This is Who We Are
This election revealed the truth about America
November 6, 2024.
Hello darkness, my old friend.
Here we are America: facing another election catastrophe.
Or is it?
Perhaps this outcome is what we should have expected all along.
Yesterday, Donald Trump won the 2024 Presidential election, much to the chagrin of millions of Americans who thought we had risen above all this racist and misogynistic behavior.
We haven’t.
We can’t.
Because this is who we are: this is what we are as a nation.
America has voted for a man who has been found liable for rape: a man who has been found guilty of felony crimes. A man who still faces criminal charges for January 6th and for stealing national security documents.
And America elected him. Again.
How does one reconcile that?
To come face-to-face with reality is the most difficult challenge most people will ever face. Accepting things about ourselves, both personally and collectively, can bring about a shock that sends us reeling.
It’s called Cognitive Dissonance.
Today, as every American reviews the results of the 2024 Presidential Election, that shock is hitting home: Donald Trump has won the election in spite of everything we want to believe about ourselves and our nation.
We believed we were a nation of sane people who would never again vote for an insane lunatic.
We believed we were a nation of law and order who would never again elect a criminal.
We believed we were a smart, sophisticated nation, one which would not permit racism and misogyny — and hatred of our fellow Americans — to take over our land.
We were wrong.
THAT is who we are as a people.
We are a nation of racism, a nation that oppressed others since its inception, enslaving or holding down people of color for four-hundred years. While America has long called itself the United States, it has been — since the Three-Fifths Compromise — divided on the issue of race.
We are also a nation of misogyny, never granting women in this nation the same rights as men. We wanted to believe that as a nation we had evolved to the point where all women would be treated equally under the law, but alas, that is not who we are. Not yet anyway.
As a nation, we didn’t grant women rights even in our own Constitution, making them struggle and fight for more than 150 years just for the right to vote. For most of our history, we have denied women ownership of property, even if that property was inherited from their own husband. We have consistently denied women their rights and control over their own bodies.
And yesterday’s election confirmed we still want it that way.
This is who we are today and this is who we have always been.
And this is who, it looks like, we will continue to be well into the future.
We are a divided nation, because as of today there is still a majority of racist misogynists ruling the land. What is particularly disturbing, but not surprising, is that more than half of the white women in this country voted to put Trump back in the White House.
This is who we were and this is who we are.
We must face this hard truth about ourselves, and from these election results it is clear that America — while slowly inching out of some stone-age beliefs over the past sixty years — has not moved forward enough, and has not yet fully developed the desire to change.
America, for all we think about ourselves, is still a racist nation full of misogyny and patriarchy. Millions of Americans voted yesterday to put a racist misogynist back in the White House because that is who we are.
When a child is young, we often teach him about Santa Claus, promising that if the child is well-behaved, Santa will bring him presents on Christmas, a holiday most in this nation celebrate to honor the birth of their religious savior, Jesus.
But when that child matures, usually around the age of nine or ten, we slowly and inevitably ease the child out of that belief in Santa Claus, helping him to see and understand that those presents were really provided by Mom and Dad, and that Santa is not, and never was, real.
Unfortunately, we don’t tell the child the truth about Jesus — that he also is not real.
We allow — nay we even promote — the concept that Jesus is the son of the God of Creation, and that we should follow the teachings of Jesus and his Bible.
The same Bible that teaches us racism, misogyny, and patriarchy.
If you are scratching your head today trying to figure out just how in the hell Donald Trump — a racist and misogynist — won another term as President of the United States, look no further than your own beliefs. Look no further than the beliefs of your family members, your neighbors, the workers you toil beside each day, people at the supermarket, folks you went to school with — folks who attend your church.
If we are bewildered by the outcome of the election, here are the facts: millions of Americans prefer to have the racist misogynist Donald Trump back in our nation’s highest office because that is who we are as a people. We may have made some progress towards growing out of those sick beliefs, but we’re not there yet. There simply still aren’t enough of us to stand against that hatred — or enough of us to show up and vote to move us forward. Now, we all must suffer the consequences of this election.
We must all come to terms with Trump as President again.
We must all face the fact that as a nation, we simply don’t support women being in charge nor do we support the idea of a person of color running the place.
We must accept that this election victory for Trump came about because…
this is who we are.
This is the end of part I. To read my ideas for how we can begin to grow ourselves out of this racism and misogyny, click here to go to part II.
© Radical Liberal 2024. All Rights Reserved.