What have we lost this election?
This election season has come at a cost — to this country, and to each of us. We are 15 young journalists who, like you, have been profoundly affected by this election.
I Have No Place In Trump’s America
By Sana Ali
On Donald Trump’s list of what can get you “banned” from America, I scream red alert! I am a Muslim woman. From Pakistan. And I am living in New York.
I moved to the country just in time for a “greater” America and boy am I terrified. Donald Trump has plans for people like me, and they are not good.
As a journalist, I have spent the past few months, talking to Americans about the election and when I spoke with Trump supporters I didn’t know how to feel. How can I listen to the support for a candidate who has engaged in hate speech and yet is one of the two names on the ballot for the American presidency?
How am I supposed to remain objective when he has attacked my basic identity?
More than just offended, I am disheartened. Many people I have spoken with are ashamed of such a candidate. They are disgusted by his comments and are fearful at the prospect of a leader who is, to say the least, sexist, racist and Islamophobic.
I come from a country that has suffered, and continues to suffer the impact of the War on Terror. The next president of the U.S. has an immense role in shaping the future of countries like Pakistan. Trump would be horrible. But what can I expect from Clinton? How will things get better for us?
So as this hate filled election cycle draws to an end, I find myself in a position where I am both unsure and scared. I have discussed the election with friends and family in Pakistan. All of them echoed my fear and uncertainty not only about the election but the four years to follow.
Were Those Wrong People Right?
By Olivia Dillingham
I grew up in Paris from ages seven to 14. I spent my seven years there missing the United States. Missing my grandmother, my school friends, the comfort of my own language.
The airport is not usually a place one wants to be. But every time I returned to the US from France, a rush of warmth came over me as I walked through Arrivals at the San Francisco airport terminal on my way from the plane. “Welcome home!” security officers would say with a smile as we walked by. I was proud to be a part of a country where such warmth — a feeling of family, it seemed at those times — came to me unprompted when I needed it most.
Americans are known in France — and elsewhere — for a certain lack of manners. But I thought I knew better. I thought I knew the truth: that Americans were loving, giving people. That they knew right from wrong. That they knew how to smile when someone needed them to. And that, for the most part, they had good posture.
This election has disappointed me. This election has been dirty, unkind. It has painted the worst sort of picture, shown the dark underbelly of my country.
This election has angered me. I am proud to be an American, of the values I thought that that promised. And yet, Donald Trump has made the world suspect that we are low. Uneducated. Ineloquent. Petty and cruel.
My true colors are not his colors. How can he have painted us so wrong? So wrong, and maybe irreversibly so?
It’s Not Over; It’s Only Just Begun
By Keisha Fleming
I was in Grenada when I learned that Donald Trump would be running for President. I remember thinking he was being satirical. That he entered the race to force the “real” candidates to focus on real issues. Then, to my surprise, he won the Republican nomination. By then he had become a polarizing figure, and my concern began to stew. The stew turned into a full-on boil as I listened to, watched and read the campaign coverage. It got to a point, two presidential debates in, when I couldn’t let Trump and his bigotry into my home anymore, so I turned off the T. V. I refused to watch him spew hatred, cite incorrect information and offend the American public. I could not digest his hatred without feeling angry and confused.
I haven’t tuned back in, and I don’t need to. My mind was made up long before the debates. Now, I am tired. I am ready to move on, and I am over Trump. I am over this election cycle. I’m ready to cast my vote and pick up the pieces — the pieces that the Trump Storm left in its wake — a fragmented America.
But for some of us, the problem isn’t just Trump. The problem is the mindset that he represents. While his comments shock some of us, others experience them in the ways we’re treated while going about daily life. As a first generation, Caribbean American woman, I would be foolish to think that this all comes to an end when the last vote is cast, the polls are closed and the ballots are counted. Through Trump we see what parts of America look like, and we can’t un-see them. We will move on, but we must figure out how to do this with renewed integrity. Maybe I was totally off when I, initially, thought Trump was being satirical, but I wasn’t off the mark in thinking he would get us to focus on real issues.
The Man Who’s No Longer a Joke
By Max Hauptman
It doesn’t seem that long ago that Donald Trump was a joke. He was the guy who had somehow bankrupted a casino and hawked cheap steaks. “You’re fired!” was the kind of catchphrase that hacky comedians or your obnoxious friend repeated far too often. One of Jon Stewart’s last great episodes of The Daily Show gleefully mocked Trump awkwardly descending on an escalator to ramble about how he was running for President and we all laughed.
It’s different now. Every time we thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, any more crass, any more shameful, they did. By the end of the third debate, people didn’t even seem particularly interested, they just wanted it to be over with. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the end is in sight, because I don’t think we can go back. I would like to say that this year has been the nadir of American politics, but that would imply that there is even a curve anymore. This feels more like we have been collectively browbeaten into a flat-line.
I grew up in a pretty liberal environment, but I ended up serving in the Army for six years. Like a latter day acolyte of John F. Kennedy’s, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” speech, I was proud of what I was doing, proud to be an Army officer, and proud of what I felt the United States represented. I scoffed when people would say they wanted to move to Canada, or lamented over how much better things were elsewhere. I was a true believer in the country. When I think about the Pandora’s Box that Donald Trump’s candidacy has opened, I feel betrayed. If the Presidency is going to be debased in this way, I don’t feel that I can believe in the same way that I used to.
Suffering from Election Epidemic
By Caroline Koenigsfeldt
When I tell people I am from Denmark they typically ask “why would you ever leave?” I’ve asked myself the same question many times lately. My respect for America has been declining throughout this election season, and for the first time in my 4 1/2 years here I feel homesick. I want to go back to the happiest people in the world.
Because here, people are not happy. I hate what this election has done to my friends, the American people. They’ve become anxious and there is a constant tension among them. Some have chest pain, others have depression. This election is making my friends sick and it is making me sick watching. It has been an election where Americans have gone to war with one another instead of coming together to create history — positive history — as this could be the election where America elects its first female president. This is huge — but it doesn’t even cross our minds, as everything is overshadowed by the two personalities of this election; their negativity, and their hate towards one another.
I have heard too little about the politics and ideas of each candidate. Instead I have learned that one has deleted emails, the other one doesn’t pay taxes. One hates women, the other one is on drugs. That is what I have gotten out of the embarrassing debates that has been nothing but name calling and mudslinging. It has been so immature, and the worst example of how a nation should be led.
I cannot relate and I do not understand what is going on. I still keep asking myself if this is real. Because I am not American and cannot vote, I have been able to distance myself a bit from this election in order to get through it. I am not as directly hurt as my friends are. But I am exhausted. I cannot wait for this election to be over, for Hillary to make history, and to have my friends and love for this country back.
The Different Kind of Trump Voter
By Amy Lu
I was in downtown Brooklyn gathering reactions to the phrase, “President Trump.”
My team and I were excited to see what we could get.
We quickly set up the camera and went to search for people to interview.
One man, dressed in a black suit and red tie, nodded okay when we asked him to speak with us.
He had a confident air about him — he walked with his back straight and glasses perched high on his nose. His briefcase slung across his shoulder. He was poised and sophisticated.
I got the basics from him: Mr. Chambers, trial lawyer, 68.
“How do you feel when I say President Trump?” I asked.
“I would be very happy with that,” he said without hesitation.
I’m not sure what I had expected from Mr. Chambers, but his answer to the question had me reeling to a complete stop. You can hear it in the interview — a split second of silence before I quickly fill the gap with a weak, “okay…”
Looking back, the reason why Mr. Chambers shocked me was perhaps because my — as well as many others — perception of the Trump voter — hillbilly, unintelligent, racist, and sexist. But that perception evaporated right before me the moment the word “happy” came out of Mr. Chambers mouth. Here was a man, living in New York City, highly educated, standing before me, stating he was, in fact, voting for Trump.
Happily, unlike others, I have not lost family or friends over Trump. I have not seen posts on Facebook endorsing him. I have not seen raging arguments and comments on social media.
What I have lost, however, is my own understanding of who and what it means to support Trump. I found that through Mr. Chambers.
Me, Matt and Donald Trump
By Sean McGowan
Last month I met a man named Matthew in a small bar on Long Island. He was a railway worker, tall and tough around the jawline, with little flecks of dry plaster and dust caught in the stubble on his face. I was waiting for someone; he’d come alone. We were around the same age, from within a few miles of each other. Both white and Irish, with girlfriends named Amanda.
I liked him.
We got to talking. Sports, music, some movie we’d both seen. Then Donald Trump’s face came across a television mounted on the wall behind me. Matt saw him; I couldn’t.
“You notice that everyone’s been getting really soft up there? Like around campus?” he said. I’d told him minutes before that I was in school at Columbia.
“Dude, yes,” I said, sliding with ease back into the tough, half-ironic diction of my teenage years. “You actually can’t say anything without a bunch of activists or pissy feminists or other…you know, -ists jumping down your throat.” It was a line that came from nowhere — probably something I’d heard a friend say years ago. But it was the answer he wanted. I could tell.
He laughed and sipped his beer, then put a fist down on the table. The sound was jarring. “Like, I’m sorry I’m white and funny and made something of myself, right?” he said.
At that I tried to seem a little less enthusiastic, and looked around to make sure no one could hear us. By the dim light of the bar, I saw three old men and a few bored waiters.
Matthew chuckled again to fill the silence and grabbed his phone, then motioned with his other hand to the screen behind me. “Well they’re all gonna have to deal with some shit when my man gets into office, huh?”
I turned around and saw Trump onscreen, starring in a soundless replay of the first debate. He was smirking, shaking his head with his eyes half shut. The bulk of him seemed to fill the screen inch by inch. He was ominous — and, I admit, more than a little alluring to me — like some dark allegorical figure out of Melville or McCarthy. That way he could say brash and reckless things, then double down when anyone else would apologize. The self-assured solidity of his voice, the towering carriage. In that moment, he looked to me like one of the guys I’d grown up with.
That liking that I took to him — however primal and brief it was — still eats at me. So much so that I’d forgotten it altogether until a few hours ago, when I saw him speaking again on a television with no sound.
We are his audience, Matt and me. The crowd that made him what he’s become. We’re two guys who grew up in a town — in a country, it seemed — where everyone looked exactly like we did. Where you could call your friends fags and beat up the ones who called you on it; where you could say hateful and demeaning things among your buddies because you’d heard your father and your grandfather do it for years, and you like them both a lot. Where the only people whose opinions mattered were the ones who looked just like you, and anyone else was whining.
By the time I turned back to Matthew he’d ordered two more drinks, one of which I knew was mine. We clinked glasses and I changed the subject. We sat together for another two hours until my friend showed up and took his seat. We laughed some more, talked about more things than I can remember, then parted ways around midnight with a handshake.
It disturbed me how well we got along, but not as much as I think it should have.
“Abki baar Trump sarkar”(This time, a Trump Government) Please
By Priya Nixon
Before I moved to the United States I brushed off Donald Trump’s candidacy as a joke. People at home in India were making a mockery of America. They wondered what was happening halfway across the world. But I was not prepared for what I began hearing when I got here and started interviewing people.
One day as I walked down the subway I heard a group of well dressed men in suits talk about their admiration for Trump. I listened in disbelief. They said, “Trump has a much better understanding of business than Hillary…she is a snake.” Trump, the man who has lost millions of dollars. The lack of awareness of Trump’s inadequacy was shocking. Similarly I heard people say they were definitely voting for Trump but ignorant as to why he would be a competent president.
Just last week, Trump said, “We love the Hindus.” His sudden love for the Indian population just felt sickening. And worst of all hearing Trump say, “Abki baar Trump sarkar”(This time, a Trump Government) was frightening. Frightening because a Trump government means a dictatorship and not a democracy.
I moved to America to live in a country that unlike India values strong independent women. But this fall I heard a potential president talk about women as “fat pig”, “nasty”, “slob”, “dog” to name a few slurs.
What I lost from the election was the realizing that the ideals I believed America stood for such as equality, embracing diversity and individualism was slowing fading away. I lost the respect and appreciation I had for the country since I was a little girl. It was painfully saddening to come to that very realization.
Good and Done and Ready
By Tori Otten
Every time I interviewed someone about the election this fall, I saw exhaustion. In one week, I must have spoken to five people who felt politically spent. And until very recently, I shared in their weariness.
I am sick and tired of this election. I’m more than ready for it to end. But when I filled out my absentee ballot a couple weeks ago, I voted for a woman in every federal category. And when I put my ballot in the mail, I got excited about the election for the first time in almost a year.
This election was never supposed to be about hatred and fear and walls. This was supposed to be an election of progress and policy and positive change.
This election was supposed to be about her.
This election was supposed to be about the nation’s brightest spotlight being on someone who can speak with authority about reproductive health and a woman’s right to choose, while also speaking with just as much authority about boosting the economy at home and building bridges, not walls, abroad.
This election was supposed to rise above critiquing a candidate based on what she wears, or how little she smiles, or how she needs to strike the perfect balance between schoolmarm and grandma while also not being shrill.
This election was supposed to be about a woman reaching the spot that she wants so badly the entire country can taste it, just like all the men before her; but, unlike many of those same men, that she is actually qualified to hold.
This election was supposed to be about one more crack in the glass ceiling.
Yes, she is flawed. Deeply. But she’s smart. And she’s capable. And she’s beyond qualified.
I’m with her. And I’m ready for that start.
Between Excitement and Exhaustion
By Syeda Samira Sadeque
A few days ago, while sitting in the middle of a discussion, a classmate had a sudden burst of excitement as she spoke about a possible Hillary Clinton victory. Her body language changed. She sat up, charged; I sensed a sudden fierceness in her eyes.
“The first female U.S. president,” she said as she smiled, as though the victory was almost here. And it was as much her’s as Clinton’s.
I come from Bangladesh, where we have had female heads of state for decades. So at first, a possible “first female U.S. president” didn’t seem that significant to me. Perhaps because it has been there for me all along and still hasn’t ensured a safe space for women in my society.
But this time it’s different. America is a country that other nations often follow and take their cues from. And electing a woman president in America would create ripples across the world.
And yet not everyone feels as motivated and excited as my classmate. For many, the light at the end of this long, dark tunnel isn’t yet visible. This election has extracted too high a price. Many are nervous. Many are anxious. Many are just exhausted and want this to be over with.
In this election, no matter the outcome, America is about to make history. Choosing Trump will set the country back by decades, undoing so many of the developments and progress it’s made; choosing Clinton will further this progress. There is no middle ground here. And perhaps, that is why there is no middle ground even with how people are feeling about this election. They are either ecstatic, like my classmate, or they’re exhausted.
There is good enough reason for both. But despite that, I choose to hope. Despite being someone who can’t vote in this election, despite the fact that Donald Trump was even able to come this far in this election, I hope. I hope that my classmate’s excitement will continue past Tuesday night. I hope that those who are exhausted will find reason after Tuesday to be excited instead.
What I Lost to Donald Trump
By Nadeem Shad
Donald Trump has it in for me. That’s right: to him I’m public enemy number one — a young Muslim male journalist, and a foreign one at that. I’ve known for some time that Donald and I just wouldn’t get along. This was long before he wanted to stop people who look like me from entering the country.
Donald’s not the only one. I’ve been judged based on how I look in every aspect of life — when I’m working as a reporter, walking home from school or travelling on the subway. After 23 years living in the West you develop a thick skin. Institutionalized racism isn’t going to go away anytime soon and when you’re six foot one, brown and have a beard it’s a sad fact that some people are going to find you suspicious. However it really, really doesn’t help when a presidential candidate for one of the two major parties in the most powerful country on the planet perpetuates and plays on negative stereotypes.
His rise has taken from me the great sense of relief and safety I had felt when I came to America from the UK in August. Britain had made a huge decision back in June to alter its course in history irrevocably: We voted to leave the European Union. We didn’t vote for Brexit. We voted against immigrants. We were told by people like Trump that immigrants were the cause of all our problems.
The morning after the Brexit vote, I woke up and for the first time felt deeply ashamed of my country — or at least of half of it that had voted to leave. I went to work that morning angry. I hated that half of my nation for stealing my future away from me. I nearly lost some close friends in the process. Moving to the United States allowed me to escape the chaos back home.
Donald Trump has taken that feeling away. I hope that after this election my friends here don’t wake up with that same feeling I did last June.
Burned
By Alisha Steindecker
I feel lost, like I should have felt the Bern. “Don’t blame me, I voted for Bernie,” is the post that’s circulating on Facebook and Twitter.
After Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton, a construction worker I met in August in Williamsburg told me he was going to vote for Donald Trump. He called it a “total 360.”
But she was a “liar,” he explained. And he couldn’t vote for a “liar.”
I just stood there, stunned and speechless. I wanted to knock on his hard hat because I had disagreed completely. I thought Clinton had so much integrity and I had defended her. He was an Orthodox Jew, and he thought Trump was a good choice because he could keep him safe and rigorously vet refugees who wanted to come into the country. I didn’t quite get his logic because, as a Jew myself, I couldn’t help but wonder if my family would’ve been let into the country during the Holocaust had Trump been President.
I’ve lost so much during this election season that nothing that will emerge in the next week can shock me — not even another email scandal or tax evasion.
I’ve lost respect for some of the closest people in my life over the last few years, who happen to be very smart and educated. They are doctors who have cared for people I know, specifically women, and they apparently care about them too. I was stunned to hear they support Trump. I can’t help but wonder now if they’re just in it for the money because, to me, Trump and women don’t really mix.
We are left with the two candidates that we have. My final thoughts are: do we want to worry about her emails or do we want to build a wall?
I want this election to be over because I can’t stand having to defend Clinton anymore.
The Last Straw
By Tatiana Tenreyro
This election has come at a cost for many of us, and for me it was my family. As a Puerto Rican woman who has American family members who are staunch Republicans, politics has always put a strain in my relationship with my extended family. I had hoped that with this election my Republican relatives would have been put off by Donald Trump. Would they realize how harmful Trump’s views on Latinos would be to my family and me? But they agreed with him, fervently.
My mother, who is horrified by the possibility of Trump becoming president, shared a picture on Facebook that spoke out against Trump supporters. One of my mother’s cousins responded in a way that still haunts me: he said that my mother’s late father would have been disappointed in her for not supporting Trump. This filled me with rage. My grandfather would not have approved of anything that Trump stands for — in fact, he would have been horrified to hear a close relative support him.
Seeing a relative invoke my grandfather’s name to push a political agenda captured something about Trump and his supporters. They do not see the harm his election might cause. I have cut off contact with those relatives.
Was I Wrong About America?
By Fiona Aoyang Wang
America is the most popular choice for Chinese students studying abroad in recent years. Why? It has an advanced higher education system, which means a degree from an American university helps you stand out from your peers in the highly competitive job market in China. More importantly, studying in America makes it possible for Chinese students to work and even stay in this country, a country that values the individual and embraces diversity.
This year marks my seventh year living in the United States. I like people I meet here and I have no doubts about my initial admiration toward this country. But this year’s presidential election to many young Chinese, both in the United States and China, is entertainment. To others who have been longing for the American democracy and political system it is a disappointment and shame. Personally, it makes me uncertain about my understanding about this country.
Jack Strauss confirmed my uncertainty when I interviewed Strauss in September. “I have concerns that Donald Trump is not the right person for me to feel safe,” said Strauss, a schoolteacher who lives in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. “I feel like he is very self absorbed, he’s egotistical to the extent that his only concern is what accomplishment to become president rather than the good that he would do as president.”
But what allows a person like Trump to become one of the final presidential candidates? How would American value change if he becomes the president? I start to wonder if my perceptions about America seven years ago are still valid today. I think what I lost in this election are the certainty about my understanding toward America and perhaps my initial admiration of this country that brought me here seven years ago.
This is Not the America I Thought I Knew
By Zhiming Zhang
Since I came to the United States four years ago, I’ve thought about where I should spend the rest of my life after I complete my studies. But now, I am more confused about whether to stay in America, return to my home, China, or perhaps go to somewhere else. I lost my understanding of the United States after witnessing this election.
Four years ago, I had an image of the United States as a country where people are equal and would get what they deserved if they worked hard. More importantly, I thought people were intelligent and would respect each other, no matter their background, culture, or beliefs. But after witnessing what has happened during this election season as a reporter, I don’t feel they do.
Immigrants’ efforts to become Americans are defined as “stealing Americans’ job,” which is unreasonable for a country that is famous for its diversity. I’ve heard too many voters I’ve interviewed speak of “Muslim terrorists.” Foreigners, especially those who look like certain ways, are the chief culprits for America’s problems. Voters are polarized and treat those who disagree with them as enemies.
The two candidates spread hatred and personal attacks, even during the three presidential debates, which are the first ones I watched live. I was hoping to learn something valuable from watching the debates. Unfortunately, it was more like watching kindergarten children fighting with each other. It was disgusting and disappointing.
I considered the United States my second home. The country was so welcoming when I first came here. I thought I knew what the United States was, a country filled with many nice and smart people who had helped me move forward. But this is no longer the United States I thought I knew.
No matter who wins the presidency, the impact of this election will linger for decades. No one is the winner because we all lost something during this election. I do not know if the America that I once saw can be found again. Still, I hope to see a ray of light in the future.
— The authors are on the staff of The Brooklyn Ink, which originally published the story.
