Unite This!

Very early this morning, Donald Trump called on the country to “bind the wounds of division” and “come together as a united people.” Only one problem there: the wounds of division don’t need to be bound — they need reconstructive surgery.

Each of us is bound by our actions and our words. They come to define us, and they set in motion consequences that we will have to live with later. Donald Trump is no different, despite the fact that he is about to become the most powerful man on the planet. He ran an extremely divisive campaign, and he will inherit a divided nation as a result.

On that score, he shares responsibility for the state of this country with at least 120 million other Americans who really should know better by now, myself included. We all had a hand in creating Trump’s presidency, and like it or not, we now own the consequences. We failed to listen to each other. We allowed ourselves to be carved up into easily measured and divided demographic groups, and we played the roles to a tee.

For my own part, I allowed myself to focus solely on Trump’s rhetoric, and on his many and obvious flaws. Of course he’s a misogynist. Of course he is a racist. These claims are so self-evident that they don’t even need to be defended anymore. 60% of voters have an unfavorable opinion of Trump. And yet, he was elected anyway.

No, this isn’t going to be a rant about the electoral college. It’s PROBABLY true that Clinton (narrowly) won the popular vote — at the time I wrote this (late in the day November 9) she was ahead by about 200,000 votes. But that’s my point, really — 200,000 is only a tenth of a percent of the 120,000,000 votes cast, and it never should have been this close. The kicker is it wouldn’t have been, if only we had listened to each other as family, friends, and neighbors are supposed to. For my part, I projected the obvious xenophobia, racism and misogyny of Trump campaign onto his supporters. It was easy to do. Every day, we were bombarded with new imagery of his hateful message and individuals at his rallies acting in bizarre, violent and otherwise troubling ways. I was among those who were more than happy to repost it, complete with thoughtful and passionate recriminations. Just like he wanted me to. Because as long as we were talking about his many personal faults, we weren’t talking about his policies, or more accurately, lack thereof. And by projecting his hateful message on to what turns out to be 10s of millions of his supporters, I missed the point entirely.

They didn’t vote for Trump because of his hateful rhetoric. They didn’t vote for him because they actually want to ban the 1.6 BILLION muslims in the world from entering the United States. They didn’t vote for him because they agree with his hateful characterizations of hispanics. They didn’t vote for him because they agree with his obvious racism against African Americans in general and the nation’s first African American president in particular. They didn’t vote for him because they think it’s funny to make fun of Americans with disabilities. And they sure as hell didn’t vote for him because he’s a pig who likes to demean and abuse women. They voted for him IN SPITE of all those things. Well, if we’re being completely honest, we know that SOME of his supporters voted for him because of those things.

But I refuse to believe that 60 million Americans are that hateful, especially when I remind myself that some of the people who voted for Trump are members of my own family. I know for a fact that THOSE Trump voters didn’t vote for him because they’re hateful people.

They voted for him because he was the only candidate available offering change. Americans, and in particular working-class Americans in the Rust Belt are fed up with the inaction in Washington. We can quibble all we want about who is actually obstructing whom, but in the absence of a clear, concise, repeatable message that explains why Washington ground to a halt over the past 6 years, any answer will do. And progressives like me and other democrats were too damned busy talking about sexual assault to understand that to many American voters, it all sounded like tired old character debates with made up facts and wild accusations. You know, the kind that Republicans used to hurl at Democrats.

It makes little difference that the vast majority of these accusations against Trump were probably true. If even one of them could be made to seem false, that invalidated the rest in the eyes of many battle-weary Americans. All they saw after the smoke cleared was one candidate promising 4 more years of establishment 1990s-era politics, and another candidate promising to “drain the swamp.” In the end, they held their nose and voted for the candidate who promised to shake things up the most. Much the same way I held my nose and voted for the candidate who I thought gave my progressive agenda the greatest chance of surviving and possibly even expanding.

No, I’m not going to argue that the Democrats should have nominated Bernie. I supported his run for the nomination, and I was crushed when he lost. I still think that America lost a grand opportunity to head in a bold new direction. But I’m not going to blame Clinton for winning the primary, and I won’t blame her supporters for embracing her candidacy. But I can fault them for the kind of campaign they ran. The campaign consisted mostly of holding her up as the most experienced candidate — which she was. They also held her up as the most qualified candidate, which she clearly was NOT. In case you haven’t read your pocket copy of the constitution lately, let me remind you that the qualifications for president are that you be a natural born citizen who has resided in the US for at least 14 years, that you be at least 35 years old, and that you capture a majority of the electoral votes. The right to govern derives from the consent of the governed, and Hillary didn’t have that.

In the end, I believe that Hillary’s gender destroyed her candidacy, but not because America is comprised of 60 million misogynists. It kept her from being elected because the appeal to shatter the glass ceiling played right into Trump’s hand. This isn’t because white men are afraid of women taking their jobs (although certainly, some of them are afraid of this). Nor is it because they view women as inferior or inherently subservient (although it is troubling that many in our society do seem to believe that bullshit). It played right into Trump’s hand because it fed the narrative of Trump as a misogynist, racist, temperamentally unfit candidate. And that narrative acted as a giant smoke screen for the fact that he has no real plan to actually help the people who got him elected.

There’s plenty of other blame to go around. You third-party voters out there who think your conscience is clean because you refused to support either candidate are about to reap what you have sown. If you thought progressive politics was hard under Obama, you ain’t seen nothing yet. There’s a lot of damage that Trump can do in even 2 years, and there’s very little the American people or the Democrats can do to stop him short of endless filibusters and threats to vote the bums out in 2018. If you honestly believed there was no difference between Clinton and Trump, just you watch what happens. It’s true that your measly little votes couldn’t have turned this tide, but your vitriolic rhetoric did tremendous damage to Clinton and left Trump nearly unscathed. You need to own that.

Trump voters, you’re not off the hook either. I really really hope I’m wrong about this, but I don’t see anything in his policy agenda that’s going to actually increase your hours at work or your wages. I don’t see anything that’s going to create those high-paying union jobs you want a shot at, and I don’t see anything that’s going to lower your expenses. All signs point to trickle-down economics, which has never worked and has no basis in any credible body of economic theory. I get that you’re angry about your diminishing wages and the struggles that your family is going through. I really do understand that all this talk about job retraining is humiliating and doesn’t do a damned thing to put food on the table or maintain that roof over your head, let alone send your kid to college. And I understand that after 4-5 years of college, and 10s of thousands of dollars, your kids seem to be ending off worse off than you, not better. And I get the fact that no one seems to care about your troubles. But Trump isn’t the answer and never was.

Still, you voted for him, and you own that now, for better or for worse. I really do hope it is for better, but I strongly suspect that it’s not.

But most of all, this mess belongs to Donald Trump. He got himself elected by expanding and inflaming division among the American people every chance he got. It’s the muslims’ fault. No, wait — it’s the latino immigrants. No, it’s the African Americans “living in hell” in our “inner cities.” Or gays. Or transgender people. Or women who have an abortion. It’s the erosion of our family structure caused by women in the workforce. Or the insane demand that we tolerate or even celebrate anyone different than ourselves. And if that didn’t convince people to vote Trump, the smoke screen generated by the Social Justice Warrior outrage on Facebook and Twitter was enough to avoid any real policy discussions. In the absence of any substance in the public discourse, the change candidate stands a really good chance of winning, especially if they can get disenfranchised voters to turn out at the polls. And turn out they did. It’s nothing short of a God damned miracle. Or something like that.

But to make it happen, he had to turn friends and family members against each other. He created divisions so deep that merely licking our wounds and shaking hands won’t do a damned thing to heal them. In order to heal the divisions in this country, Donald Trump will have to actively own up to his own role in creating and exacerbating them for his own political ends. He will have to fully own his actions and his words — all of them — and the consequences that come with them. He will have to apologize — really apologize — to the people he alienated and endangered on the campaign trail if he is to have any hope of actually becoming a president of the people.

This morning, he called on Americans who didn’t support him, claiming “I’m reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so that we can work together and unify our great country.”

Well, here is my guidance. Own your actions. Own your words. Come to terms with the fact that this wasn’t the “heat of the debate” or the “rough and tumble of American politics” that made you say those things. You said them because you knew it would divide us, and you could use that division to get elected. Admit that. Reach out to the people you alienated and offer a humble apology and listen to what they think you should do next.

I seriously doubt you’ll do any of that. But it really is the only hope you have to unify this mess.

If you don’t, you will find that the phrase “elections have consequences” can have more than one meaning. It’s not like we’re going anywhere, and it’s not like we’re too stupid to learn from our mistakes. And take it from me — Democracy can be a real bitch when it bites you in the ass.