Monday On Tuesday night, Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States, having previously served as the 45th - Grover Cleveland is the only precedent for serving two non-consecutive terms in the White House - and in the first 48 hours there were new norms and proprieties to get straightened out. For example: was it productive, in the aftermath of the election, to call the 72 million Americans who voted for Trump a bunch of idiots?
Plenty of people thought this approach was strategically and morally faulty. On X, timelines divided between Democrats losing their minds and Democrats bowing their heads in attitudes of concern, like saints in a church window. These were the whispery ministrations of people who like to use the word "liminal" and who, before the ink had dried on the ballot papers, got to work enumerating all the ways in which it is possible to be "part of the problem". (Surprisingly, this list does not include use of the phrase "you are part of the problem".)
What had happened? The simplest answer was that wealth inequality had driven widespread resentment that had been brilliantly exploited by Trump, but around that basic fact there were details to haggle over. It was about the price of groceries. It was about girls' sports. It was about coastal elites who make people in the heartland feel bad for wearing flannel and getting spooked by words like liminal.
It was about racism and sexism, internalised or otherwise. This explanation drew intense resistance from right and left, with howls of indignation from people who said, "72 million Americans can't be racist and sexist". To which one could only smile and say, have you met America?
This story is from the November 09, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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This story is from the November 09, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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