Everything is broken. That’s how its feels. So much that we hold dear lies shattered. Too many are whimpering in stunned incomprehension. Where are we now? Trump is victorious in the electoral college and is now president-elect. Who wanted this? Who took a chance on this completely inexperienced fraudster simply because they wanted a change? Why did so few people know which way the wind was blowing as Trump’s hair stayed lacquered into immobility?
All the systems that tell us about elections are broken. The polling was wrong. All the final aggregates of polls were wrong. Those elevated wonks who crunch numbers all day without ever talking to flesh-and-blood voters were wrong. But they were still whizzy enough to be changing their live predictions within seconds on online meters. This was self-inflicted angst: Florida was said to be in reach for Clinton and then needles shuddered as if on an empty petrol gauge and other states started to fall like dominoes. Our maps were useless. Sophisticated polling models? We may as well have asked astrologers. Either people have lied to pollsters or pollsters focus so much on hard data that nuance and conversation do not get included. We all saw the former steelworker who wanted his job back, less of the middle-class woman in a pantsuit who was going to give Donald a go. Looking at the numbers of white voters of all incomes who came out for Trump, it seems these people may have expressed complicated and contradictory impulses that were somehow not registered.
The media was heavily reliant on polling and its stories also lie broken. It has enabled Trump as one might give an alcoholic a brewery to run. Trump pushed ratings up and made politics a little less boring by being rude, obnoxious and unprofessional, ie authentic. We have seen the same phenomenon here with Nigel Farage forever “entertaining” us on Question Time. Trump – despite being of the media elite – could rail against that same media elite. Too many reporters filed their sub-Hunter S Thompson pieces about the wackiness of a Trump rally. This organised chaos with overt elements of white supremacy was written off as mad but not that dangerous in the early days. They know not what they do. But they did know what they were doing. It was assumed that Trump’s vote could not cohere beyond these monstrous rallies because the media has little way of envisioning the lives of those who don’t live in cities. Thirty-one of America’s 35 largest cities voted for Clinton. Trump was able to moblise the rural vote, one that generally all the elites mention but have little knowledge of.
The straight read-through of comparing the Brexit vote with the Trump victory is a poor way of understanding the many different countries that the US actually is.
Another thing that now lies broken is any idea that changing demographics might give way to a post-racist society. On the contrary, eight years of a black president has given way to a crowing white supremacy. The rhetoric for making America great again is rooted fundamentally in making it free of black people, Latinos and Muslims, or at least making sure they exist in only subservient roles. Trump’s vote was white. Some were certainly the white dispossessed, interviewed at every turn, but it was also the vote of many white women and middle-class white men. This is as deeply, deeply troubling as the tsunami of misogyny released by Trump and his supporters. In an election where we were told it was all about class, the poor, forgotten, angry working class, we now see that race and gender were absolutely key to unlocking this rage.
No one who has been online in the past few years and seen how racist and sexist discourse is now visible and therefore permissible will be surprised at the lived consequences of this. To want to shut down some of this speech is not the prerogative of oversensitive humanities students; it is an attempt to stem the sewer. The “locker room” talk of white men is now presidential talk. Liberals have been reluctant to tackle this because liberals like to see progress as linear. But we are hurtling backwards.
Think again. Social democracy – its very foundations shaken by Trump – is not a natural state of affairs. It has to be contested and fought for every step of the way. Basic notions of equality and fairness have shifted in a globalised world. They need to be addressed. Otherwise we end up with moral purists such as the Green party candidate, Jill Stein, or a Labour party that is cultish and distant.
The rethinking of the liberal project now means the following: a secure state, free movement, fundamental equalities. A discussion about the limits of growth has to take place. None of these fit Trump’s vision, but we cannot let go of them.
In dark times we can collapse in on ourselves – isn’t that exactly what has been happening for a long time now? – or we can turn outwards as the world ruptures and find new ways to cross the crevices all around us. Shine a light. Bertolt Brecht wrote, while in exile from Nazi Germany: “In the dark times / Will there also be singing? / Yes, there will also be singing / About the Dark Times”. We know the difference between change and hope. Sing.
