Change At Any Price - The Election of Donald Trump

Millions of words and libraries of articles have already been written about the 2016 US election where Donald Trump has been stunningly offered the keys to the White House, so I don't intend to trawl through what others have already done in excruciating microscopic detail. I had actually remarked to my husband that I didn't think that I'd bother to write anything about the election given that I could probably offer little in original thought, and also for the fact that I'm Australian, not American. But as the days have gone by, and I keep on reading and I keep on thinking about what has happened, why it has happened, what it means, and what could possibly face us in the years ahead, I began to coalesce a few thoughts that in their own particular combination, do perhaps offer something original. As for not being American, I am reminded of what author J K Rowling tweeted in response to being told, "aren't you British, mind your own business" regarding the election: "When a man this ignorant & easy to manipulate gets within sniffing distance of the nuclear codes, it's everyone's business". 

So here are a few thoughts cobbled together after a few short days and that claim no exhaustive or expansive brief.

Everyone knows what kind of a man Donald Trump is. It is hardly even mildly surprising now to hear him described as being a racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobic, narcissistic, demagogic blowhard who would easily win the gold medal for the least understanding of political and geopolitical drivers in our world today. The disclosures during the campaign of how he customarily treats women have been horrifying and breath-taking. Pigs, slobs, dogs. Predatory sexual behavior too, we saw with our own eyes.  The disclosures during the campaign of how he exploited workers and not paid them properly have been scandalous. The fact that there are still outstanding court cases against him is probably a normal day at the office for Donald Trump. He says he will forbid anybody with Muslim faith from migrating to the US and he will build a wall between America and Mexico. Welcome to the West Bank. Welcome to Stalinist Berlin.

Spoiled, and having grown up in and surrounded by immense wealth, not of his own making, he is famous only for that wealth and for his ego. Famous for nothing virtuous; much like a Kardashian, or a Paris Hilton in the noughties. And even his business interests are hardly glowing. Lots of businesses he’s touched have turned to ash. His reality tv show, The Apprentice, depicts him as the omnipotent boss who can fire anyone and everyone on a mere caprice if the notion so takes him; a tv show designed patently to feed his soaring ego so that he can be watched by millions of people around the world as, Olympian god-like, he, Donald Trump, plays with his people-toys and crushes their hopes when he's finished playing. This is narcissism at its most text-book. This is narcissism beyond healthy confidence and self-assurance and lifted stratospherically into the range of unhealthy and destructive personality disorders.

With his name 'Trump' emblazoned across his private jet, his tower block in New York, his University, and all his other Trump merchandise, his narcissism finally hit the ultimate jackpot in running for the Presidency of the United States. Never would there be a bigger stage for him to flounce his enormous ego. And of course, in the early days of the campaign, when even he probably thought he would be knocked out of the race quickly, the American media gave him gazillions of dollars’ worth of free advertising and publicity, as he only had to sneeze and they followed it in high def cinematic vision, his every inane ignorant fact-free utterance covered in minute detail giving him free kick after free kick. The media failed us all.

So I ask the question? Can we separate the man from the mouth? Or putting it perhaps more carefully, can we separate the character of a candidate from his or her platform? Is it okay to vote for a tyrant if you like what he says? Is it kosher to vote for change when the change will be brought about by a protectionist demagogue or a misogynist sexist or a racist blowhard? I would say "No, it isn't". America just said, "Yes, it is". I think most of the world disagrees.

I don't think you can separate out, like cream from milk, the character and the platform. They go together, for the platform will be informed by the character and the platform will be prosecuted by the character. What does history tell us? Recall those in Weimar Germany who voted for the little WW1 Austrian corporal with the funny Chaplin moustache because he too talked about change; a much desired change, by rejecting the crippling war reparations imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. These same voters might have thought twice had they known what he would do with their vote. Eighty million people would ultimately die as a result of that vote. But how could they know? Well, they did know to a certain extent. They knew his fascist proclivities. They knew of his Brown Shirted thugs who beat up Jewish people or in fact anybody who dared to disagree with them at their meetings. “Nasty business this aggressiveness”, these voters would no doubt have said, while turning the other way not to look. But they knew. And yet they voted him into power regardless. Are they at least in part responsible for what happened next? You bet they are. And a sense of guilt still hangs over the country of Germany to this day, “like a black cloud”, one German friend told me once. And all because the people wanted change and a twisted little demagogue was able to sell them what they wanted to hear.

I have another question that flows from this. Is change always a good thing? For example, what about change that exacts a significant cost? Does the end always justify the means? Is change at any price, even good and desirable change, a good thing when its execution brings suffering and division? I say "No, it isn't". America just said, "Yes, it is". I think most of the world disagrees.

The American election was undoubtedly a race election. We thought it might be a gender election. But in the end, it wasn't. It was all about race, and indirectly, class. We are told that it was anti-establishment. Establishment politics. Establishment economics. Establishment media. It all had to change. The forgotten poor people, note, forgotten poor *white* people, voted for change to send a message that they would be forgotten no more. Well, maybe they did. But they voted for change at any price. They voted for themselves. The so-called forgotten forgot everybody else. They forgot the greater good. They forgot that the road of progress is hard won and can be swept away in an instant of madness. However, this economic story cannot be the full story. Because, the black community, the most down-at-heel and oppressed group in the United States, overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Clinton, even though she was establishment. I think they might have wanted change too. In fact, I know they did. In overwhelming numbers. But they had the good sense not to vote for change at any price. Change at any price is self-defeating. Change at any price is unconscionable.

Recently in Australia, the LGBTI community gathered together in overwhelming numbers to oppose the enabling legislation for a plebiscite that would have the country vote on the issue of marriage equality. The plebiscite was to be a non-binding public opinion poll and was designed by the opponents of marriage equality as a way to stop marriage equality. It was to be essentially, a poll of Australia’s homophobia. With the polls as they are, a plebiscite indeed would have passed the vote test. But in bringing marriage equality about this way, the Government would have unleashed the vile forces of public homophobia against the LGBTI community unchecked; kids included. It had started already, even without the enabling legislation. The lies, the distraction, the attacks. While most LGBTI people want change in the Marriage Act, we do not want change at any price. The arguments against a plebiscite on moral, political, mental health, philosophical and sociological grounds were overwhelming and a majority of Senators listened and blocked the legislation. There will be no plebiscite in Australia and young gay people have been saved the opprobrium of the homophobes and the bigots. The LGBTI community will have to wait for marriage equality. And wait we will, because the alternative, change at any price, is too costly. A price we were not prepared to pay. The price for change, good change, would have been one step forward, two steps back. America missed its opportunity here to replicate our behaviour and got wrong what the Aussie gays got right. The end does not justify the means.

Donald Trump ran a campaign that was almost total in its lack of policy detail. He railed against every minority he could and turned a blind eye to violence in his own rallies. He implied that Hillary could have been happily shot. He mocked a disabled reporter. He set up an ‘us and them’ model of the United States and the world; a model where the ‘us’ is white, straight and male.

Half the population of eligible voters didn’t even bother to turn up to vote to stop this. This result is on them. Millennials didn’t show up to vote; some of whom were probably the Bernie or Bust crowd. Their apathy and/or their idealism has allowed Trump into the Oval Office for four years. This result is on them. White women, unimaginably, voted for him. This result is on them. Over 80% of Evangelical Christians, with their eye to stacking the Supreme Court in order to overturn Roe vs Wade and marriage equality, ignored their teacher’s Sermon on the Mount, and voted for Trump. Rank hypocrisy and derailed religion. Even 75% of evangelical women voted for him. This result is on them.

Blogger John Pavlovitz put it this way. By voting for change at any price:

“They have aligned with the wall-builder and the professed p*ssy-grabber, and they have co-signed his body of work, regardless of the reasons they give for their vote:

Every horrible thing Donald Trump ever said about women or Muslims or people of color has now been validated.

Every profanity-laced press conference and every call to bully protestors and every ignorant diatribe has been endorsed.

Every piece of anti-LGBTQ legislation Mike Pence has championed has been signed-off on.

Half of our country has declared these things acceptable, noble, American”.

It is breath-taking in its short-sightedness. Some said they voted this way because they were rallying against “political correctness.” This term is one of great contention. It has moved between the Left and the Right since the beginning the twentieth century. Originally, and differently used to the modern phrase, it was used by Marxists. It then moved to social progressives in mid-century and was finally appropriated by the Right in the nineties. It is a concept that describes the policing of language and representation of minorities. In the mouth of the Right, it is a pejorative and used satirically. In the mouth of the Left, it is a genuine desire to see societies progress from older traditional understandings of minorities in the light of more modern scholarship and superior understanding and to use better and more sensitive language when representing them. In this usage, it is an appeal to egalitarianism. Spiritually, it is an acceptance of the family of humanity, where no individual or group is better than another, that we are, indeed, a family of humanity inhabiting this tiny blue dot together in the vastness of the cosmos.

When I was a child in the 1960s, I heard adults and everyday people use epithets to refer to Australia’s Indigenous, Greeks, Italians, and Chinese that were racist and hurtful. As society has progressed and values have changed, these lexical items have fallen rightly into disfavour and are seen as politically incorrect. It is a term with which I am perfectly comfortable. I want to be politically correct in my language and in my representation of minorities, not least because I am one of them: a gay man. Egalitarianism is one of the most important values in my life. I want the world I live in to be egalitarian. I want to see women equal to men in every sphere of life. I want to see the elderly valued as much as youth, the disabled as much as the able-bodied. I want to see gay people the equal of straight people in every sphere of life. I want to see the masculinity of gay men the equal to that of straight men. I want us to discard older ways of seeing things and describing things and embrace a more egalitarian model. I see the phrase ‘politically correct’ as being synonymous with ‘egalitarian’.

If the voters in America are voting as a backlash against political correctness, then for me, they are not egalitarian. They do not believe in equality. They accept that some people are not as valuable as others. They are happy to endorse the candidate whose very election the Klu Klux Klan is celebrating as a great victory. I can never accept this, no matter the need for change. Change at any price is unconscionable.

Finally, there is still the gender issue at play in this result. Hillary Clinton was not able to break the glass ceiling despite being the better candidate in this particular election, and perhaps one of the most qualified candidates across all elections. America has missed a wonderful opportunity by rejecting this woman. The right-wing mythos that has sprung up around her that she is crooked and corrupt and a criminal is just that; unjust, nasty, and misogynistic nonsense. She has been a hard-working individual her whole life: in the law, as an assistant to her husband as First Lady when he was President, as a Senator for New York and as a tireless Secretary of State. Her very existence and indomitable praxis challenges the old patriarchy.

At a time when the world needed to hear a strong human rights advocate, America has fouled its own nest by electing an unworthy. When radical Islamism tries to propagate its teachings, which include the subjugation of women, a female American President would have been a clarion cry to the whole globe that such is not the way, that women are the equal of men, that girls should aspire to the heights as do boys, and that education is a powerful way to improve your lot.

Hillary Clinton has been an outspoken friend to gay people. In December 2011, we saw her publicly declare to a United Nations meeting in Geneva in front of a number of world leaders who were not so enamoured with her message, that “gay rights are human rights”. Her speech was powerful and still reverberates around the world in human rights and LGBTI discourse and offers a necessary corrective to those nations who would dispute such a claim.

I am so pleased the vast majority of African American women voted for her and did so in vast numbers. That a significant portion of white women did not is more than unfortunate and perplexing. It was fool-hardy and self-defeating. The world will have to wait for its first female President, probably from the Democratic Party, and whoever she may be, she will no doubt remember and honour the immense debt she owes to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In the courts of ancient Rome, the lawyers used sometimes to distinguish been a vir bonus (a good man) and a petitor bonus (a good claimant). The former was seen to be a virtuous man due to his behavior. The latter was thus ascribed only if he had a good case to argue before the courts; something substantial the lawyers could take and prosecute persuasively. Allow me to paraphrase the same two epithets if you will for the modern era and in the case of this American election. Donald Trump is neither a vir bonus, a good man, nor a petitor bonus, a good candidate. His behavior has shown up his character to be unworthy of this highest of offices and as a role model for the young, and his platform, his case, has been one of exclusion, divisiveness, aggressiveness, bullying and appeals to narcissism. Donald Trump was never in this for America. He was only ever in it for Donald. It’s only ever been about Donald. And he fooled everyone. 

In voting him into the Presidency, America has miscalculated on a global scale. It will end in tears. Not three days after his election, there is already a massive upsurge in racist violence in schools and across the United States; such aggressors emboldened by the presence and the words of their new Commander-in-Chief. And in voting him and not Hillary Clinton into this role, America has missed a once-only opportunity to have this sophisticated, intelligent, witty, highly qualified, charming woman as its first female President who could have brought about change in better and more noble ways.