Hate won

By Deauwand Myers

Hatred is a most useful and effective emotion. Constituents of it: violence, murder, cruelty and malice inform history. It is a renewable resource; for in the human heart, hate burns incandescent. It doesn't require nurturing.

For the first time in 16 years of political forecasting, I was wrong. Further, national polling, accurate more than ninety-seven percent of the time, was also out. That information being so off in so many states has never happened before in modern US history. Literally.

The election of Donald Trump is disastrous for many reasons, and for those who want assurances: there are none. A Trump presidency with a Republican House and Senate will have awesome power. This is substantial and far-reaching: federal courts, regulatory bodies and the military.

The EEOC, decimated under Bush II, just rebuilt under Obama, will be hollowed out once again under Trump. Fair employment practices and most labor law will not be enforced.

Environmental protection, reproductive rights for women and all social welfare programs will be greatly diminished or nullified.

I take no comfort in the fact that some of this will disproportionately and negatively affect white men and women of the lower socioeconomic strata; those who voted en masse for Donald Trump. It is, however, deliciously ironic.

This white-lash is self-destructive and enlightening.

I was surprised by the scientific polls being wrong almost everywhere. Again, that's never happened. But that's all I was surprised about.

We have a state, our national capital and several universities named after George Washington, a man who was deeply involved in and emphatically a proponent of the genocidal practice of slavery and the slave trade. We honor him. In 2016.

America is an empire. Most empires, particularly large and powerful ones, employ mass murder and evil to expand and sustain themselves. That's not an indictment, just a description. Colored people and women are not, and most likely never will be, fully welcomed in America.

This makes the demographic breakdown of the election results most interesting, especially considering Trump's racist, sexist, misogynist, nationalistic, and xenophobic past. Consider: over forty-two percent of women, over eight percent of black people and more than Romney's twenty-four percent of Latinos voted for Trump.

Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate. Her mundane campaign style, her arid list of policy proposals, her overconfidence in picking an equally boring, vanilla technocrat as her vice presidential running mate, and her impulse to be secretive, guarded, and robotic with her media interactions were all problematic.

But in comparison to Trump, (and actually, most politicians of her stature) she's a paragon of virtue. Yet Clinton's e-mails (discovered only after the umpteenth Benghazi investigation, a mere political witch-hunt in itself) and charitable foundation, both of which had, at worst, the appearance of impropriety, and yes, poor judgment, were deemed disqualifying.

Juxtaposed with Trump's mountain of sexual assault allegations, lack of tax records, several ongoing criminal trials (and never before in American history has a president-elect been charged with crimes and awaiting possible conviction after winning the national election), past prosecution by the federal government for racial housing discrimination, and his re-tweeting racist, sexist, anti-Semitic messages by the ultra-white supremacist right is breathtakingly unjust and unsettling.

What's most heartbreaking, for some, is Trump's racism, cruelty, and misogyny were rewarded. It teaches us what many already knew: a more qualified candidate in a female body is likely to lose out to a much less qualified male one. She's afforded no lapses in judgment, while he's given the benefit of the doubt for his long list of malefaction and misdeeds.

Trump's "Make America Great Again," like Romney's "Take Our Country Back" are slogans reflecting white angst and anxiety. They hearken to nostalgia for the good, bad old days, when white supremacy was unabashedly promulgated and embraced.

Trump factions vandalizing property of racial minorities; white children taunting Latino children with "build the wall!," physical assaults on racial, ethnic and religious minorities, and the deluge of epithets targeting them, are all emblematic of white fear and hatred experiencing a resurgence we haven't seen since the Obama era, now coming to its end in epic fashion.

Unity was not how Trump got here. Fear and loathing worked, and astoundingly well. His lack of policy proposals, beyond scrutinizing Muslims and deporting undocumented immigrants, his vague and broad pronouncements of everything being "great," without telling us how, only bolstered his supporters. Trump is in no way obligated to change his rhetoric or attempt reconciliation with the many groups of people he's derided and disparaged.

A demagogue, Trump's thin skin, and his affection for dictators and fascism, should give us pause.

America deserves this unfolding horror show. Bush II was the worst president, by literally any metric, we've had in a century. We must want a repeat, but worse. Good luck with that.

Deauwand Myers holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.com.