For most political junkies, waking up on Election Day is akin to waking up on Christmas morning. Sitting and watching the returns is downright exhilarating. But for most Americans, this year was very different. There were a great number of #NeverTrump and #NeverHillary voters, and it’s unclear how many folks actually voted in favor of their candidate as opposed to against the other.
Given that my husband and I work in politics, we live and breathe the horse race, and while yesterday morning felt a bit exciting, it was also incredibly depressing, given the fact that our least favorite candidates from each of the primaries were on the general election ballot.
After my husband left for work, and after giving my kids breakfast, I sat down and logged onto Facebook on my phone, as I do every morning. In the sea of political posts, one stood out. An old girlfriend from high school posted a photo of a mutual friend with a heartbreaking farewell. Like many of this girlfriend’s friends over the years, our friend had died of a drug overdose.
While it’s easy to be consumed by a Presidential election when you work in politics, this old friend’s death was a jarring reminder of a few important truths. Four years ago, watching the returns roll in, my husband and I had decided to start trying to have a baby. While it was personally difficult to cast a vote this year because of the candidates on the ballot, I did so standing next the two children we’ve been blessed with since I cast a vote for Mitt Romney in the last Presidential election. While I’ve voted with my kids previously, there is something incredibly special about walking into the voting booth in order to show them how we choose the next leader of the free world. They are my most important accomplishment, and my biggest source of pride in the last four years; most parents would say the same of their own children.
This election has been by far the most vitriolic and heated in modern American history. Lost in the weeds for many in the media are some of the fundamental reasons why Donald Trump’s supporters were in his camp, and what exactly they were supporting and rejecting. The media narrative centered around racist, sexist and, at times, anti-Semitic messages, though these themes were hardly what drove many of his voters to the polls. In reality, those in huge pockets of blue collar America were rejecting the status quo, which Clinton, who has been active in American politics for decades, certainly represented. As evidenced by my small, blue-collar town’s issues with economic recession and rampant opioid addiction, things aren’t alright for much of white America.
In a pre-election Intelligence Squared debate that pitted Bret Stephens and Jennifer Rubin against Tim Carney and Ben Domenech, each side battled over the motion: “Blame the elites for the Trump Phenomenon.” Carney and Domenech argued in the affirmative, and in his opening remarks, Domenech explained why many Americans felt drawn to the businessman-turned-politician:
“Imagine you are one of the millions of middle-aged unemployed white Americans with a high school degree. There are today seven million men in prime working age who have dropped out of the labor force—that’s 15 percent, higher than we’ve seen since the end of the Great Depression. And there are millions more who know people experiencing this pain as a brother, uncle, or a son.
Moved from unemployment to disability, you receive sufficient benefits to subsist—around 1,200 dollars a month on average—and to pay for the alcohol and drugs that help you self-medicate. Your life is essentially one marked by hopelessness, desperation, and anxiety. You are statistically unlikely to ever re-enter the workforce. Alone among all demographics, your likelihood of suicide is rising.
The things that make life not only endurable but happy are religious faith, now lost to you; family, which is fractured; community, which is disintegrated; and work, which you find hard to come by.
The TV screen flickers with images of people living lives you could never hope to emulate. Your situation is bleak, and while our soma is better, it is still not a replacement for the pursuit of happiness.
Your tomorrows look dark. But the past, even the grimy parts of it, look like gold.”
The picture Domenech paints is that of my hometown, and the hometowns of many Americans. The America that turned out to the polls to deliver a victory to Donald Trump yesterday did so not because they were driven by hatred or racism, but because they’ve attended too many funerals for the spunky and fun girls and boys we went to high school with, now dead of overdoses and suicides. Friends they never imagined succumbing to an opioid addiction are now gone from this earth, leaving behind their broken and devastated families.
Every American, regardless of political persuasion, had their families closest to their hearts on Tuesday at the voting booth, and sometimes right alongside them, as my children were. They are what mattered to them on Tuesday, and they are what matter to us all today. As we focus on what comes next for America, our families should remain our priority — even as we seek to rebuild the bonds of our national community
The post What America Forgot About the Suffering of the Forgotten Man appeared first on Acculturated.