One last election essay
The 2024 US elections are done and over with. The news cycle has moved on. No one wants to hear about it anymore. Yet I want to organize my muddy thoughts about the election one last time, and reiterate my stance for posterity. The last I wrote on this was nearly four months ago, and the last time before that was nearly four years ago. Some of my comments from four years ago sound questionable when taken out of context — good thing I can just put them behind a paywall.
Do I believe that a Trump presidency will be bad? It depends on interpretation: Bad for who? Who is considered “America”? In what time period? But largely, the answer is yes. Like I’ve argued before, it’s difficult to weigh most policy understand their impacts, even after the fact, much less prior to. As a consequence, what matters more is the immediate tangible impacts on women’s health, DACA, and the breakdown of Western decorum. One can argue as I have done that Trump is a symptom rather than a cause, but legitimizing that symptom worsens it. Trump is unpresidential, and though clearly representative of some aspect of America, not the aspect that is consistent with respect, honesty, intelligence, or any other positive traits.
Are there benefits to a Trump presidency? It would be disingenuous and short-sighted to say not. For the world as whole, American protectionism and isolationism means an end to proxy wars abroad. I expect both recent flare-ups of the Middle Eastern and Eastern European conflicts to quiet down in 2025 as US aid dries up; I don’t think this will result in fair settlements for all parties involved, but it will certainly lead to less bloodshed than a forever war. From a less anti-American imperialistic perspective, there are also the benefits of another resounding defeat in the referendum of what matters to American people. Democrats need to regroup: Biden winning in 2020 only brought Trump back stronger than ever. Not because his policies benefits Americans more than the Democrats, but because his message is one that resonates. In these trying times, a candidate which represents a departure from the norm that has failed them is a winning candidate.
But I believe that there are few defensible reasons to support Trump, including the ones I’ve listed above. There are also a few understandable demographics who support Trump: the Appalachian-Rust/Bible-Belt-American or even the disenfranchised white male living in a city, fed up with democrat policies and rhetoric that don’t speak to him. But to support Trump as a well-adjusted person making a comfortable wage, living in a big American city, with friends across racial, sexual, and economic groups, is an utter disappointment. Quietly voting Republican is one thing, but to listen to the All-In podcast filled with charlatans angling for cabinet positions and lower tax rates, and then deciding that yes, Trump is good for America is appalling. It screams greed and callousness towards the treatment of many groups, and has the same mouth taste as an anarcho-capitalist in college who smugly refutes real-world implications and humanitarian considerations with “facts and logic”.
Of course, I don’t see a Trump presidency as a disaster. It is a forgone outcome in a country where the party of the working class has abandoned them and is a symptom of what I’ve long seen as the state of the US. Trump’s first term didn’t end in thermonuclear war or the collapse of democracy, and neither will this one. The impact of a Trump presidency will be as I’ve previously mentioned: immediate impact for certain affected groups, presentation of an uglier side of America to itself and the world, and hopefully a reevaluation of priorities and platform by the Democrats. It is a departure from the norm, but that that much of a departure either. The policies that favour the rich, capital-owning class will remain. Foreign policy will generally continue to be interventionalist and imperialist to the benefit of America and to the detriment of the world. The institutions that quietly run America will continue trudging along in the back, ensuring that the US remains the dominant superpower for years to come.
Project 2025 threatens to change that, undermining the very support system I claim will keep America righted. As terrifying as that may seem, I’m still skeptical of the administration’s ability to push it through. I don’t fully understand the implications of a Republican-controlled Senate, House, and dare I say judicial branch, but I know that they represent removal of many roadblocks. Furthermore, in his second term, it’s also possible to expect a more cavalier attitude towards executive order and electorate preference. I am by no means a Trump apologist, but I think that despite all this, a Trump presidency doesn’t spell the end of America, as hard as he may try. Draining the swamp is hard work.
The next four years are going to be predictably filled with Trump antics and decisions that spark outrage, but mostly due to delivery or sensationalism. As much as some of the immediate policy shifts will disproportionately affect some Americans, I only watch with a casual sympathy from north of the border. Trump’s messaging and appeal is that he is a departure from the norm, a clear sign of shifting voter preferences. Yet his policies and their results aren’t fundamentally going to be that different from those of his predecessors. Nonetheless, I view it as a sign of either poor character or poor judgment to support Trump, something that has led to many arguments with my friends. It’s rational to vote for policies that benefit oneself, but it’s unempathetic to do so when their champion is of extremely poor character, and there will be immediate harm to many groups.
Unlike the other political essays I’ve written, I hope I’m right in this one. I hope that four years of Trump will actually be largely unimpactful, save some soul-searching that the Democrats must do. Seeing Kamala’s latest video makes me question that though. I’m not American, but when elephants fight, it is the grass the suffers. I associate the rise of populism in the West not with Trump, but with governments that have failed the working class, much like the United States. Perhaps there is time for other countries to right the ship before they slip the same way.
