Trump Isn't Leaving

He can stay, he can go. He can be impeached, or voted out in 2020. But removing Trump will not remove the infrastructure of an entire party that embraced him; the dark money that funded him; the online radicalization that drummed his army; nor the racism he amplified and reanimated.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, March 24th 2019

This title refers to not the physical presence of Trump as president (which I do sincerely hope is gone, kicking and screaming or not, by January). Rather, I wanted to highlight that everything Trump represents - intolerance, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, lies, arrogance, white supremacy - is not going anywhere. Don’t get me wrong, let’s breathe a sigh of relief and celebrate, for this election result is certainly a lot better than its alternative. But we can't sit back and think that the world is now magically going in the right direction just because of a Biden presidency.

When I use the term ‘we’ I use it to broadly indicate the Western liberal consciousness, most prominently that of the US and, yes, Britain. Our cultures and politics are so closely interlinked and so dominant on the world stage that we can’t deny the influence of US politics on our own. Indeed, my friends and I, and many of the people I work with, followed the election as though it was our own country’s leadership at stake. For the US considers itself the leader of the free world; where its politics go, many others follow. And while a Biden presidency may well have a positive impact on world politics, I'm not sure if it will ever completely undo the harm wrought by a Trump one.

Biden's win was impressive. He swung states that Trump clinched in the last election, and even previously Republican strongholds like Georgia* and Arizona (*subject to recount). But it's important to remember that in many of the places where Biden won, he won by a small margin. In many blue states, nearly 50% of the other votes went to Trump. Overall, Trump managed to get over 70 million people to vote for him. Almost half of all voters, for whatever reason, still think that Trump would be the best person to lead the country for the next 4 years.

What’s more, and as much as I don't want to believe it, over half of white women voted for Trump. Those who didn’t, those who probably (hopefully) care enough about gender equality and enfranchising marginalised groups to let these issues guide their vote, can’t afford to sit back and think their job is done now that we have a more tolerant world leader. Hatred and bigotry have been allowed to reign for the last few years, but they were bubbling away before that, and they will continue to do so with more vigor now that they have been validated.

If you, like me, still struggle to understand Trump’s appeal, Steve QJ offers a comprehensive analysis in this article, stating that dismissing Trump’s supporters as racist is too simplistic. He posits that Trump appeals to the prominent culture of individualism and freedom in the US. He suggests that:

[Trump] allows his followers to embrace their worst instincts without any guilt. His supporters love him for saying the things you’re not supposed to say because they’re the things they want to say. He makes them feel legitimized because he never, not a single time, appeals to their better nature or asks them to sacrifice something for the sake of others.

This election result means that nearly half of voters, people who have been allowed to ‘embrace their worst instincts without any guilt’ for the past 4 years, are now facing a Biden presidency against their will. They are fuelled by lies, outrage and aggression; fed on misogyny, racism, and ignorance. Trump is not going away. Not really. The attitudes that he incited in people were attitudes that were already lurking inside many Americans. It is a country, after all (and just like our own), built upon white racial superiority and entitlement; Indigenous genocide and land theft; and the enslavement of humans as an economic system.

As Jessica Wildfire highlights in her eloquent Medium article "Trump Won, No Matter What Happens Next":

[A] lot of Americans were like Trump on the inside. They were selfish and arrogant. They were lazy and judgmental. They were racist and homophobic. They were loud and aggressive. They were waiting for someone to give them permission to show it.

The push for justice and peace will not happen naturally now that we have a more liberal leader. Trump, in just 4 years, managed to undo nearly every progressive move that Obama pushed for in his 8. Yet, within his presidency we have also witnessed one of the biggest social justice movements in living memory. Politics pushes and pulls; it takes a step forward and then collapses in on itself completely.

If anything, the last 10 years in US politics surely shows us that we can't take political progression for granted; the real fight happens in the everyday, starting with us. Record numbers of voters turned up in the US this year. I hope that this is a sign that the necessary groundwork and activism will continue in the time between now and the next election.