The ballots are (mostly) counted and the results are in — we can all breathe a sigh of relief that the white house will no longer be home to the infamous Donald Trump come January 20th. But is it really time to celebrate just yet?
For months it seemed that Trump’s approval rating was rapidly dropping and pollsters had repeatedly predicted a landslide victory for Biden, but the election results showed a different story.
It’s pretty obvious that political polarization in the USA has reached a new extreme. Despite record voter turnout and a new generation of politically engaged voters, Biden only won the election by a few million votes. Meaning that the country is more or less divided in half.
Needless to say, these results are particularly concerning. There was a glimmer of hope that many republicans would acknowledge the widespread damage that Trump had inflicted on the nation throughout the past 4 years, but instead, the election essentially became a contest to maintain power at the expense of the American people.
It’s no secret that Trump’s campaign ran on a platform of bigotry and hatred. Appealing to privileged white Americans with outdated beliefs, he empowered racist, white supremacist groups and individuals. While there are many people who still voted for him that don’t necessarily fall into either of these groups – by casting their ballots for him, these very people decided that they didn’t consider civil rights a priority for all Americans.
Quite frankly, it shouldn’t have come as a huge surprise to any of us that this election would be so close. It’s not just Trump who’s spreading misinformation and hatred, but republican politicians and news networks who are blindly supporting him and promoting his rhetoric that are also to blame.
It also doesn’t help that for many Americans, socialist policies have become synonymous with communism. This insane dialogue about how universal healthcare or better benefits for Americans would result in the end of capitalism and democracy is completely unfounded. In fact, with news pundits and politicians pushing this argument it seems that for many, the justification in voting for Trump is to protect society as a whole – when in fact, a vote for him is doing the exact opposite.
To put this bluntly, there was no blue wave. There wasn’t a sudden awakening in the USA where a majority of the population was able to confront systemic racism, a sudden support for all civil rights, or an intense desire to ensure everyone in the nation was afforded the same support or opportunities as the privileged. Ultimately, this stems from the fact that the USA is a highly individualistic society, placing a higher value on themselves than the citizens of the country as a whole. Trump and the republican party capitalized on that, allowing the minority of white, right-wing Americans to have a stronger voice than most.
Despite the fact that Trump’s reign of bullshit is supposedly over, that doesn’t change the decades worth of damage he’s done, or the fact that he’s given extremists a platform to feel comfortable spouting their bigotry. Yes, democrats are moving into the white house – but that means nothing unless we keep doing the work to dismantle the divided society we’re currently living in.
