Two cheers for America
The United States passed its test of getting rid of Trump, but serious challenges remain.
Even after the election, there’s still serious cause for concern. Despite documented evidence of this politician’s bigotry and admiration for authoritarian strongmen, despite armies of his cultish followers who will abuse and intimidate anyone who opposed their leader, millions of people still chose to support him and his party.
But enough about Jeremy Corbyn. Let’s talk about Donald Trump.
Now that Georgia has flipped, it looks all but certain that Joe Biden will be elected President of the United States. With the most votes ever won by an American Presidential candidate, no less. But many observers - especially up here in Canada - seem more fixated on the approximately 69 million Americans who backed Trump instead of the almost 74 million who voted to get rid of him.
And that’s with the Biden total growing much more quickly than the Trump vote. By the time all of the mail-in ballots are processed - hopefully Tortoise Nervosa Guy in Nevada finally gets all of that state’s votes tallied some time before Inauguration Day - an election that looked unnervingly close may turn out to have been a pretty definitive repudiation of Trump after all.
That said…yeah, many millions of Americans surveyed the last four years and decided they wanted more. That’s a problem. I don’t think they’re all racist - Trump’s surprising gains among Latino and even African-American voters show that something more complicated is going on - but there’s an awful lot of people in the United States for whom Trump’s race-baiting, corruption and incompetence was not a deal-breaker.
Trump will have won around 70 million votes by the time this is all over. And you know what that and five dollars will get him? A footlong sandwich at Subway. With all the advantages of incumbency and an opponent from a deeply divided political partywho ran the lowest-profile campaign possible, he fucking lost. He’s Jimmy Carter without the charity work and basic human decency. The number of Americans who for him is way larger than he deserved, but not nearly as big as the number that said “enough.”
And the winning ticket had Kamala Harris on it, no less. Two of the last three administrations will include an African-American in one of the top two positions. That was absolutely unimaginable when I was growing up.
As a Canadian I know all too well about America’s many problems - the prevalence of guns, a health care system that drives many people to financial ruin, a highly punitive justice system that disproportionately affects African-Americans, crumbling infrastructure, shockingly cruel border security policies. A Biden Presidency alone will not be able to fix all of these problems, especially with Republicans likely (though not definitively) retaining control of the Senate.
But I don’t look at these election results and see a lost cause. I see a United States slowly but surely moving in the right direction.
Now that I’ve spent all of this time burnishing my anti-anti-American credentials, let me savage this big, out of touch American corporation for this shockingly tone-deaf decision:
Less than a week before millions of Canadians are set to pay their respects to veterans by wearing a poppy, a national grocery store chain has banned its employees from wearing the symbol of remembrance while on the job.
U.S.-based Whole Foods Market says poppies aren't allowed under its recently updated uniform policy, which affects employees at its 14 locations across Canada.
But the company won't say why.
An employee of the Whole Foods in Ottawa says she was told by a supervisor that wearing the poppy would be seen as "supporting a cause."
"I was basically told … if they allowed this one particular cause, then it would open up the door so that they would have to allow or consider allowing other causes," said the employee. CBC News has agreed not to name her as she is concerned about reprisals at her job.
I’m not one for boycott culture, but I won’t be going anywhere near a Whole Foods any time soon. Because, um, we don’t have one in Halifax. And it’s overpriced anyway. But you get my point.
Now that he’s almost certainly gone, can I confess that this ad - which probably won the state of Florida for the Orange Idiot - is kind of awesome?
It’s not just a catchy song, it’s just so wholesome to a degree most American political ads - especially Donald Trump’s - are not. This is so many immigrants to the United States have exactly in mind when they pack up their lives and come to America for a new life. (Even under the most anti-immigrant President in decades, the U.S. is still the world’s number one immigrant destination by a wide margin, though Canada and many European states take in many more per capita.)
Mind you, a great song can make even the worst leader look good. The late Hugo Chavez ravaged his country to a degree that goes far beyond any damage wrought by Trump, but tell me this one (the title translates to “Chavez is Not Leaving”) won’t be stuck in your head for days to come:
That Trump ad is a nice example of what Biden should have done. The ad plays to feelings rather than logic. A subliminal feeling of discomfort or fear of one side (such as “socialist” Biden, even though there’s no evidence to support that) and a promise of security from the other side (even though they’ve actually let down millions of Americans) will trump (pardon... ;p) reasoning every time.
Not that reasoning isn’t important! Just saying, if the underlying feelings aren’t addressed, it won’t matter.
If Biden’s win is sufficiently strong - and it’s starting to look that way - Trump and his blindly devout followers will become a lesser worry, although not to be dismissed. The more significant problem will be that the far better educated and experienced Republicans in government who supported Trump in the first place still have their own agenda and may get the power to carry it out and/or obstruct real progress. America does seem to be struggling in the right direction, but it may have a long way to go if Biden doesn’t get a Senate majority...?
I hope the best for them. It’s a very culturally and ethnically diverse country and it won’t be an easy task.