"Embarrassingly Naive": I Expected America to Stand Up for Democracy
The choice voters made defies comprehension.
I expected America to stand up and assert itself on Election Day. And it did, loudly and clearly.
It just wasn’t the America I held in my mind’s eye.
Voters handed the White House back to a leader devoid of virtue – a deranged, lawless con man who triumphed with a venomous campaign of lies, bigotry, and cruelty. Instead of hiding his darkest qualities, Donald Trump emphasized them.
A majority of the electorate responded, “Yes, please.” And they empowered him with a Congress that, barring a surprise flip of the House once ballot counting concludes, will have neither inclination nor incentive to restrain him anytime soon.
That means a free hand for Trump to begin rounding up millions of immigrants, placing them in camps, and then deporting them. A free hand to impose sweeping tariffs that would jump-start inflation once again. If implemented, both would have ruinous effects on the economy of the United States and the world.
It means a free hand to seize control of the federal bureaucracy and turn it into his personal instrument for self-enrichment and revenge upon his enemies in the realms of politics, journalism, and business. A free hand to corrupt the Justice Department and escape criminal accountability. A free hand to confer authority for public health and the environment on anti-science cranks.
It means a free hand to weaken democracies around the world by abandoning America’s commitment to defending free governments and protecting the weak from the strong. That represents an enormous advance for the authoritarian regimes in Russia, Trump’s longstanding benefactor, and China – both of which now have much more leeway for aggression against Ukraine and Taiwan, among other targets. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Israel, which had mostly ignored President Joe Biden’s appeals to spare Palestinian lives in its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, won’t even hear such appeals from Trump.
If you’re accustomed, as I am, to believing that a critical mass of Americans embraces the values of freedom, pluralism, and common sense, the choice voters made defies comprehension. The arc of history in 2024 bent not toward justice, as Martin Luther King Jr. liked to say, but away from it.
Why Trump Prevailed
Pinpointing the cause is impossible because no singular factor accounts for the outcome. The broadest explanations are the most comforting.