As the news rolled in, state by battleground state turning from light pink to a deep scarlet, I couldn’t help but sigh and turn the television off. My partner’s cousin from India was in town for the week on a business trip and we quietly discussed the implications of what already seemed to be a foregone conclusion. Donald Trump would make the most unlikely comeback in the history of American politics to snatch the presidency for a second time. But was this comeback that unlikely? Was the political reincarnation of the worst tendencies and features of American politics so out of the question?
People often talk about how the political atmosphere in the US has become more adversarial and contentious than at any time in the history of the country. They would do well to remember the caning of Senator Charles Sumner by House Representative Preston Brooks on the floor of the US Senate chambers. Sumner was nearly killed in the incident and spent three years recovering before returning to work in the Senate. Meanwhile, a vote to expel Brooks from the House of Representatives failed, and while Brooks later resigned, he was re-elected to Congress in a show of support from his constituency. Many historians believe the incident heightened tensions in the country that would eventually lead to the Civil War.
US politics has always had a strain of violence and uncivil behavior ranging from assassination attempts to political bombings, from civil unrest to national guardsmen opening fire on protestors. Is it really so surprising that a convicted felon and accused rapist be elevated to the highest office in the land? Historians have widely documented the sins of the country’s forefathers and their successors. Thomas Jefferson’s sexual predation on Black female slaves, Andrew Jackson’s program of genocide against indigenous peoples, Franklin Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese citizens, and the corruption of Richard Nixon and his intelligence state are just a few examples of US leadership’s hypocrisy and allergy to democratic or humanitarian values.
This is all to say that Donald Trump’s second election did not surprise me in the least. For the last decade he has served as a disturbing mirror reflecting the worst our country has to offer. His unflagging popularity and jingoist rhetoric reflects a truth about the US that many in this country have yet to wake to. The US is a country born from Empire. The narrative of American exceptionalism is a guise for supremacist ideology flowing just under the surface of the US collective culture. Its foreign policy is largely bent towards maintaining its control as kingmaker and world police in service of securing the necessary resources and markets for the corporatist base that truly controls the American political system and international politics.
The ugly truth of American history is that we may not be the shining paragon of democracy and liberty that we are taught as children. The unprecedented prosperity of the US economy has always been driven by the spoils extracted, often violently, from oppressed peoples in the so-called global-south. All the while the riches have largely flowed to a mega wealthy class of venture capitalists, financiers, industrialists, and tech companies.
American liberalism maintains double standards both within the country itself and among the international community. A legal system for the wealthy and one for the indigent. Tolerance for dictatorships, genocide, and murder for some foreign powers and sanctions, violent intervention and mass civilian casualties for others. The War on Terror, Vietnam, Operation Condor, the Jakarta Method, and countless other US military or inteliegnce interventions are as much a part of the US legacy as the Bill of Rights, apple pie and McDonalds. Usually the working class, ethnic minorities, and other disadvantaged communities are the ones who suffer the most while the wealthy always seem to escape the worst of the fallout.
The Trump phenomenon is really the actualization of these ugly truths. An unveiling of what our country has either gleefully exemplified at worst or negligently tolerated in the service of profits at best. The Democratic Party has drifted further and further to the right since it flirted with leftist ideals in the 1960’s and as a result has been largely abandoned by the working class as shown by Trump’s gains in nearly every demographic of non-college educated citizens.
Democrats and shocked leftists around the country are now engaged in the blame game and debate about where the party must go to avoid the same mistakes. Solutions range from doubling down on the rightward shift of the party by continuing to pander to right wing neoliberal policy points, to focusing further on identity politics while attempting to energize a base turned off by a hawkish Democratic leadership. Neither argument truly addresses how we got where we are today or the abject failure of either political party to work on behalf of the working class.
Ultimately the question that upset Americans who voted for or against Trump should be asking is whether this 200 year old political system is capable of producing a moral society? Can a capitalist liberal system ever fulfill the lofty humanist goals we purport to hold dear? Or have we reached a point where we must evolve, where we would be better served by fundamentally re-examining the pillars of governance and the unfeeling economic system that undergirds it. Some Americans have already made that choice in this last election in an unexpected way. Can reform bring the change we all desire or has the time come for Americans to break up with “democracy”?
In addition to serving as a staff writer and JURIST’s Alumni Engagement Coordinator, Sean Nolan is a 3L at Southwestern Law School with a deep interest in labor and employment issues in the entertainment industry.
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