What shall we learn from this election?
As a friend, formerly at the State Department writes:
"What shall we learn from this election? Thoughts from a middle aged-white guy.
To my friends on the left:
If the only thing you take away from the 2020 election is that centrist Democrats and moderate Republicans are a bunch of sellouts, corporate shills, and intellectually-impoverished neanderthals who simply are not woke enough to understand how right you are, you will have learned nothing.
You need to take a very hard and dire lesson from the fact that almost 70,000,000 people voted for Donald Trump. You need to come to grips with the fact that not only the majority of the country, but the majority even of your fellow Democrats, do understand what you propose and are not interested in the radical redefinition of society that you would attempt to engineer. Some of them so severely that they were prepared to live with a despicable vulgarian who would at least keep us stuck where we are, rather than send us plunging down an unknown and unproven road to an uncertain and ill-defined future.
It is not that we think you are philosophically wrong, we do not. The country needs more justice. The country needs more economic equality. We need a clean environment with breathable air and drinkable water, and we need to stop destroying the fragile environment that allows us to exist. We need to build a country that gives our children hope of more than we have enjoyed, and yes, we need to do it pretty urgently. And we need to look deep into our very souls and answer for our ongoing failure to give all of our citizens the rights, the respect, and the dignity to which being a human being entitles them. But you need to have a workable plan for getting there, and you are simply not going to make the sale that a radical redefinition of the society on which 320 million people depend is the prudent way to go about this.
If you learn one thing from this election, let it be this: You have not convinced us that it will work, and you have certainly not convinced us that it is worth the cost and the risk of dismantling a society that, for its many flaws, functions better than those that have come before it. You cannot make the sale simply by berating people that your visions are the morally right thing to do; you are going to have to work a little harder on the math. We are, and we have always been, an incremental country that absorbs change one step at a time. It is frustrating, yes, and sometimes the glacial pace of change is maddening, but you are not going to change it. It is what it is. Work with it.
To my friends on the right:
If the only thing you take away from the 2020 election is that Democrats and liberals must be a bunch of fuzzyheaded, treasonous, commie-loving, un-American socialists, you will have learned nothing.
For starters, consider taking a course in political science (from someone other than Trump University, please), because you have absolutely no idea what socialism actually is. Follow it with a course in propaganda, so that you come to understand how deeply badly FOX News and the right-wing propaganda machine have warped your view of the world. I know you have convinced yourselves that “both sides do it”; no, they do not.
If you require proof that your fellow Americans in blue are not interested in radical schemes to remake society, consider that we have asked Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to take a seat and elected Joe Biden - the epitome of traditional, white, male middle-of-the-road-ism. Joe Biden is many things; a radical leftist is not one of them.
Ah, you will say, but even if Joe Biden is not a radical leftist, his new Vice President is! Actually, no, Kamala Harris is not. She is a whip-crack smart, practical politician with a pretty respectable history of respect for law and order. But in another way, she is where we draw a line with you. We are not interested in radical schemes to wreck the economy and we do not want to destroy the country, but we have reached the point where continuing to ignore demographics and the morality of how we treat people who do not look, love, and pray like ourselves is no longer tolerable. For most of the history of our country, all the seats at the table have been dictated by white Christian men. It was never really right, and it is certainly no longer tenable. You must get over it, move over, and make room for everyone who is part of this country to have their share of the say and, yes, of the power. It will not look the same around here anymore, and you are going to have to accept that. New ideas will be brought to the table. Like any ideas, they should be vigorously tested, but they should not be rejected out of hand simply because of who brought them to the table. And yeah, this one is not negotiable. We are willing to debate the economy, taxes, healthcare, schooling, spending, and any of the hundreds of other issues that we have debated for 250 years, and will debate for 250 more. But the point where there must be a break with the past, the point where we draw the line, is on equality. This one is no longer negotiable.
If you do learn one thing from Donald Trump’s presidency, let it be this: we gave you your one last spasm of white male privilege. We gave you the space to have a four-year temper tantrum, we let you trash institutions, degrade civility, and “let it all hang out” one last time. We let you parade your bigotry, your racism, your frustration, and your truck-caravans of vulgar, sickening, racist, anti-Semitic, bullying, misogynist, sexist, homophobic sewage in front of the country and the world. And you have done incredible damage. This country that used to be a paragon of freedom and liberty has been disgraced and embarrassed in the eyes of the world, by you. A quarter of a million Americans are dead, and a quarter million more are going to die, because you needed a President who would let you indulge your Id while he indolently, negligently, incompetently and disgracefully abandoned his responsibilities to honor his office and protect the people during a public health crisis.
Now we are done. Like any exhausted parent, we will put up with bad behavior to a certain point, but there is a time for the temper tantrum to stop. It is time to start acting like a serious country again. We have a President and a Vice President who almost uncannily personify America as she is today: our traditional past and our diverse future, united in the attempt to find a path forward together through difficult times. The election is over, the public has spoken, and this is the choice that the majority of us are making. Complain all you want to; God knows we have complained about your choices for the last four years, and we will give you the same courtesy. But this is where we are heading. You are invited to join us.
This essay comes with no conclusion, for it is not a conclusion, but a beginning. The next chapter will be written by all of us. Let us hope that we find a way to write a good one."