Not another post on the election!  An apolitical look at why Trump Won

We must all be sick by now of election hype and hysteria.  It happens every time.  A never-ending form of jousting within the confines ‘he said’ and ‘she said’, or either did.  It seems that the more toxic the discourse, the greater the fallout fatigue.

This phenomenon, the descent of civil discourse in the political sphere from a debate about policy and ideas to a cult of personality is not a healthy one for either party, and does not bode well for the future of US democracy.  Cults don’t do compromise.  Cults major on “othering” and demonizing the opponent, normalizing hate.  The loser’s disappointment goes beyond any concern about policy differences.  It is existential.

I won’t dismiss that threat, as it is one that I will surely live should Project 2025 indeed be policy.  But that isn’t what this post is about.

Trump won the election because he was aspirational to more than half of voters.  Aspirational?  How could that be?

How could a doddering, mean-spirited, misogynistic, lying, cheating, felonious dirty old man be aspirational for so many people?  This is a complex question which requires a look at how this came about.

There will be plenty of people who blame Kamala, who ran an extraordinarily competent campaign given how little time she had to prepare.  Plenty of people who blame Biden for not stepping down sooner, for having the fool’s hubris for going back on his word that he would be a one-term President.  It may be more fruitful to ask why he didn’t set up Kamala up for success early in his term, instead giving her lame-duck and difficult no-win assignments.

But I don’t think any of that matters.

And Trump’s lack of policy outlines mattered little too.  He didn’t need to put out a platform.  Many speak of how he turned his grievances into a brand, how he made his issues the election issues.  But I don’t think that mattered either.

What mattered is that Trump came across as aspirational to the people who voted for him.  And it isn’t just that “everyone loves a winner”, even if he did manage to convince people that he was a winner, would win, and was relentlessly dismissive about the idea that he might lose.

If anything, his big talk about vengeance, the awful things he would do to people once he got in, was aspirational to people.

America has become a society of victims.  The system doesn’t work for most people, and without something concrete to lash out about, there is a growing sense of grievance in society as a whole.  Gone are the days of personal responsibility, the kind that was stirred when Kennedy uttered the famous words, “ask not what society can do for you, but what you can do for society.”

What is going on today is that everyone wants revenge.  Everyone has grievances.  Trump successfully portrayed himself as a victim, but as a victim poised to exact revenge, and for nearly everyone how is aggrieved, this was a hero story waiting to happen.  Trump, like everyman, was a victim of a corrupt society, corrupt system, and here he was going to show them, to get back.

We talk about how the stale, male, and pale entitled white man is on his death bed.  And many of us will say “thank God”.  Perhaps many more will say so at the next round of elections.  And there is a bit of the last hurrah in this visceral whiplash, a kind of death throe of the entitled patriarchal white man, but for all that, there is still gas in the tank.

This is controversial, but even if there are those of us in all walks of society who don’t like the entitled white man, most cannot help but be seduced by what white privilege has afforded.

There are immigrant families who got her 5 or 10 years ago, who got green cards, maybe citizenship, but are resentful of immigrants who got her last year or two years ago and who got theirs too.  This willful forgetting that the US was built as a melting point, built on successive waves of immigration.  It doesn’t matter.  It seems everyone who gets in doesn’t want to turn around and help those behind them up the ladder, they want to pull up the ladder and cast off.

It is a kind of classism, an “I’ve made it” attitude, which may not be making it in the grand scheme, but it is enough of having made it to feel the difference…that I have something that they don’t, that I have more, and Trump exemplifies this kind of lust for material success and flash above the neighbour.

It may be ironic, but is there anything less Christian?

Trump is symbolic of a classic patriarch.  What conservative immigrant male head of household doesn’t aspire to that.  Values which remind of home.  And when they see the chest thumping, unabashed lust for the privilege that goes with being white, rich, and in power in a patriarchy, it must stir an existential lust to want that too…to want it so badly to be like it.

In such a world, there is no room for policy.  It doesn’t even matter that much of Trump’ likely policy will hurt the people who voted for him most.  They may never even know.  They may still blame whoever has to clean up after him, or blame the people that Trump and his allies will now try to leave holding the can.

I think of this on an even more insidious level in how some societies and cultures, having lighter coloured skin was considered more desirable.  In parts of India this has been true.  In parts of Africa.  A dear Ethiopian friend of mine once remarked that she felt superior because she wasn’t “black” but coffee coloured.  

I have to say a few things about that.  First, I am encouraged by how black America has been redefining and reasserting its identity, reclaiming its African heritage, from naming to style of dress, and that this has been going on now for decades.  Second, there is no minority group that has shown this trans woman more support than black Americans, especially women.  Strangers.  And no LGBTQ+ person should ever forget that the social justice movement that resulted in gay rights was begun by black trans women.  Nobody for that matter.

And we can all learn from the quiet dignity of resistance which came from leaders like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King as well as the outspoken freedom fighters like Malcolm X.  The methods may make some people uncomfortable, but what do you do in the face of bigotry.  You fight back in every way you can.

Donald Trump won because enough people out there want the privilege he feels entitled to for themselves.  They want to be able to exact revenge.  They want easy answers.  They are fed up with a system and a life of being a victim.

Things are going to have to get a lot worse before they get better.

On a lighter note, it is confirmed fact that Republicans are way kinkier than democrats.  It is the burden of white male privilege that turns people into perverts.  As an aspiring ho, it should be good for business.  I didn’t used to much care for CBT (cock and ball torture) or bsll busting, but I think it is going to become my favourite thing.  I might even offer discounts for Trump supporters.  Or then again, I should charge them double.  They’d probably like that.  They like being victims.