I
thought I was just scared of Trump – but it's his America I fear
Jessica Valenti
Thursday 3 November
2016 17.12 GMT
Misogyny,
racism and bigotry won’t go away if Donald Trump loses next week’s
election; it was already here before he drew it out into the
mainstream
With the
presidential election less than a week away, my once-composed
optimism has given way to panic. Sheer, stomach-churning panic. You
see, up until now I had done a somewhat decent job of not allowing
myself to imagine the unimaginable: Donald Trump winning. But as
election day looms closer, and the racism and sexism that infects
Trump’s campaign is ratcheted up, it’s hard not to be terrified.
In the past week, a
Ku Klux Klan newspaper endorsed Trump and white supremacists
announced their plan for widespread voter intimidation. Trump
rally-goers shouted antisemitic invective at reporters, and a
historically black church in Mississippi was burned and “vote
Trump” scrawled across the side. Another woman came forward to
accuse Trump of sexual assault, and a Texas official called Hillary
Clinton a “cunt”.
This isn’t a
political divide between left and right, Democrats and Republicans;
it’s an immeasurable moral chasm. And so I understand why it’s
been easier for many horrified by Trump to simply pretend there’s
no way that he could actually win the presidency. Imagining the
hatred underlying his campaign and politics being emboldened in this
way is just too much to bear.
If Trump wins – a
possibility, even if it is unlikely – what will our country look
like? What will happen to women’s rights, not just at a policy
level, but in schools and in homes? How much more afraid will
immigrants and people of color have to become that they’ll be
ripped from their homes or killed on the street by the very people
tasked to protect them? Part of the problem is that we already know
the answers to these questions: we’ve been living them.
This election has
uncovered something vile about America. That so many people would
support a despicable candidate is not news to those hurt every day by
racism, sexism and xenophobia; we know it’s alive and well in our
country. We’ve been dealing with it our whole lives. But to see
this hatred on such flagrant, unapologetic display is something else
entirely.
Even if Trump loses,
this isn’t simply a bad dream that we’ll awaken from on 9
November.
A common refrain
I’ve heard from Clinton supporters is that we’re better than this
– the hatred, the harassment. But if this race has shown us
anything, it’s that we’re not better than this. The bigotry and
misogyny – that’s who we are. That’s what this country was
built on. And even if Clinton wins next week, that’s who we will
remain.
As wonderful as it
will be to watch the first woman win the presidential election, it
can’t undo the truth of who we are. The deplorable people who feel
they no longer need to hide their hatred aren’t going anywhere
after election day, no matter what happens.
So I suppose my
panic wasn’t about the possibility of a Trump win, after all. It’s
about the reality of the moment we’re in, win or lose. It’s about
the slime that’s risen to the top, the stink we can’t wash off
with one election or one president. We don’t need to panic about
the future, because the present already contains more horror than we
can handle.
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