The Republican side, as I'm sure we can all remember, was largely informed by Trump's insistence (reinforced by Fox News, Breitbart and other right-wing news outlets) that the country was on the verge of literally going to hell, slowly being invaded by outsiders who might have either malicious intent or wanted to bring us Skittles -- I hope I'm recalling this right. In any event, I heard him say on several occasions that if Hillary won, the United States of America as a nation was effectively over. You can't cram much more mongering of fear into a sentence than that.
This isn't a new tactic: simultaneously predicting doomsday and presenting oneself as humanity's sole savior is a political gambit as old as the hills. And in this case, it came close to swaying the majority: almost half the country was able to overlook most aspects of one of the most odious personalities ever to enter the political arena, and cast its vote based on the fear of what would happen if they didn't.
On the other side, just *over* half the country was collectively stunned that such a person could even be considered a serious contender for the country's highest leadership role. Every new revelation -- from old interview tapes to up-to-the-second Twitter rants, not to mention campaign promises about literal wall-building, threats of mass deportations and explicit prosecution of opponents -- sparked new flurries of outrage. Friends were unfriended, vast swaths of Americans were called "deplorable", and the established media news mostly wrote off the opposition and its support base as a tasteless joke. I mean, this was someone that even other *Republicans* could barely stand. How could this end in anything other than a Democratic landslide?
And yet, somehow, here we are. As you can probably tell, I have my own opinions about the way it all played out, and I don't have the energy for the mental acrobatics required to be evenhanded about it. What I see the main difference as being (barring the now-accepted interference by foreign powers) is that the Republican party knowingly played on the fear of average Americans and got it to stick. The Democratic party allowed its moral outrage to blind it to the concerns of almost half the country. In my mind, intent is the key here.
But let me elaborate on the latter half of that previous statement. One thing that I've come to understand through my own experience of this upheaval is just how invigorating and passion-stoking that anger can be. I'll be the first to admit, I quickly unfriended pretty much anyone who would post anything on my social media feed that was pro-Trump or anti-Muslim (I didn't see anything anti-Semitic or anti-LGBT, which I read as a reflection of my inherently excellent taste in friends). I did this mostly because these sorts of things would make me angry, to the point of distraction. I found myself zoning out of things I should be paying attention to in order to dissect the utter wrongness of something I had come across, and to mentally compose the perfect withering counter-argument.
However, I sometimes would knowingly find an article or click-bait designed to be offensive, and instead of just dismissing it, I would dive into it. Holy cow, I would even sometimes *read* *the* *comments*, something I promised myself years ago that I would utterly and completely resist. It took me a while -- and a healthy heaping of self-actualization -- to realize that the reason I was doing this was that I was actually getting a rush from it. Dammit, it felt *good* to be so obviously right.
It's true. There's something so comforting and belief-reinforcing to hear someone voice an opinion bone-headedly opposite of yours, one where you feel absolutely no reserve or remorse in unmercifully railing against their stupidity, how their grandchildren will be ashamed of them, and celebrating the coming day when their brand of paranoid, antiquated mentality will soon be thrown smoldering upon the scrap heap of wrong history. (See? I'm doing it right now and I don't even have a specific issue in mind!)
The only reason I could come up with for my behavior is that, in general, I try to think critically and skeptically. I'm very aware that for most arguments, there are two sides who are equally convinced that they are right, and in most cases their convictions are utterly rational, based on their own particular points of view (I haven't forgotten what Obi-wan Kenobi said about that sort of thing). Here's the catch, though: this objectivity that I try to have often hamstrings my utter delight in being unreservedly bone-deep sure that I am right, while the other person is just all kinds of stupefying wrongity-wrong-wrong. Apparently, it's only when I'm up against the current level of anti-intellectual, anti-human demagoguery that I can let go of the reins and really let my hostility gallop.
So during this election run-up, when I saw climate denial, when I saw not just racist pandering but utter bullshit tribalism, or an instinctive mistrust of anything other than the white/straight/male/Christian status quo, it offended my bedrock beliefs so much that I couldn't help it. This is where I think the Democrats (and I among them) fell down this time around, because there are two rules of public debate: 1) don't feed the trolls, and 2) you're not going to convince anyone to change sides by insulting them. We broke both of these.
Have you ever been told that not only does your favorite band suck, but also that you're stupid for liking them? Did it make you stop and consider whether they really do? Or did it maybe even make you like them a little bit more, simply because you felt like you had more in common by being marginalized right along with them? Well, I'm afraid that's what we Democrats did this time around. We spent too much time enjoying ourselves, saying "Do you not *see* how horrible and unqualified this guy is, you idiots?!" and not enough time figuring out just how he kept right on steamrolling through every hurdle that was being thrown at him.
The only solace I can take right now is that if there was ever a case for a President being forcibly removed from office, it would be now. He's legitimized white supremacy, advocated sexual assault, publicly mocked such people as the press, immigrants the military and their families, civil rights heroes, and the disabled. Not only that, but the volumes of known conflicts of interests -- and likely even more that we don't know about yet -- should be more than enough to do the trick. If we can't force someone like him out of power, then I guess he was partly right after all. America -- as a nation we can be proud of -- is effectively over.
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