On November 5th, like millions of other Americans, my wife and I were tuned into the presidential election, eagerly waiting for what I believed to be true: that our country couldn’t possibly choose this hateful man again. Surely, I lied to myself, we are better than racism, hatred, selfishness, sexism—I believed that we were compassionate, empathetic, and we wouldn’t continue letting American women die in hospital parking lots—but alas, I was wrong.
For years now we’ve watched as Donald Trump denigrated minorities and women on live TV; we’ve heard from countless women who have viscerally recounted their assaults; he’s been caught on tape saying all manner of vulgar comments; had an affair on his wife with a porn star and then paid her hush money. He inspired 1000s of people to storm the United States Capitol where multiple people lost their lives—these were real human beings who paid the ultimate price for a lie. He was indicted for crimes against the United States and was already a duly certified felon in New York. His attacks against Kamala Harris were personal, crass, and sexist.
And yet, despite all of this, at least 75 million Americans voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 Presidential Election.
The thing is though, they didn’t just vote for Donald Trump’s policies, or even a single issue like the economy, they also voted for what he represents as a whole, whether or not they realized it. They voted for a man who told them, showed them even, that he was not of good moral character; a man that promised to inflict real harm on their neighbors; on the migrants that bake under the American sun picking their food in the fields.
All for what? Cheaper eggs and manufactured Chinese goods?
Some of these so-called single-issue voters may delude themselves into thinking that they didn’t vote for all of Donald Trump and everything he represents. But the reality is that these voters have cognitive dissonance. They somehow believe that Donald Trump and his administration will not do the things they say they will do—all to maybe save a few dollars in their wallets. They will rationalize their choice as the “lesser of two evils”—where evil in this case is the cost of consumer goods and not the human cost that their decisions will inflict.
The irony is that these voters didn’t really understand Donald Trump’s policy proposals. Tariffs, by their very nature, are inflationary policies. When a company imports goods into the United States, that company will pay the additional tariffs, and they will pass these costs along to the consumer.
But policy literacy aside, these voters chose to trample the rights and autonomy of millions of their neighbors; their fellow Americans. They actively chose to persecute the people that come to this country to do back-breaking work that no Americans will do; hard work that pays meager wages and that puts that very same food on their tables.
These voters paid for ephemeral savings that may never actually materialize with the pain and suffering of their supposed fellow Americans—and illegal immigrants, many of whom are lured to the United States and American farms by the absence of the very same American workers who claim to be having their jobs stolen.
Regardless of why these voters chose to elect Donald Trump, the very reason they were able to overlook all of his flaws and criminality speaks to a deeper problem, one that reasonable Americans need to reckon with. We need to stop lying to ourselves and we must admit the truth: Large swathes of the United States of America are Donald Trump.
They look like him; they talk like him; they think like him. Perhaps most of these people will not outwardly admit it, maybe they fool themselves and others around them into thinking they’re not, but I’ve always been taught to consider a person’s actions as their character, and anybody who would vote for concentration camps for any reason is sending up highly visible flares.
Rational Americans need to reckon with the fact that some of our neighbors are actually racists—in fact, they might even be Nazis. We need to stop deluding our own selves into believing that large portions of the American populace aren’t sexist, chauvinists, woefully undereducated, and full of hate.
We must stop projecting the qualities we would like to see onto the real America because our projections are fairytales we tell ourselves to cope. The truth is, there is something wrong with this country and its citizens. And until we reckon with that, we’ll remain paralyzed, unable to progress into the nation we ought to be, and the root causes of these symptoms will never be cured.
We…are broken.
I know, friend. Those may just be the heaviest three words—but they’re true. I wish I could conjure up the perfect follow up words to ease your anxiety as you realize it, too. I also wish I could say it gets better.
Unfortunately, these deep-rooted problems are a symptom of our very culture, and of the machinery that drives this country. Take our media for example: American movies and TV shows glorify machismo; teach us that violence is the answer to most problems; and makes us numb to human suffering and death. American cable news networks drive American perception of current events in a partisan manner and are predicated on rage baiting you for clicks and ad revenue. Social media traps us in endless echo chambers and algorithmically locks us into doom scrolling.
Likewise, American institutions have been used for 100s of years to segregate people, first by slavery, and later by practices such as red lining. For a more modern example you need not look any further than your currently elected officials peddling disinformation about hurricanes, FEMA, and stolen elections; about migrant crime and the economy. The very people who are supposed to give you truth are now complicit in spreading the very same lies and conspiracies that fuel division and distrust from a perch of authority, which gives these lies and conspiracies a perception of credibility.
The most prevalent religion in the United States—Christianity—is a religion founded in the righteousness of a vengeful God, and one where women are to be silent and subservient to men. It instills upon young American men’s minds a sense of superiority over women that is divinely inspired and therefore infallible. In some denominations of Christianity, women are not allowed to be pastors or hold positions of power within the church.
American society encourages us to idolize and revere billionaires while homeless and poor Americans wander the streets and food insecurity is at an all time high. It programs us to believe that human suffering is the status quo; that it is somehow always a byproduct of their own ineptitude and not indicative of a flaw in the system or our society at large.
Furthermore, our political structure immediately divides us into a two party system that predicates an us-vs-them mentality—and that somehow this political divide is too great to bridge—which keeps our government and our nation in limbo, perpetually unable to help itself.
Racism, misogyny, wealth inequality, and sexism have permeated all aspects of American life since this country’s very inception and they continue to do so to this very day; they are inescapable axioms of the American experience.
And so we must not turn away from these realities.
Yes, it is true that America is all these things. It is true that our neighbors might be modern day Nazis. Yes, millions of Americans voted for an administration powered by hate and misogyny. Yes, our president is a felon and an adjudicated rapist. But that’s not all America is.
Remember, 72 million Americans voted against Donald Trump. Seventy-two million Americans chose to put democracy above their own bottom line. An army of your neighbors marched to the ballot box because they believe the same thing that you and I do: That we can be better than hatred, racism, and misogyny; that enough Americans do care about the environment and our fellow neighbors; that we can be progressive enough to elect the first woman President of the United States.
And even though times ahead will be turbulent and traumatic for families and communities across our country, it is during these times that we must come together as one voice—we must come together as human beings. We must stand up for what is right; for the ideals that our country was founded on.
We do that by breaking down walls and reaching out to our fellow Americans. We have real conversations again about the things we agree on and we learn to compromise when we don’t. We expand knowledge of how to vote for every American’s best interest.
The most powerful movements have all started at the grassroots level, which is just a fancy way of saying people talking to each other and organizing.
There is a lot of uncertainty about where we go from here as a nation, but this is not the first time the United States has faced adversity and we’ve come a long ways since the era of Jim Crow and women not being allowed to open bank accounts. These changes were made possible by individuals and groups refusing to accept the status quo and refusing to let this nation go down the wrong path.
To borrow a phrase from our friends in France: Vive la résistance.
We may have stumbled momentarily, but we’ll be back. Better, faster, and stronger. Count on it.
