Graham, Mitch McConnell, and more won re-election to the senate. Several new candidates supported by Trump like Tuberville and public QAnon supporters Greene and Boebert were elected.

So, I breathed a sigh of relief when Trump lost, but I still see the United States growing more evil year by year, and the chances of us finding a collective sanity greatly diminished. I can’t find joy, peace, or cause for celebration when I think of the body count it has racked up and might in the next years.

As for the representation offered by Kamala Harris in the vice-presidency, I just can’t get excited about it. Perhaps as a white sort-of-man, I have never felt what it’s like to not be represented so I don’t understand. Over the last decades I have seen representation increase at the managerial level, CEO level, judicial level, Congressional level, etc. and I have not noticed it bringing any reprieve to the horrors of our way of life. The representation I am looking for at the Presidential level is “non-evil people” and “people who had normal jobs.” That’s why I was excited about AOC (non-evil bartender), and two of my happy moments this year were Cori Bush (non-evil nurse and activist) and Jamaal Bowman (non-evil teacher and principal).

Again, I’m no expert on representation, but I have read and heard a little about it. I believe that two important reasons why representation matters are 1) that people can recognize “people like them” in the news, in literature, in media and 2) that it can shape public perceptions of different groups of people. It can be harmful, to individuals and to society, if members of a certain group are invisible, or are never heroes in public narratives, only appearing as villains, stereotypes or sidekicks. But within this framework, I do not see how black people, south asians, or women benefit from showing up as a villain in the U.S. Government, any more than they would if they showed up as bank robbers in a B movie. I think that representation only helps if the example is a positive one.

And so we come around to an important view of mine, which I am guessing many of the celebrators do not share: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are evil. If you believe in degrees of evil as I do, then surely they are less evil than Trump. But, nevertheless, fully and completely evil, in a way which likely exceeds anyone you have ever known personally. And the long succession of choices between the lesser of two evils, which most of American elections are, is not in any way inspiring of joy. So, phew, Trump lost. Now everything sucks anyway, and humanity needs to fight against Trumpism, Trump’s crime family, Biden, Harris, McConnell, Graham, Pelosi, Feinstein, Facebook, Amazon, the domestic and foreign military, polluters, etc. etc. It’s a long list, and we will need to celebrate intermediate victories along the way, but this presidential election was not one.

[1] Many Trumpists abhor racism, and are very upset to be characterized thus; to justify my characterization would require a separate essay. I promise that this characterization is made not to insult or attack them, nor to generate rhetorical advantage, but rather to present the situation as accurately as I can. I also consider most people, including myself, racist, but in contrast to Trumpists, I am not in favor of mass murder, mass incarceration, mass deportation or mass impoverishment.

[2] In 2016, Trump’s vote tally could not be taken in the same way. First, Hillary was widely unpopular, so many may have been voting against her rather than for him; the status quo was widely unpopular, so many may have been voting against the status quo; and Trump was less well-known, so many may not have known what they were voting for. By 2020, it was not particularly difficult to ascertain what sort of man or president Trump was, and Biden seems to inspire little enthusiasm among his supporters and hate among his opponents, so I am more inclined to see Trump’s vote tally as representing a lot of support for exactly what he has done and said over the last four years.