Trump’s victory is a grim day for the United States and for democracies around the world. You have every right to be appalled, saddened, shocked, and frightened. Soon, however, you should dust yourself off, square your shoulders, and take a deep breath. Americans who care about democracy have work to do. ” Tom Nichols in Nov 6, 2024 The Atlantic
My night was disrupted by constant despondent messages from my European friends and readers – not that I could sleep anyhow. I found myself embracing conspiracy theories rather than acknowledging the real horror of this election outcome: the majority of American voters are happy to act on racist, misogynistic, patriarchal and christian nationalistic impulses. The spectacle of cruelty and power, of ignorant belief in empty promises and a desire for traditional hierarchies restored, attracted millions of voters, White women and men predominantly among them. Embracing the fact that they are empowering a convicted felon and his coterie of oligarchs and supplicants. Equality, as enshrined in the Constitution, but an empty term.
Who would not rather believe that voting machines were manipulated, by oligarchic shenanigans or foreign powers, that bomb threats and voter suppression disrupted the process, that votes were systematically not counted, than to admit in what company of landsmen we exist?
The grief I feel today is compounded by the fact that German history is so closely associated with my life as German-born, as a Jew, as a scientist, who sees the writing on the wall, whether it will be show trials for opponents of a malignant narcissist, withholding of disaster aid to blue states, willful ignorance of scientific data ranging from vaccination denial health care decisions (welcome back, polio and diphtheria, measles and pandemics,) to climate change in what short window of time we still have. The damage will be irrevocable.
Millions around the world will pay the price for this nation’s election, starting with the Palestinian and Ukrainian peoples who will have fought in vain against genocidal aggression. The grief is compounded by knowing that so many of my younger friends or children’s generation worked so hard for a better future, throwing themselves into canvassing and other organizing work, because they realized that their own future is so much more endangered than that of my generation that soon will be gone.
I know that autocrats’ goals are to instill fear in us, and exhaustion, isolation, disorientation. George Monbiot wrote in The Guardian before the election:
Never underestimate the vengeful nihilism at the heart of this movement. The glitter-eyed fanatics behind Project 2025 and other such programmes will smash whatever is most precious to you, partly at the behest of commercial interests – but also to enjoy watching the pain it inflicts. They will crush beauty, joy, community and hope precisely because other people value them.
Well, they will try. There will be a time to resist that, to move and organize and understand that those of us who are privileged as white middle class people are called on supporting the multitudes of more vulnerable fellows. But today I grieve. I withdraw. I have nothing else in me. I had gotten my hopes up, unable to fathom the depth of racism that drives this country and the lust for hate, and fell all the more. Allow yourself to grieve, too, if you share these fears. Then we’ll figure out what comes next. Together.