The Day After

[oloriel]

So the news have sunk in, and we're apparently not going to get a Groundhog Day style miracle, and the world will have to keep on turning.

And I have to admit that right now, some of what I hear from the non-Trump voters is almost as scary as the fact that Trump has won the election. (Or the electoral college? Or maybe they'll vote differently in December after all? I DO NOT GET THIS SYSTEM BUT THEN, I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO.)

I understand that the reality of it must be horrible if you're actually living in America and belong to a minority group (including, apparently, academics --- ow! what?!) or are a woman or *gasp* both. I realise that a lot of the things I'm seeing from my distant storm-threatened hill in the not entirely calm fields of Europe may look different from the eye of the hurricane. And I certainly get that a lot of the reactions I'm seeing from those who voted (or would have voted) for Clinton (or Other) are kneejerk reactions born out of disappointment, or very real fears.

But.

When I see people gathering for anti-Trump protests in the streets, I cannot help but wonder what these same people would be saying if things had been different, and Trump voters were heading out for anti-Clinton rallies. Look at them, can't even accept the result of a democratic election. Typical for them...
Yeah, well.

When I see people seriously considering emigration to Canada or New Zealand or Australia or the UK (um, the UK is actually not such a happy place right now, from what I hear; but sure, add a heavy wave of migration to their Brexit issues, I'm sure that's gonna go down well), I can't help but wonder who will be left to heal the wounds and protect those who cannot leave and write letters to their senators and try to move things back in the right direction. Nobody, apparently. And I can't help thinking that most people will serve their country and the world and, ultimately, themselves - emigration, I hear, is not a fun business - better by staying where they are and doing what they can.
(Unless, obviously, they're under actual threat, in which case, do try to get the hell outta there.)

When I see people posting on Tumblr that everyone who voted for Trump please (or not please) unfollow them, I actually facepalm. Because yes, Trump gives the impression of being a horrible person in a lot of ways, and his racism, sexism and sheer popularism are enough to terrify anyone, but he's still a human being, and so are the people who voted for him. I realise it's hard to stop and consider this - especially on Tumblr, where the "other side" never appears to be made up of human beings - but by blocking them from your friendslists or whatever the things are called on Tumblr, you'll only suggest to them that feminists, people of whatever ethnic background that isn't white, people who aren't (US) American, academics or people who believe in climate change are sore loosers and elitist and out of touch with the working/ middle classes or whatnot and refusing to engage in dialogue. Instead of showing them that uh, no, black lesbian feminists with a college education (or whatever else) are actually totally normal, quite reasonable people who may have interesting things to say and reasons to say them. Look, people are not gonna listen to media from the other side or read long eloquent articles about just why Trump was a bad choice, no matter how true they are. But they might absorb something from someone who's in the same fandom or shares their obsession with figure skating or their love for gardening or whatever. There's the adage of "keep your friends close, but your enemies closer" and while I don't think you should consider these people enemies - because a lot of them may not, in fact, be sexist or racist or whatever, but just frustrated and uninformed - I think it applies now, too. You may be needing the bridges you're burning right now.

And that's the bad thing about these perfectly understandable kneejerk reactions, they are already burning bridges and causing damage. Because looking back, the people who are happy with the result of this election will always be able to point their finger and say "See, they don't want to play by the rules either, they hit the streets and rioted, too, so why should we do any different?", and they'll be sorta right. Because if you unfollow/unfriend everyone who happened to vote for Trump, the rift is only getting deeper. In the end, there'll just be a neat community of Trump supporters re-assuring and re-asserting themselves, with no information trickling in from outside (or if anything does trickle inside, it'll be easily stamped down in the way that every critical thought is stamped down in a Tumblr crusade).

So yeah. This is a bad, bad, BAD result and you have every reason to be angry and scared and to feel like lashing out. And I totally get the urge to disconnect from anybody who may be responsible for it, but it's not going to make things better. In fact, I'm worried that it has already begun to make things worse.

Sorry, had to get this out of my system. I know it's none of my business, really, sitting on, as I said, my little hill in the wide fields of Europe (haha). But as news about the election is everywhere, and as things that happen in the US tend to have an impact on the whole world, it's a bit of my business after all.

I hear things about an Interstate Popular Vote Compact and about writing letters to various electorals, which sounds like a route more fruitful than, you know, kicking the two or three Trump voters you can actually reach off your friendslist. At least in the long run. So look into that. And stay safe. And sane. Have a cup of tea or a good bubble bath or a pedicure treatment. Have a binge reading of Harry Potter or, if that's too uncomfortable right now, read fluffy fanfic until your eyes water. Or stay away from the internet for a while. Chop some wood. Bake a cake and eat it, too. Whatever makes you feel better. Hugs.

Comments

[independence1776]

Getting electoral college people to change their votes is a pie-in-the-sky dream. Yes, it's technically possible but it's not going to happen. Looking at the states in the link where it could occur: Pennsylvania is the only one where I could see it happening. The rest of the states (save swing-state Iowa) are conservative. Period. Also: the House is Republican; doing this would change nothing.

I honestly laughed to see the poster hoping to flip Kentucky. I live in the state. There would be violence if that happened. The only counties that voted majority Clinton were Lexington and Louisville. 57% of Louisville voters voted for Clinton. It's not an overwhelming majority by any stretch of the imagination.

And, frankly, this person did not think of the wider social consequences of this: it pretty much, from the vast majority of the US population's standpoint, would be stealing the election. (Most Americans don't understand how the electoral college works, either.) It would legitimize Trump's statements about election rigging, voter fraud, and the establishment not wanting him to win. I guarantee there would be violence.

Lastly, I think it would be undemocratic: the people voted and while the electoral college is a weird system, the result shouldn't be changed. We have ways of mitigating the disaster-- voting in the midterm elections, contacting our representatives, etc.-- that I hope people use rather than just talking.

As for the rest of your post: I tend to agree with it. I see where people are coming from in not wanting to be around Trump supporters at this time; I couldn't stand to be around my parents yesterday (and I'm likely to try to avoid them today as well). But Tumblr has an unfortunate tendency to non-nuanced thinking: there are reasons that don't have to do with bigotry as to why people voted for him. There's also a tendency toward "change everything immediately and don't compromise" that is a complete hinderance to any sort of activism. I also think that Tumblr itself is an echo chamber, which is why so many were shocked that millennials had a slight majority in voting for Trump: some--many-- areas of fandom lean liberal, but that doesn't mean the entire generation does.

I think it's in large part because they're hurt and they're afraid and they don't want people around them who voted Trump into office because they feel they can no longer trust Trump voters to not hurt them. But bridges will have to be (re)built: we can't save this country if people refuse to talk to and understand each other.

The emigration thing happens every election and from both sides; the vast majority will learn they're not going to be able to. Yes, it's more serious right now, but I've seen a ton of people saying they won't leave because then they wouldn't be able to work on fixing things.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Thank you; you've nailed it on all those points.

The anti-Trump protests are not going to accomplish anything useful. They'll just stir up more anger and divisiveness, and probably violence. Trump won the election legally; Hillary has already conceded - the only way to stop him being President would be if Congress found some charge against him, and that is really unlikely at this point.

It is useful to harass our elected officials about election reform, but they're all getting a storm of harassment from all sides right now, so really it'll be more effective to harass them in a few months, when the dust has settled. It's persistence that pays off.

Emigration is no answer. Hello, the world is already full of refugees who were driven from their homes by war and famine; other countries sure don't want us swelling the throngs at their gates.

Cutting off friends who disagree is the surest way to seal oneself inside an 'echo chamber'. But I think there's a lot to be said for staying off Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook if one can't go there without getting in a fight.

Mine is the only red county West of the mountains in Washington state - on the map (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2012/countymaprb1024.png) we're that one red rectangle in the top left corner. Also the SCA is a haven for enlisted military. Therefore I know quite a few Trump fans, some of whom must be dancing with joy now. I haven't seen them; I think it might be a little while before I can be with them; but they are still my friends.

Trump was a terrible choice, but there it is: he won, it's over; all we can do now is make the best of it, and contain the damage as much as possible. The President is just one guy; it's Congress and the State legislatures that hold the real power. Trump's win might be a good thing in the long run, if it galvanizes armchair progressives into realizing that more is required of them than just voting every four years.

[conuly]

Nobody really understands the electoral college. The whole reason we have the electoral college was basically a back door in case the people in power didn't like who the common people elected. (The alternative explanation was to keep the people from ignorantly voting in a heinous demagogue. Hello, Mr. Trump!)

We would never really be able to overturn this election by nagging our electors, and we wouldn't really want to. Their side has most of the guns.

However, what we do have some hope of doing is creating enough press and fuss about it that we seriously put the pressure on to end that ridiculous system. The trouble is keeping the pressure up after the election hysteria dies down.

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

(I apologize for not putting this well. Words aren't really cooperating with me right now, and I'm more ranty on a general level right now than at you.)

Basically - what Indy said, about no longer feeling safe (yes, I realize it's rich coming from the same side of the Atlantic as you ) around Trump supporters. For me it's an abstract as well, apart from whatever global ramifications will be coming our way.

But the thing is, it feels like this places the onus of outreach on the people who were loudly, publicly and frequently targeted during the campaign. Trump made remarks that could and were understood as assassiation threats against Clinton and the "lock her up" chants during his rallies also were very much a thing. Deportation forces, banning Muslims, advocating war crimes, torture and escalating armed conflict, nuclear proliferation, building a wall to Mexico, and so on and so forth? Anyone who cast their vote not against women or minorities of various kinds but for Trump's economic promises or whatever still found all that acceptable collateral damage, whether or not it'll actually become a reality. At the very least it wasn't a detractor from the populist, hurtful, hateful messages that Trump and his campaign sent.

That's despite the on-the-ground grassroots campaigns that tried and failed to reach out and convince people already for the duration of the election. That's (on tumblr levels which look and are ridiculously negligible by comparison) despite following me already (because these Trump supporters didn't suddenly pop out of the woodwork, they were already there) and being exposed to shared obssessions and my bits of inconsequential fluff and whatnot, and it didn't make a difference beforehand. What is going to make me believe that it's going to make even a lick of difference now that their views were legitimized by the Electoral College win?

I do get where you are coming from with the facepalming, too. And reaching out is going to be important, but right now it feels like nothing so much as Maedhros showing up to that treaty with Morgoth, sticking out his right hand and going "please hang me on Thangorodrim". And yeah, Trump and his supporters are human, not forces of evil and darkness, so the comparison doesn't really work, but that's what it feels like to me; they're still capable of causing hurt and damage. And Trump supporters also very much have an echo chamber of their own already, what with one of Trump's campaign executives (and apparently future White House Chief of Staff) being the chairman of Breitbart News who's been providing convenient narratives for decrying "the other" throughout I wish I could purge my brain of the things I read on that site.

And that's probably defeatist thinking. But right now that defeat actually happened, and I can't get figures like the 41% spike and continuing high trend in hate crimes after Brexit or the 44% spike in right-wing crimes in Germany until August this year that comes largely in conjunction with the rhetoric and successes of Pegida and the AfD out of my mind, and I just don't know what to say. Who cares for logic and hard work when there are fears and resentments to appeal to that populism can exploit and offer easy "answers" for? So - action, absolutely. It's terribly and desperately necessary, but I'm not seeing a way, at the moment, that is inclusive of the people who voted for Trump, for whatever reason. At the moment. Institutional action, if there is any to be taken like the post you linked? Absolutely. I hope it'll change feeling like the only way. But I know I don't want them to be around me right now. (For the record, if I have any, they didn't react to that post; no one unfollowed me after I posted it.)

Excuse me, I'm going to go take a walk and have a good cry now.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Oh, sweety. I honestly don't know what to say. Because a lot of what I can think of saying is just based on hope and, perhaps, naïvety. And I might well be wrong.

But the thing is, I don't think there's any way of changing things for the better that's exclusive of people who voted for Trump, or would vote for AfD. The further apart these groups are drifting from "us", the less they can be reached.
Othering and dehumanisation and demonising don't make anything better, no matter which side oneself happens to be on (and no matter how demon-like aspects of the other side may be looking).

I also have the hope that if exposure to the other side (if there was any, either on Tumblr or here - after all, our communities tend to fill up with the like-minded anyway, and lines have probably been drawn for a full year) may not have made a difference in advance, it may make a difference now that the pre-election heat dies down. In theory at least, now will show how much was just rhetorics, and how much is very real concerns; and maybe sentiments of fear like the ones you voice on behalf of others will now no longer be seen as "bah, they're just trying to make my candidate look bad" but as "wait, she honestly is worried about that". Some people are only realising right now how deep that rift really is, I think, and maybe something good will come out of that. It's only a fool's hope, but, yeah.

I'm very much relieved you're aware that Trump and his supporters are human. I remember 8 years ago when one of my dA acquaintances was so disappointed in the aftermath of the elections that she posted very seriously about the End of Days and Obama being the Anti-Christ. It was embarrassing to read then, but it's even more embarrassing to read that kind of thing from people you actually agree with! ;) In that light, if you want to think of a Middle-earth analogy, maybe we should more think about Fingon being willing to communicate with the "other side" in spite of all those burned ships. Because maybe once the others realise that their grand leader was largely made up of bling and rhetorics*, reconciliation might be possible. (Hopefully without anyone losing a hand first. Well, the analogy only works so far.)

Avoiding these topics or even those people for right now, or even for a while, is a different matter. That's just reasonable. You can't heal while someone constantly picks at the scabs. But sending folks away (and it wasn't you who reblogged that post after all - something must have happened somewhere ;)) will send them off for good; they won't be coming back in a couple of months going "Hey, are you still mad at me?". I don't have any smart ideas, either; I'm just convinved that excluding people for good is not going to work.

I hope your walk helped! And I seriously hope we come up with other solutions, because, indeed, we have the AfD to worry about.
*hugs*

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