White folks voted for Trump, 56 – 42.
That’s quite a landslide, one that leaves zero doubt about our appetite for racism, lies, and treason.
Fron the standpoint of the environment, it says something else as well: we couldn’t care less.
We’re just now learning about the factors that put Trump back into the White House. In particular, too few voters are capable of understanding the issues, and, as a consequence, too few showed up at the polls.
Many people, me included, mistakenly supposed that the threat of a full-on fascist in the White House was going to bring voters out of the woodwork After all, do Americans really want to be led by someone who admires the world’s dictators and clearly wants to become one himself?
The answer is that most of them simply don’t care. Involvement in politics would require effort, e.g., taking a few minutes to look up words like “authoritarian,” and familiarizing themselves with the issues covered in Project 2025, a federal policy agenda and blueprint for a radical restructuring of the executive branch, key components of which include:
• Opposing abortion and reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and racial equity.
• Targeting immigrant communities through mass deportations and raids, ending birthright citizenship, separating families, and dismantling our nation’s asylum system.
Now that all this is clear, an important question arises: What about America’s future, given that our investment in educating our young people is under greater attack with each passing year? I know a young person who buys his beer at a convenience store whose Gen Z clerk was unaware that the United States had an election earlier this week. What’s that level of ignorance going to look like when it keeps increasing exponentially?
Are they laughing? In a word, no. Quite the contrary.
Most of the Earth’s population has historically counted on the U.S. to do the right thing when it comes to things like human rights and rule of law, and they take this quite seriously.
That’s why, when I interviewed a bunch of Swedes during Trump’s first term in the White House, they all agreed, “Trump may have 6% or 8% support in Sweden, but the vast majority of us simply feel sorry for you. If a fascist had come to power in Ecuador or Mali, we would have said, ‘Well, what did you expect?’ But the United States of America? No one ever thought it could ever happen there.”
When Americans went to the polls earlier this week, the idea expressed in the meme here went from a real possibility to a pipe dream.
On a related note, 54% of Americans aged 16–74 read below a 6th grade level, so the outcome of the election really should have come as a surprise to no one, and its tragic consequences are, in reality, exactly what this nation deserves.
Now what? We can start by feeling sorry for many different groups of people, mostly here, but some abroad as well, who will experience terrible consequences of Trump’s re-election, either directly or indirectly.
Americans Directly Affected
Muslims
Women who may need abortions
Sick people covered under Obamacare
Immigrants and their young children escaping grave physical danger
Active duty military and their families
Those who work in industries aimed at decarbonizing our energy and transportation sectors, e.g. the 300K U.S. families whose weekly paychecks come from the expansion of solar energy
Those whose jobs derive from the CHIPS act and the Inflation Reduction Act
People of color
The working class whose taxes will increase to cover further handouts to the billionaires and huge corporations
LGTBQs
Those living in poverty
People living on Social Security
Consumers of products and services that are made affordable by migrant workers who pick fruits and vegetables, work in restaurants, etc.
Those concerned about climate change and other forms of environmental degradation due to slashed EPA regulation and an increase in the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels.
The growing number of parents and their children who can’t afford private schools
The future of America’s knowledge-based workforce, e.g., its engineers and physicians
Non-Americans Directly Affected:
Ukrainians, Taiwanese, and other people around the world who are under attack or threat of attack by Putin, Xi, and the growing list of authoritarians and war criminals
Europeans worried about what Putin is likely to go after once conquering Ukraine.
Indirectly Effected
Those who believe that America benefits greatly from its adherence to the rule of law, i.e., single set of laws that apply to everybody equally
People whose connection to all this is minor, but who are compassionate human beings who care about the well-being of others.
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Concerning this last group, I explained to my son when he was younger, “For you and me, involvement in politics is important, but not because it affects us personally. We’re not poor, Muslims, uneducated, black, gay, immigrants escaping danger, or women. We need to be connected to politics, but only because we care about other people and hate to see them suffer.”
Side Note – The Winners
To be fair, there are many groups whose stock just gained a great deal of ground:
Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who appeared to be headed toward expulsion from the U.S. Supreme Court
A large range of criminals who will benefit from the evisceration of the Justice Department
A few hundred insurrectionists now serving prison time
Trump’s high-level co-conspirators in his attempt to overthrow the U.S. government following the 2020 election loss
All would-be dictators around the globe who have renewed hope after seeing authoritarianism come to the most powerful country on Earth
The evangelical Christians, book-banners, and proponents of the Ten Commandments in classrooms
Fox News and other ultra-right-wing “news” sources
Corporate CEOs who will now be under less pressure to offer employees a living wage
When American actor (then called an “actress”) Katherine Hepburn made this statement in the middle of the 20th Century, it hit home with our country’s women. After all, how many females at the time could expect to live with the same rights and privileges as men?
Seventy years later, things have changed. Woman are still paid less than men for identical work, but, as 1970s feminist icon Gloria Stein put it, “a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.”
The author of the meme needs to understand the use of apostrophes.
Aside from that, even if you do prioritize cheaper gas over your loved ones’ rights, do you really think that Trump is going to improve the financial condition of the common American?
Perhaps the saddest single feature of our world today, and the United States in particular, is what we do with power.
We look at our billionaires, those who could be putting an end to world hunger and climate change, but who are simply enriching themselves further, and further consolidating their power, e.g., Elon Musk (see below).
What does Donald Trump do with his power? Takes over an entire political party, and dares fellow Republicans to stand against him in order to force him to comply with rule of law.
What does ExxonMobil do with its roughly $10 billion in earnings each quarter? Reward investors, expand operations, and make it impossible for those who care about the environment to make any real progress.
Almost all Americans have a passionate interest in the outcome of today’s presidential election, but how many of us see these results as something that will be meticulously studied by historians over the coming decades?
According to polls, it’s possible that the United States will choose to be led by a pathological liar and career criminal–one who tried to overthrow the federal government when he lost the last election.
That won’t be making too strong a case for the wisdom and honesty of our nation’s people, but it’s a real possibility.
It’s true that Trump supporters don’t care about morality, legality, or the truth. But almost half of these American voters do have things they care about very deeply: White Nationalism, the rejection of science, and the end of women’s rights.
