Kamala Harris lost because the American people aren’t really who they believe they are. People quote Maya Angelou and say “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time” in regards to Donald Trump. After all it is patently ridiculous that anyone could not see and know what kind of man he was. But now I have to consider the problem isn’t that the observers were morons who didn’t see the devil in plain sight, but that the observers were showing me who THEY are both through support and inaction. The American people are showing the world who they are through Donald Trump.
The people who support him support his most monstrous qualities and merely dress it up as anything else. Their impulses are indulged by watching him get away with what they want to do. And everybody else? Those in power don’t risk their position by exercising it, because they believe the optics would hurt their image and the damage to their image is of greater import than America being led down this path. Those whose power is the vote? They didn’t bother bringing the same vim or vigour that they did in the previous election cycle because when it became a contest between someone they held to a standard and someone who fails in every possible metric a man could be judged by only the one held to the standard would be taken to task and would be publicly judged and dressed down. The standard they set frequently crossed beyond perfection and demands of that perfection become contradictory.
If this perfection was not absolute and all-pleasing to opposing viewpoints there could be no working with her administration going forward to have the issue approached from a different angle, there could be no appeal to work with local representation to pass it up the chain, there could be no compromises, there was only all or nothing. And nothing passes it over automatically to the entity that cannot be “worked with” at all outside of a transactional devil’s bargain you’ll be worse off for. One that does not even pretend to value your input and will even lash out at you for failing to praise them blindly to say nothing of what they’ll do in the face of real criticism. It is preferable to allow one who will actively punish those who demand change or a fix to an issue or even the factual acknowledgement an issue exists to set that as the new norm, changing the system going forward so that you no longer have the right to make such demands than to deal with the hassle of talking like an adult to someone who did not meet your standards. It’s what? Beneath you to give them that much respect?
So what does this say that accepting a Trump win in its entirety was a less offensive option than Kamala Harris having a single issue being the wedge that prevented someone from voting for her? That it takes so little for her to no longer deserve your support? That lifting a finger and standing in line was more wasted effort than enduring what Trump openly promises? That HE is worth enduring by your inaction and SHE is simply NOT? What does it say that her record still needed proving and chances should not be taken but people could look on the Trump days and sort of hope for the best? What does it say the same people scared out of their minds about the implications of this election left it to ONE PERSON to bear all the responsibility of getting the message out to your next door neighbour who won’t listen to you who they interact with every day much less politics and politicians they make a choice not to care about and then might have just stayed home themselves anyways because they figure someone else will be doing the heavy lifting? What does it say about voters whose only concern is seeing “themselves” win and they simply look to this woman and say “I don’t see myself in her or what she does so I don’t care” but still lay blame when the little bubble of what they think matters gets breached?
And so the “failure” of the woman to be better than perfect, to whip an apathetic crowd waiting to have their problems solved for them by someone they treat more as a servant than a leader into action they were not already motivated to take, to approach the staggeringly high bar where she is considered worthy to stand in equal consideration as a politician against the worst politician in history that man won BY DEFAULT when those looking for flaws inevitably invented some to apply in the aftermath of remaining “on the fence” watching her fail against a man who did not have to pass a minimum bar to get his supporters to show up on election day. Hell he sets new lows for what is “acceptable” behaviour for someone not being set to any kind of standard and the trench being dug for it gets deeper daily if not by the hour.
Maybe it’s time we finally accept Americans are not actually better than this and the people who are left that are trying to be what they’ve always envisioned themselves are doing it despite the history and culture they embrace and not because of it. The people they try to act as exemplars to are exactly the ones working against them. America, you have the leader you worked the hardest for. And he will be the leader you deserve. The countries who have counted themselves your allies cannot be the friends we’ve tried to be any more. I share a border with a country that elected a psychopath who wants to use your military to run a global extortion racket, will sell our secrets, has no compunctions whatsoever about betrayal or murder for matters of petty ego, and has himself declared us enemies. You put him in charge, as much as your instinct will be to protest that it’s someone else’s fault. Somehow you cared less about keeping him out of power than you did in 2020, and it terrifies me to think the common denominator in the worst man’s wins is that the alternative was voting for a woman held to a different standard than any man. And the winner by default when naturally the standards were kept out of one person’s reach while the other had no test to meet is the man who normalizes holding EVERYONE to entirely different standards to which only one can ever truly be considered “deserving” of anything good. Or is normalize the right word? Because that is the history of America.
America, you have the leader you deserve now. You are not better. And you won’t be until you see and accept who you really are. That you are not simply moving on and “turning the page” but that you weren’t reading the book to begin with. Nobody can change without facing that. And then maybe when someone rises to represent what you think you are and you support them without hesitation or reservation it will be the sign of who you really are.