As a U.S. citizen that has spent most of the past decade overseas, I often find myself in the awkward position of having to look at the U.S. with a critical eye while simultaneously defending its cultural ideals. I generally find politics dull and uninteresting, but I will be asked about the election several times in the coming days. So I thought I’d share my thoughts here & refer people to a link. Feel free to share and or email me any thoughts, and thank you for reading.
Trump won.
A lot of people I know are angry today. Hurt. Devastated, even. People who worry about the physical world that we are leaving for their children and future grandchildren, and people whose heart breaks a little bit each time their 1st-grader has to go through an active shooter drill.
And…gasp…even more people are celebrating today.
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Those celebrating do not want to leave a resource-depleted, overheated planet for their children and grandchildren.
They do not want their 1st-graders to endure monthly active shooter drills (much less active shooters).
Trump did not win because they are all racists. Nor did Trump win because they all lack respect for women. He did not win because they are all stupid.
Trump did not win because they find him admirable, or strong. He did not win because people’s actual jobs have been taken by illegal immigrants (they have not). Trump did not win because the U.S. economy is bad, or tanked under Biden (it did not).
Trump did not win because they condone his attempted insurrection, his past felonies, or because they think telling lies is good. He did not win because of his policy ideas, any less than he won because of his bigotry, misogyny, or sheer ugliness.
Trump did not win for any of these reasons.
He won because we are angry.
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The Evolution of the American Identity
Trump diagnosed the root cause correctly and played on it. He (knowingly or not) understood the anger people feel and mirrored it. He made people feel heard. Harris did not.
This was always going to happen. It was just a matter of when.
America earned its status as the world’s leading power. We bravely defended freedom in WW2. We built an industrial machine. We became the place for higher education. We became the wealthiest nation in the world through sacrifice, hard work, and innovation.
But after the Cold War, we no longer had a unifying threat to rally against. As each subsequent generation grew up further removed from the sacrifices of full-scale war and of having to build from the ground up, we became entitled and less connected to the value of what we have. Now, we were wealthy because that’s just the way it was.
Like our crappy IKEA bookshelf, we value things more when we put legitimate effort into building or earning them. If 1960s America worked odd jobs to save enough money to buy a used Chevy when it became old enough to drive, 2000s America has essentially been handed the keys to a Porsche.
America—and Americans–still worked. Some even worked hard. But collectively, we didn’t really have to figure anything out.
But times change and technology changes. And when those changes started to make the blueprinted jobs and lifestyles that were given obsolete, we lost the grit to scrap and adapt and figure things out. When you’ve been handed a blueprint for the good life, and that blueprint no longer works, it’s only natural to expect an updated version to be handed to you, like an iOS update that comes every few weeks.
A large chunk of Americans have been idly sitting around waiting for a software update that isn’t coming.
We don’t do well with stagnation. A friend once told me that happiness is not an average rate, but a rate of change. It doesn’t matter how much you have if you’re sitting still.
Happiness is about pushing towards something. The reason new toys and bags and clothes make us happy is because they are a change in position. But that change is fleeting–it wears off just as quickly as it came and we find ourselves standing still again.
To be happy, we always need some kind of challenge we are pushing toward.
If post-WW2 America were a person, she’d be Rosie the Riveter (the famous “We can do it” factory worker). She could figure out how to put someone on the moon, and she did. She always had something to push toward, usually something bigger than herself. This helps explain why first-generation immigrants often report better mental health than comp natives.
If 2024 America is a person, she is lost. She hasn’t developed the grit to figure things out, because she has never had to. She isn’t really sure what she is pushing toward, and her most prominent influences are modeling that it should only be about herself. There’s no more we can do it, but it should be done for you. And, damn it, Mexico will pay for it.
Without something clear to push for, there is no change. And without change, there is no happiness. Over the past 75 years, America has seen its well-earned power manifest into entitlement, then complacency, and into a state of indifference.
And while Rosie said we can do it, complacency and indifference have the opposite effect, stripping our perceived sense of agency. An idle mind is the devil’s playground, creating the perfect conditions for a charismatic snake charmer to validate even our most shameful tendencies.
It’s far easier to blame others for our shortcomings than it is to endure the painful self-reckoning and hard work to correct them, and that attitude essentially embodies Trump. That’s how sane, reasonable people can support a man whose behavior they will openly acknowledge as unacceptable. When someone feels powerless and adrift, it becomes easier to overlook the transgressions of a figure whose anger makes them feel better about themselves.
In my personal experience, I’ve experienced depression at times when I felt the same combination of things. Society is no different. When we’re depressed, we’re weakened and vulnerable to anything or anyone with the promise to make us feel better about ourselves.
Getting through depression is hard. The first steps are the hardest. Trump understood that, ate it up, and removed the burden of responsibility of taking those first few steps from the shoulders of some 70 million Americans. You’re not responsible for the entitlement, complacency, and indifference-inspired depression you’re experiencing. They are.
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Mental Health and Purpose
The U.S. is living through a mental health crisis on a national scale.
Happy #girldads do not accept “grab her by the pussy” as presidential behavior. Happy families do not believe the immigrants down the street are a threat to their dogs and cats. Happy people do not feel the existential need to have assault rifles at home.
But we are collectively miserable. This election cycle, and the political evolution of the past two decades, have shown me that Americans are lost, lacking purpose and a sense of agency. We feel depressed, but can’t quite put a finger on why. And like a car salesman’s eyes light up at the sight of a wealthy buyer who isn’t quite sure what he is looking for, Trump’s approach played right into the vulnerability people feel when they can’t quite diagnose an illness.
I suspect the majority of those who voted for Trump don’t need to be told more lies about fraudulent elections. They don’t need more tax breaks (lest they have to pay to drive on highways like just about every other developed country). They don’t need borders closed off from a grossly overstated and hyperbolized immigration problem. They don’t need to be worried about what someone else chooses to do with his or her body.
They need to be hugged. They need someone to tell them it will be okay. In relationships, we usually learn the hard way that sometimes solutioning is the worst thing we can do. When our partner shares a problem with us, our first instinct is to put on our hero cape and try to solve it, when all they really wanted was to be heard and feel validated. We just witnessed this played out in political form; one side dove in with solutions while their conversation partner just wanted to feel heard and validated. Ironically, it was the narcissist who never stops talking that made them feel that.
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What This Means for the Future
Make no mistake, I think Trump represents the absolute worst of humanity. I’m generally apolitical, and while the presidency wields very real power that will impact lives, I see it as a figurehead more than anything else. My first criterion in choosing who to support as a figurehead is character: are they admirable, empathetic, intelligent, and could I see them as a role model? I feel that way about Harris. I certainly felt that way about the Obamas. And though I didn’t vote for them, I had a civil respect for McCain and Romney.
Like many, my initial reaction to Trump’s victory was fear, despair and sadness, making me grateful to live abroad because if that’s how Americans are, I don’t want to be a part of it. I am still genuinely stumped at how anyone with young children can support a man who is the absolute worst kind of role model when it comes to human decency. Do as I say not as I do is just not a leadership style I admire.
But I took a few deep breaths, went to a yoga lesson, and hopefully what I’ve written here communicates a more nuanced view of compassion, and even hope. America, for all its flaws, is not a dystopian place. And Americans, for all of their entitlements and complacency, are generally not uncivil, unempathetic, heartless people who wish suffering on others. I don’t believe that 70 million Americans are inherently indifferent to Trump’s obvious moral failings, but his play on their unaddressed anger and lack of purpose hit closer to home than any moral concerns.
The bad news is that this election will have real, impactful consequences to the daily lives of many people I know and love. The men soon to be in power will undoubtedly attempt to reverse social progress, continue to manipulate people’s fears, and portray a zero-sum world where there is not enough to go around and for us to prosper, someone must suffer. To what end, I don’t know. And the people who voted for these men will have to live with the outcomes, for better or worse.
The good news is that I don’t believe this was an endorsement of hatred, division, scapegoating, and all of the other nasty things Trump represents. I believe that Trump just did a better job of problem identification–understanding the actual problem that Americans are feeling–and catering to that (albeit in the worst kind of way).
I also take some solace that this is just part of the imperfect nature of humanity. I’ve seen plenty of commentary from around the world about watching America destroy itself, but that shows a lack of understanding behind the basic psychology that led the U.S. to where it is today. This was always going to happen, and I (unfortunately) bet the same cycles will come to other developed societies as they become further removed from real sacrifice and raise more and more entitled, complacent generations.
The questions we all (U.S. or elsewhere) need to be asking root back to mental health and happiness. How do we provide a sense of purpose? How do we give people, many of whom already have everything they need, something to work towards? How do we make people feel a part of something bigger than themselves?
It all comes down to problem diagnosis. I certainly don’t have the answers, but I hope this will stimulate a bit of hope and a sense of purpose for anyone left feeling apathy by this election. If we can correctly identify what problem we are actually solving, then I believe we can do it.