When a Country Shows You Who They Are, Believe Them
By: Christine Quaglia
Tags: Society, Election 2020, Politics, Society Politics, Presidential Campaign

When a Country Shows You Who They Are, Believe Them

I bought into the idealized version of America: the dream, the hope, the Camelot

As I write this, Joe Biden has not yet won the Presidency. He seems on track to win and by all margins, mathematics, forecasts and punditry he will have won by later today; this fourth day of November in the godforsaken year of 2020. In my mind, when that happened, I was going to feel rejuvenated, restored and renewed by this victory. The mind, the body and the soul that had been shredded, gutted and torn apart by these last four years, despite best efforts to mitigate the damage, would begin to be sown together. I would feel rebuilt and reborn because there was the brightness of a new day. It would be 2008 all over again when I awoke with tears in my eyes, filled to the brim with hope that we were in a brave, new and beautiful world.

That was the fantasy, the hope, the dream that is, lets’s just say…..unrealized. I sit here writing this in pyjamas, with half drunk coffee in a Golden Girls mug, hair unbrushed, eyes wide and feeling shredded, gutted, torn apart, hollowed out, hungover (after one glass of wine), empty and, most frighteningly, paralyzed. A friend who really knows me (and who also pointed me in the direction of this piece — thanks friend!) wrote to me this morning and asked how I was doing. I replied that I was very, very, very, very, very cautiously optimistic and hopeful for Biden but, also, sad. In writing to my friend I attributed my sadness to an inability to ever just be really happy, but, the more we kept talking, and my friend expressed their own feelings of hope and faith in America being misplaced, the more I realized that I, my friend, and, undoubtedly millions of people the world over, had every reason to feel sad, pissed off and, in my case, unable to make any sudden movements, or, really any movements at all.

We have every right to feel those feelings because America let us, and itself, down. Again. And again and again and again seemingly ad infinitum. Joe Biden (here’s hoping) will win but he will do so with a whimper and not the forceful bang that would have signalled a nations repudiation of Donald Trump’s unabashed, unmitigated and unchecked evil. It was incredible that after the cages, the walls, the Coronavirus, the science, fact and truth denials, the misogyny, the sexual assault, the incitement of violence, the racism, the mocking of minorities and the lies, just the sheer volume of lies, fifty percent of the country remained in his corner.

Of course, there were those who decamped and went to ‘the other side’. Others didn’t necessarily like the man but liked what he had done for their 401k’s and stock portfolios to ‘overlook’ the crazy, facist and dictatorial things he tweets, says and tries to do. And there were others still, the majority of Trump’s voters, who, most disturbingly, just love the man and all that he stands for and represents. The cages, the science denials, all of it.

They love him because he has given voice to their fears and their anxieties. Their racism and hatred and bigotry and misogyny and, at the bottom of it all, their ignorance because he too is ignorant. Trump has not only given voice to that ignorance, he has amplified it by using the biggest megaphone in the world, the office of the American President, from which to sew such hatred and venom. And fifty percent of the country, even those who don’t necessarily support his ignorance, did not have enough will, courage and basic humanity to let their own fortunes fade, even a little, to say: “enough. No more. For the good of my own heart, this country and the world, this has to stop.”. It is astounding, terrifying and, yes, nearly paralyzing.

It is astounding and, yet, it shouldn’t be. It should not be because as I wrote to my friend this morning, who pointed out that this was a good starting point for a piece, “when America showed us who they were the first time in 2016 — and really throughout Obama’s entire presidency — they were to have been believed.”. America showed us who they are then, they keeping showing us now and they ought to be believed. The rot is deep.

Women and their rights to choose do not matter. RBG is emblematic of that now as her choice, her deathbed choice, went unheeded. The planet does not matter more than profit. They show that by denying Science, by leaving the Paris accord and, in the ultimate rebuke, re-empowering a man who believes windmills cause cancer, forest floors need to be swept to avoid fires and, oh yes, a deadly and lethal pandemic is no worse than the flu. Two hundred thirty three thousand and counting Americans are dead on Donald Trump’s watch. It is a 9/11 nearly everyday that is met with a shrug and a ‘we won’t contain this contagious virus.’. Unemployment are at all time highs, trade is a disaster as a failed businessman failed at, you know, business. Dignity and basic human rights, values and freedoms and institutional norms are in tatters, hell, basic reality is in tatters and, yet, fifty percent of the country thought ‘let’s give DJT another whirl.’.

He not only failed at the job interview, he failed at the job and yet, instead of resoundingly having his own catchphrase — “you’re fired!” — bite him squarely in the ass, he was on the verge of being rehired. Stunning and, yet, it should not have been a surprise. I should not have felt my heart stop or myself nearly lapse into a catatonic state because America has been crescendoing to this inflection point for years, maybe, since it’s very inception.

Women have never really mattered in America. Immigrant lives have never really mattered in America. Black lives have certainly never mattered in America. LGBTQ+ lives have never mattered in America and that is all because true equality has never really mattered in America. What America, and the people of good conscience who do live there have done, every once in a while, is to put the thinnest of barriers between who America can be and who America really is. They have done this when a man like John F. Kennedy or Barack Obama have been elected. Or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez comes from nowhere and catches the country by storm. In those moments, the gap between their real and ideal selves was closed and Camelot was achieved.

As Jacqueline Kennedy was working to cement her husbands legacy after his assassination, it was she who gave the culture this notion of “Camelot” citing a song from her husbands favourite musical of the same name. In particular, she selected this lyric to define the Kennedy years: “don’t let it be forgot/that once there was a spot/for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.”. And that is what the Kennedy years were: a brief shining moment that was known as Camelot and were , ultimately and unfortunately, forgotten. The Obama years were a Camelot too. A brief interlude, a beautiful dream of what could be possible in America; the faintest glimmer of hope. Bruce Springsteen encapsulated this dream but I don’t know if the Boss realizes it is a dream. Dreams do come true but this one hasn’t. Not yet and maybe not ever.

People such as myself, and those like me, see the idealized version of America and have thought it to be true. The reality though, the overarching story of America is one of war, plunder, enslavement, unbridled greed; the raw grab for power and a pull back toward the past rather than a march toward the future. This pull toward the past has put America on a path toward fascism and autocracy. That was never more clear than at three a.m. last night when an American President declared victory and asked that legally cast votes not be counted. It was democracy, if not being destroyed, being irrevocably damaged. An election is stolen and rigged only if he doesn’t win.

As Van Jones pointed out last night, there is a difference between a moral victory and a political victory. Joe Biden may win the political victory but America has lost the moral one. They have because Donald Trump, the ultimate artist of projection, the one who has been screaming about a rigged election for months, nearly won an election that he himself rigged. Trump has cast doubt on mail in ballots, claimed (because he knew they’d be blue) that they ought not to be counted and that any election result, if not in his favour, was false.

It all felt shocking and disappointing but it shouldn’t have been because this wasn’t the first time there was a questioned, stolen and, yes, rigged election. It was just the first time it had been put out there with such plainness and force. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 and is not the President. George W. Bush and his cronies stole the election from Al Gore. The only difference between then and now was a veneer of due process, but, at the core, the rot remained. Pundits wax on and on about Donald Trump upending norms and institutions but, it is not the norms and institutions failing or failing people, it is the people failing those norms and institutions. They are every time they don’t question, rise up, march, or, at this moment, resoundingly reject a dictator like Donald Trump.

I bought into the idealized version of America: the dream, the hope, the Camelot. In other words, not the reality. Maybe someday America can become the ideal version of itself but, today, it remains its real self. Maybe someday it can fully and finally live up to its own ideas, its own ideals, its own potential. Maybe someday but not today. Not anytime soon. America has kept showing us who it is. It is time to start believing them. I finally do. And it makes me sad but, I also feel relieved. The truth will really set you free. I can stop wishing and hoping now for America to become something it is not; something it may never be. I will continue to hope for it, but, I will no longer be let down by it. I see who they are now, they have laid it bare. The biggest difference is though that this time I believe them and I hope that you do too.