Back at the end of September I suddenly saw that a Trump victory was possible. Suddenly, with a horrible clarity I could see that there was a credible way for him to get to the White House. And once it was credible, it suddenly seemed inevitable.
And for that reason, I don’t wake to a feeling of astonishment and surprise today. This American election result is not what I hoped for but it is kind of what I’ve spent large parts of the last few weeks not merely fearing but expecting.
It is rare that I wish that I had been wrong, but I do today.
The election of Donald Trump is to be deeply regretted. However, it also needs to be understood and those who regret it most deeply need to think not merely about how to cope with the news but about what comes next.
The true enormity of the defeat of Hilary Clinton has to be faced head on. I’m sorry for Hilary Clinton but this isn’t merely a personal defeat. It is a defeat of a whole set of liberal values that millions of us hold throughout the world. If we want to know where to go next with those values there are some tough truths that we need to face.
- Donald Trump didn’t win the election despite being a xenophobe. He won it because he was a xenophobe.
- Donald Trump didn’t win the election despite being sexist. He won it because he was sexist.
- Donald Trump didn’t win the election despite being anti-LGBT. He won it because he was anti-LGBT.
- Donald Trump didn’t win the election despite being unqualified for office. He won it because he was unqualified for office.
- Donald Trump didn’t win the election despite being against every progressive value people like me hold. He won it because he was.
He won it because he was.
That’s the point.
That’s the fact that has to be faced. The enormity of that fact has to be faced. People wanted this. A majority of people wanted this.
It seems to me that people have used the ballot box to express a desire for change – change from a system which was not taking everyone along with it.
I feel the frustration myself. It is the frustration of seeing the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. It is the frustration of seeing people hungry in the richest economies of the world. It is the frustration of seeing young people with no hope for jobs. It is the frustration of seeing social security systems undermined. It is the frustration of seeing pensions squeezed and being told that is a price worth paying. It is the frustration of seeing financial institutions rescued whilst blue-collar jobs have been seen as expendable.
There is much that is wrong with our world.
And one of the things that is wrong with the world is the presumption on the part of so many of us who hold liberal views that if things get more difficult for people then those same people will automatically turn with joy and thanksgiving to the solutions of the liberal-left. The reality is far from that. People who are frightened for themselves more often turn to the right.
This election result is a trump of judgement for those of us who are liberals. The #Brexit result was another such trump but I fear neither will be the last.
If we want liberal democracies then we will need to work for them them and fight for them and if I’m honest I’m still thinking through what that means for me personally on this rawest of political days.
Liberal complacency is partly to blame for the situation that we find ourselves in. Liberal values have largely kept the peace between nations in the West for 60 years. However, they have not kept everyone fed. And if you want peace, you must feed the poor.
So what comes next?
What next? How to cope with today? Take joy in the small things and work to change the big things.
— Kelvin Holdsworth (@thurible) November 9, 2016
Somehow we need to remember to be kind to one another. And that means being kind to those with whom we disagree profoundly. Then we need to take joy in the small things. The sunrise, the love of lovers and the the light of a candle in the darkness are all unaffected by the political events of the last 24 hours.
But then we need to pick ourselves up and do what liberals do. We need to organise, protect, witness, learn and love.
Organise. Protect. Witness. Learn. Love
— Kelvin Holdsworth (@thurible) November 9, 2016
We need to organise because that’s the way the world changes. People voted for change in this election. Let us never forget that they can vote for change again – in America, in the UK, all around the world. It is those who organise who have a head start in getting the change they hope for.
We need to protect because right now a load of people are going to be feeling vulnerable. We need to work out how to protect and stand alongside the Muslim who has heard the call to ban Muslims from entering the greatest economic power in the free world. Or the Mexican with relatives on both sides of the wall that is already being built in Trump’s mind. Or the woman who fears bringing an accusation against an abuser. Or the LGBT teenager who hears the most powerful people in the world talking about conversion therapy. Or so many others. People need to be protected. People we know need to be protected.
We need to witness to the fact that we believe in better values than those which have seemed to triumph today. That means taking a full part in the frightening world of public discourse that we now have. Social media can’t be put back in a bottle and bunged up only to be opened once we have learned how to deal with it. Those who wish to lead and guide need to be right in the midst of the people advocating things worth believing in and social media is right where the people are whether we like it or not. Church leaders need to note this particularly. The anodyne tweeting only of inane bible verses, where you went to bless a Mothers’ Union banner or excerpts from the Daily Office do not count as serious engagement with the modern world. Yes, the online world needs those things, and a dose of humour too, but it needs more than that. Our world needs ideas worth believing in and people who can articulate them in the prevailing culture.
We need to learn because our ideas need to change and because some of our ideas have not been fit for purpose. Only the most arrogant could simply believe that the majority of people in America were wrong without trying to learn something themselves. I fear more than Donald Trump that liberals will not learn the lessons of this day. Prosperity must be prosperity for a far wider group in society. Do we have the courage to speak of reducing the gap between rich and poor for the sake of a greater whole? Are we prepared to advocate broader prosperity that might lead to our own pockets being lighter? Are we prepared to learn the tricks of the new media world that, so far, the political right is so perplexingly more savvy at using than the liberal left? Are we prepared to say that we’ve not yet found the answers to all that ails us? Are we prepared to face the fact that in assuming that people would turn towards collective institutions (the EU, the UN, the Climate Change agreements etc) that we were wrong. Are we prepared to educate and teach, relentlessly the values we hold to those whom we raise?
And we need to love. There’s a whole lot of loving needed today and there’s a whole lot of loving going to be needed in the days ahead.
I happen to believe that love wins.
Even on days when it doesn’t feel like it.
That’s what makes me a liberal.
And I hear the call loud and clear to live the values I believe in.
Thank you, Kelvin, for this excellent post which articulates so much of what I am feeling, coming as it does on the heels of Brexit. You rightly offer a series of challenges to us as Liberals. The question is: how can we meet those challenges. I would like to hope that the SEC might help in approaching them. You are spot on about the need to organise and learn
Thank you for this Kelvin.
I shared it on my Facebook and had the temerity to make this comment which I share. You man not agree with it all, but what you said challenged me where I am
It is do easy for those of us who have a self righteous belief that we are on the right side of History to fall for the sin of pride, The Prayer of the Pharisee – Lk 18:11, because we are kind decent people who are against the council tax and like the EU and want a liberal decent independent Scotland – or fill in whatever good cause you are into – and then realise that people don’t feel that way, that out there is the racist and the homophobe, and the unionists and the supporter of Nuclear weapons, and all the people who will not vote in the way of enlightenment. We realise that we live in a wold where the Government would have no problem in killing millions, in starving the poor, in making sure that their mates make money out of the Privatised NHS again pick your favourite hate action of the Government.
At least in the UK the Tories didn’t saddle us with Loathsome and we have time, but it is what we do with the time which is important.”
I rather take exception, as a lifelong unionist, to being lumped with ‘the racist and the homophobe’.
There is another thing. There were a lot of lies, credible lies, around both Brexit and Trump. We need to find a way to combat lies with truth that is not merely truth, but is believed to be truth.
Kelvin, I am one of those liberals in America who will take your words to heart. Thank you for giving me some perspective on this day after the elections that my candidate lost.
Agreed. Scapegoating does not happen in a vacuum. Thanks.
Kevin can’t thank you enough for your comments, on this heavy hearted day, We must live the love we know, the love that came for every single soul, of race colour creed, social standing, sexual orientation, and all other human and created orders, there is no other way to stand against extremist politicts and regimes. Sue M.
Well said.
‘I fear more than Donald Trump that liberals will not learn the lessons of this day.’ This too is what I fear, however unlike you I think that complacency was a major factor. I was pounced upon by some Americans for daring to suggest to them that what happened this side of the pond could happen that. ‘Oh, people wont actually vote for him’; was phrase that kept being thrown my way. Today people are in shock, but complacency is also still very much evident. I hope that over the next week that current shock shakes the complacency out into the light so that people see and tackle it.
Actually, I share your view about complacency. I too think it was a strong factor.
The problem with liberalism is incredibly basic.
Libertarianism. Every breach of the social contract in aid of the individual with power and money who can abuse their position. Every exploitation of underpaid workers and suppliers and overcharged customers.
And then followed by the scapegoating of the actual liberals who can look you in the eye and say that liberalism isn’t liberalism if you’re denying someone else’s liberty.
And they choose… the libertarian, who opposes increases to the minimum wage, has made a career of outsourcing jobs to other countries, and systematically demonises the “other.”
Liberalism has not been tried and found wanting; liberalism has been found difficult and not tried.
A perspective perhaps – worth considering – http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/09/donald-trump-white-house-hillary-clinton-liberals
I heard someone talking on the radio who had looked at actual voting data (wherever such people get that from). Predictors of whether someone was a Trump voter, though by no means decisive ones, were whether someone earned more than $50000, had never gone to college or had done so but dropped out, was male, and over 44 years old. But there were people in those categories who had voted for Clinton as well. Even the much spoken of Hispanic vote was not as big a predictor of voting preference as thought and there were too many women who hated Hilary Clinton for misogyny to be the overarching factor.
The stand out predictor which went across all categories was colour, whites going for Trump, up to %58.
This vote was an anti-Obama backlash from people who couldn’t quite forgive the fact that an African-American had been running the show for eight years, whether the racism was of the vitriolic nasty sort or the more urbane sort that says that some of the other lot are probably ok, but only as long as we don’t have to actually mix with them and they’re somewhere else, it amounts to the same thing. The analyst speaking referred to a sort of nostalgia for when whites seemed to be in overall charge of everything.
As to our response: as far as I can see the reason American politics is so vitriolic is because Liberals and Conservatives hate each other and also want to remake the other side in their own image.
Love the other: well very gospel, but pretty darned hard when you struggle to even like xenophobic misogynistic lgbt-haters, let alone love them!
Love might be the attitude that those of us who call ourselves Christians have to struggle towards, but I’m less sanguine than Kelvin is on this one and the verse that keeps going through my mind is the bit in Ecclesiastes about there being a time for this a time for that.
Sometimes conflict is inevitable and has to be fought to a finish. You can’t react to the kind of person who shouted out at Trump’s victory speech “jail Obama” on the basis of well, six of one and half a dozen of the other. And such people aren’t exactly amenable to sweet reason.
On the other hand sometimes people have just to be left alone. Forceably trying to remake the other in your own image just antagonises.
I think our response has to be to discern the difference between the two situations. And to redouble our efforts to make sure that a Trump can’t become Prime Minister in the UK.
A prophetic and timely warning, Kelvin. What Trump represents is on the way to becoming a global phenomenon. The tone of his rallies, and the chanting of mindless slogans, is all too reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s. The fact that his election has been welcomed by Marine le Pen and other far-right leaders in Europe speaks volumes.
Something to think about: when it penetrates the general consciousness that the majority of white conservative evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, what if anything will be the fall out for Christianity as a whole?