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And they'll coach you in the classroom that it cannot happen here, but it has happened here
I didn't realize how much I had existentially relaxed in the last eight years—how much having Obama in office made me feel safer on some unnoticed level, because I knew the world was getting better in ways that mattered deeply, no matter the turmoil and backlash of working out the routes and means. I thought I could expect it to keep getting better. My low-bar, minimum-clearance definition of better was apparently so terrifying and repugnant to more than half the country I live in that they killed it. Now I don't feel safe and neither do most of the people I love and I know I will have to find ways to fight for them, because the alternative is not acceptable to me (nor would it make me safer: I am not in the demographic of America Trump promises to make great again), but it feels exhausting even to contemplate and any fight of this kind will take the most resources from the people who already have the least to spare. Right now I cannot imagine relaxing again and I spent most of my adulthood working to convince myself that this world was a good place to stay in; now I feel it would be irresponsible to leave it, but I don't expect to enjoy it. This is the tension of the Bush years. Worse, in fact, because then I thought we must have hit rock bottom, surely we must recover, if we just don't blow up the planet there cannot be farther to fall. This is not how I had hoped to feel by today. I don't believe in miracles, but an improbability would have really been nice.
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And I didn't think that the world was just getting better on its own without input or attention—I thought that people were working toward it because the majority had agreed it was better to have a future that took care of its planet and its people and did not structure itself according to inequality and indifference and hatred of the stranger. I didn't take it for granted. I thought they—we—had decided the tough decisions and the rocky stretches on the way of progress were worth it. It was the way I prefer to live. I do not like finding out that the work people were willing to do instead was retrograde: closing possibilities rather than opening them. I don't actually see that the closed world does any good in the long run, no matter what fantasies it feeds.
Does anyone know what happened with the polls? Were there really so many who changed their minds at the last minute? Was it simply that people who planned to vote for Trump all along just decided not to disclose that fact to the press?
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Yes. It's partly, I suppose that I live in a bubble (NYC does not have a lot of Trump supporters) but it's so hard for me to understand how so many people could vote in support of such nationalistic, xenophobic nonsense.
Does anyone know what happened with the polls?
The biggest problem with the polls seems to be large numbers of rural, uneducated voters. They were quite open about the fact that they preferred Trump, but because in the past they have tended not to actually turn out to vote, they were discounted in the statistical weights. Instead they showed up in unexpected numbers. Trump also did better than expected with both women and people of color, though I haven't really seen any explanations yet of why that hadn't been captured in the lead-up polls to election day. In addition, Democratic turnout was lower than expected – this may at least in part be due to restrictive laws passed since the end of the Voting Rights Act.
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Trump told a story about America that didn't offer anything attractive to you, just as it didn't offer anything attractive to me or any of the people I know closely—his fantasy of America was inimical and repulsive to us, partly because we were variously forms of the Other which his story excluded or cast strictly as the enemy. For people who saw themselves as the last embattled fragment of the true America, however, I think it was irresistible. It wasn't nonsense to them. He was telling them a story which matched and strengthened what they believed and feared to be true. People believe most easily those things which accord with their beliefs, which sounds tautological but explains why logical argument hits a wall so much of the time; people are susceptible to stories. They're brain hacks. The right narrative can override any number of facts. Trump gave the right narrative to the parts of the country which needed to hear it and it didn't matter that every other word out of his mouth was an inaccuracy at best and a lie more of the time, it felt to them as though it described the reality of the world and they liked it. They were the heroes in it, the happy few, the last bastions. It hit all the right buttons. I like this phenomenon better when it produces really powerful art, not political disasters.
They were quite open about the fact that they preferred Trump, but because in the past they have tended not to actually turn out to vote, they were discounted in the statistical weights. Instead they showed up in unexpected numbers.
Thank you; that makes sense to me.
Trump also did better than expected with both women and people of color, though I haven't really seen any explanations yet of why that hadn't been captured in the lead-up polls to election day.
My mother was very upset by the willingness of women of whatever ethnicity, age, or religion to vote for Trump. She didn't necessarily expect them to feel solidarity with Clinton, but she did think they would recognize Trump as a danger. To her, it felt like a writ-large version of the phenomenon where women demonize and marginalize other women in order to increase their standing with men.
In addition, Democratic turnout was lower than expected – this may at least in part be due to restrictive laws passed since the end of the Voting Rights Act.
I had been afraid of that.
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Yes, I think you're right. It's just hard to deal with the fact that that's the narrative of the world so many people preferred.
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Understood and agreed.