The Nation is dead. And we have killed it.
Twilight of the American Idol: Democracy and Donald Trump
Like the majority of Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton last week, my faith in American pluralism and Nate Silver’s statistical models has been utterly squashed by Donald Trump’s small, pussy-grabbing hands. In the plainest possible terms, the man represents the worst America has to offer. He is a greedy, narcissistic, chauvinist xenophobe and bigot whose petulance and idiocy can be plainly viewed on Twitter. The fact that he is the American president elect makes me ashamed to be an American, and after five days of trying to digest the reality of a Trump presidency, I have come to the only logical conclusion: I no longer know what it means to “be American.”
Be All That You C — Home of the Br — Life, Libert —
The United States of America is exceptional in one thing: fabricating the myth that we are exceptional. We talk about “being American” as if there were some positive shared quality between the 100 million+ smarmy adolescen— eligible voters who decided to stay home on Tuesday night. There are multiple people in my family with whom I can’t even enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner, so what exactly connects the 65,853,516 people who voted for Hillary Clinton and the 62,984,825 Americans who think corporate greed and political corruption is going to be curbed by electing a greedy, corrupt billionaire to the presidency?
Fewer than 26% of eligible American voters voted for Donald Trump. He lost lost the popular vote — a literal synonym of a representative democracy — by 2,868,691 votes. And yet Americans still call the USA the greatest democracy the world has ever known.
That is exceptional.
If there is one takeaway from this election, it is that our country is in the midst of a major identity crisis . We no longer know what it means to “be American” because we have reduced every individual to an identity politic. What we’re dealing with, then, are is a fundamental difference in hundreds of millions of worldviews amongst hundreds of millions of people, which is why Trump needed to begin his victory speech with the first two lies of his presidency: 1) That he respects Hillary Clinton and 2) That he wants to bring the nation together. Trump is an idiot, but he still has eyeballs: the unprecedented number of protesters in the streets aren’t going away. He is already the most hated American president in American history and he hasn’t even taken office … and if you think that he won he’ll soften his stance on virtually everything he’s ever said, I’ll leave it to Stephen Colbert’s explanation when speaking to children: “Yeah, maybe he’ll be different from how he was and always is.”
Trump is a demagogue who may or may not become a despot. Thankfully, we can prevent some of the potential harm he will do to the environment, to minorities, to immigrants, and to the entire world by looking towards the past to better understand the present. And while Donald Trump has almost certainly never read much of anything, this is not the first time a country was so disillusioned that it allowed a hate-filled cult of personality megalomaniac to become president.
“God is dead. And we have killed him.”
During Friedrich Nietzsche’s time (19th century), science and technology were changing Europe’s age-old religious and moral codes at a furious rate. Rationalism and Enlightenment ideals were threatening the old systems that historically provided structure and meaning to the average layman. No longer comforted by the notion that God could provide the holy trinity of meaning, identity, and protection to the masses, there was fear over how Europeans would find purpose now that the old gods were “dead.” Nietzsche did not rejoice over the death of God, nor did he think it would necessarily lead to good things — most human beings need dogmatic institutions to provide them meaning and identity. And, as feared by many, a return to nationalist myths and cults of personality plagued much of the 20th century.
We are witnessing a similar moment in history, for pride in “being American” can no longer delude us from the reality of our fragmented nation. We have searched in vain for a collective identity through a grotesquely individualistic Cult-of-Personality Culture (how many followers do you have? How many mentions?) that only knows how to sell us the vapid ideal of becoming rich and famous. We do not know how to find meaning in our lives because we’ve been poisoned by conspicuous consumption and greed. We are a nation of egotists, a nation of consumers, a fiercely competitive nation that believes (despite all evidence to the contrary) that we are somehow still The Best. Our version of success is to climb a mythical ladder to oblivion, stomping on every face along the way so we can “prove ourselves” because to be American is to “win.” But if Donald Trump is any indication, the only thing to win is the comfort of clinical delusion. We say our government protects us even though millions of citizens lack basic access to healthcare; we say we are a prosperous nation even though we have one of the highest levels of income inequality in world history; and we say call ourselves educated even though our best solution to helping students is crippling debt. Our elementary schools and movie theaters have been turned into killing fields — we are exceptional in our willingness to sell opioids on television and AR-17s at the state fair.
America is dead. And we have killed it.
Americans are only exceptional in their narcissism. The lofty ideals we’ve been told to champion—cultural and religious tolerance, gender equality, basic human respect — did not die on Tuesday (they’ve been dying for decades), but with Trump’s election this all-American delusion is finally coming to an end. And yet for an American to say America is not great is tantamount to blasphemy — only heretics would suggest the Land of the Free is a myth! And so we flock to our smartphones to reassure ourselves that the majority of Americans are great; we say we’re shocked by Trump’s presidency and talk about it to Facebook friends, yearning to be united in our misery. “Maybe it will be okay” we say when RIGHT ABOVE THIS PARAGRAPH IS PROOF THAT TRUMP BELIEVES IN EUGENICS.
America deserves the president it elects. Our true colors are red, white, and scared. The national myths that Americas champions so they may delude themselves into complacency — cultural pluralism, “all men are created equal”, that everyone has a legitimate chance at the “American dream” — have been a delusion since the beginning. And until we recognize this, until we understand why the Electoral College still exists, until we recognize why the hateful underlying structures that allowed Donald Trump to reach the White House will remain, we will forever be yelling at the other side without recognizing our own complicity in our country’s descent. Every single American is partly responsible for this.
So can we finally admit that our country is sick? That we need help? That the Left has remained too silent for too long on account of political correctness and “safe spaces”? And can we admit that the Right is largely made up of homophobic bigots? That there is a limit to “understanding” the other side because white supremacy is America’s primary legacy ? We live in a country where “unarmed black man killed by policeman” is not just common but acceptable (not to mention that nobody thinks to say “unarmed American”); we are governed by people who would like minorities to remain minorities and “blacks” to be called “blacks” because we still define our citizens by the color of their skin. The hateful institutions that helped shape this country continue into the present day — Trump’s election has legitimized bigotry, chauvinism, and racism once again.
So enough of this coddle culture charade. This is no time for, “let’s wait and see.” If a majority of Americans disagree with their president elect, it is time to make our voices heard — most of us are in this together. After eight years of Republicans blocking Obama at every turn, it’s time for democrats in Congress to do the same. Trump wanted to divide America, and that’s what he has achieved. But after recent scenes of children chanting “build the wall!” in a Michigan middle school, it should be obvious to everyone that “working together” will not be the goal (or the result) of his Trump’s presidency. If we hope to build a new collective identity, the one we have heard of in myths, it is now the people’s responsibility to see where we come together. For the 26% of Trump supporters who do not seem to want to come together, all we can do is leave an empty seat for them at the table. And for the 50% of Americans who did not vote, is it because you truly do not care, or because you were disillusioned? If it is the latter, now is your chance to create a new national identity — will you choose a society based on tolerance and open-mindedness at the risk of being made uncomfortable, or abject bigotry and the illusion that nothing is ever supposed to change? Your voices have been heard in the deafening silence that elected this president. Now is the time to speak up if you still consider yourself American.
We The People
If there is something positive that remains about “being American” after the 2016 Presidential Election, perhaps it is this: continued courage to stand up against tyranny — not for one week or one month or with a slew of hashtags, but any time we hear a racial slur, any time we witness sexism, any time we see a fellow human being denigrated because of an alternative creed, gender, philosophy, or color of skin that doesn’t fit into the deranged, all-American mold: “wealthy white male.”
My father grew up in Fascist Spain and fled the country when he was twenty-one years old. When I called him on November 9, 2016 to speak about my sadness, about my anger, about my inability to comprehend, he didn’t tell me to prepare for the worst, he just told me to be ready.
“The reality TV show is over. He is now president. And we’re going to need to be strong mentally, yes. But also our feet. I’ll be marching quite a lot between now and 2020.”
