Trump’s reelection is a gut-punch to progressives and liberals who believe humans can be rehabilitated or improved, but is it true?
For half of the population in the U.S. and for many people around the world, the U.S. presidential election results are devastating. What makes it all the more so is that it makes no sense. There’s only thousands of reasons why Donald Trump is unqualified and unfit to be president. We progressives and liberals keep asking ourselves and our friends, how can this be? We keep looking for any reason to understand how half the country saw fit to vote for him. We recite the litany of offensive, ridiculous, even insane things Trump has said and done, and still, it boggles the mind. We shake our heads. It’s beyond comprehension. How could anybody in their right mind have voted for this guy? It is utterly, totally, and completely illogical, and that is ultimately the point.
In the aftermath of the election, various pundits pour out copious copy and endless talking points trying to pin down how this happened. In a New York Times opinion piece, conservative columnist Bret Stephens asks, “How, indeed, did Democrats lose so badly, considering how they saw Donald Trump — a twice-impeached former president, a felon, a fascist, a bigot, a buffoon, a demented old man, an object of nonstop late-night mockery and incessant moral condemnation?”
Much of the excuses are political and demographic analyses. Tactical missteps like bumping President Biden off the ticket and anointing VP Harris without primaries. Or she couldn’t separate from Biden’s supposed failures. Or economic discontent and working class alienation; the middle class feeling left behind. All these reasons ring hollow when compared to all the threats and failures Trump brings. It doesn’t explain why voters preferred Trump with all his warning signs, not to mention that most Americans are opposed to his policies.
Most Americans support a woman’s right to choose. Most support the separation of church and state and oppose the Christian nationalist agenda to make the U.S. into a Christian nation. Similarly most support same-sex marriage. The majority of Americans favor…
