lokifan

Apparently I just can’t get past the need to do a reaction post to this…

This time it surprised me. I think that’s the other way round for a lot of people. I remember in 2016, I went to see my grandpa with my mum and younger sister on the day of the American election. They were sure Clinton would win, and I was like “...well. Brexit.” I was grimly expecting it, after Brexit and the way the EU had been over Catalonia’s independence referendum; my memory of summer 2016 is a series of parties where we’d talk about other things for half an hour and then dive back into furious discussion of politics. The Spanish police broke the hand and fingers of a friend of one of my students; my BFF’s Portuguese mother, who fought in the revolution against Salazar, said grimly that the Spanish police had always been more brutal. British judges were ‘enemies of the people’. Things didn’t seem to be going well, basically.

This time… there were moments I lost hope. The first assassination attempt on Trump - I thought he’d won in that moment, actually. But then people seemed to forget almost immediately, and Harris/Walz seemed great, and by so many measures the American economy was doing well. The Biden administration had achieved a lot. Women were voting early in much higher numbers than men; young men seemed to have turned against Harris, but older white women were turning towards her, and they vote more often.

I still can’t believe it. The popular vote. Every swing state. Inflation’s massive anti-incumbency effect is clearly part of it, but Trump ran a campaign that seemed… so incredibly weird? Ineffective, going to weird places, all the endless podcasts. He’s obviously deteriorated further, too. It’s just such a brutal refusal to see authority belonging to a woman of colour as legitimate.

The day after I woke up at 5am from a restless sleep and checked my phone. The same way I found out about Brexit - waking at 5am to see a row of crying emojis from my BFF and feeling my chest go cold.

When Trump won in 2016 I spent a lot of my day listening to Beyonce and texting the American guy I was going out with at the time. This time, I was exhausted by sadness. I spent the morning mostly in bed. It was lucky that my friend

kabal42 was visiting from Oz; he, I, and my flatmate

sodsta went round Regent Street to look at fancy tailored suits, and found a brightly-decorated Turkish restaurant. It was fun and distracting.

We went into Fortnum and Mason’s to look at all their weird expensive stuff, and I eavesdropped on two pairs of American women talking about the election. One pair seemed all in favour, and were talking about how unfair the media had been to Trump; one of the other pair, younger, brought up ‘grab them by the pussy’ and that maybe context wasn’t that crucial. I wasn’t infuriated, listening, until they all congratulated each other on being able to have a civil conversation about politics. They were white, and wealthy enough for a holiday in London. Of course they were able to be civil. They can afford healthcare and a flight somewhere for an abortion.

We got back late and I felt very guilty - our third flatmate’s American and I was worried we’d abandoned her. But she didn’t seem angry; she does generally like to process this kind of stuff alone. She’s considering giving up her American citizenship.

Thursday was rough too, but then I went off on an annual trip with friends which was wonderful. But still; this time feels more like grieving.

Just. I’d thought we still had a chance at 2C.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

princessofgeeks

Yeah, it was awful. I have accepted it but I am terrified and heartbroken. The sexism plus the right-wing media ecosystem won. But as always, so many people don't bother to vote. It just kills me.

From:

lokifan

Yeah. It's just so awful even from the outside.

But as always, so many people don't bother to vote. It just kills me.

YEP. Thinking of Brexit again - I saw a bunch of young people in the days after the vote being all "old people shouldn't vote, they ruined our futures!" and just like. A) fuck your ageism and B) 64% turnout for 18-34-year-olds vs 89% turnout for 65+! WE WERE THE PROBLEM.

I voted ofc but like, as a group. Turnout is the thing.

From:

spiralsheep

Honestly, the fact that what the Spanish have been doing recently in Catalonia has the legal blessing of the EU scares me.

"they all congratulated each other on being able to have a civil conversation about politics. They were white, and wealthy enough for a holiday in London. Of course they were able to be civil. They can afford healthcare and a flight somewhere for an abortion."

THIS. SO MUCH THIS. (And not only USians, obv.)

Anyone who doesn't want to hear my honest opinion on US politics and western Nice Middle Class Liberals in general should scroll past this....
I didn't know any African Americans who believed Trump would lose on either occasion (and interestingly everyone in my local bus queue, with an extremely different demographic - voiced similar opinions, albeit for different reasons). So the outcome was no surprise to me. Also, as someone in touch with western left of centre politics I'm very aware that Nice Middle-Class Liberals relentlessly sabotage precisely those groups who have historically proved effective against the rise of fascism (with small edge-case exceptions for some Nice White feminisms), while wailing and wringing their hands ineffectively about the aforementioned rise of fascism. And I don't think the Democrats would've won if their candidate hadn't been a WoC either, that's merely the standard Nice Middle-Class Liberal racist backlash (the same MM-CL racism that blamed Trump's initial win on Obama being Black which wasn't true either - at least blame Obama for what he actually did and failed to do).
/scrolling is freeeeeeeeeee

Edited Date: 2024-12-11 05:55 pm (UTC)

From:

spiralsheep

Also, and I feel I shouldn't have to point this out (and yet here we are): Hillary Clinton isn't Black.

From:

lokifan

Yeah, but she is a woman, and I think that was a factor in her losing (though I don't know nearly enough to know if it was a deciding factor). I don't think acknowledging sexism/racism/misogynoir etc among voters is the same as blaming it on the candidates.

From:

spiralsheep

"I don't think acknowledging sexism/racism/misogynoir etc among voters is the same as blaming it on the candidates."

Absolutely.
Acknowledging -isms is the first step towards changing those -isms.
The next step is changing prejudices and bigotry, not actively accomodating hate by blaming the targets of hate and excluding them (us) from society.
Fascism is based on exclusivist Us versus Them thinking. Anti-racism and social feminism are two of the best ways of challenging fascistic Us versus Them thinking (as are collective action groups such as Trade Unions).

From:

lokifan

All of this!

From:

lokifan

Honestly, the fact that what the Spanish have been doing recently in Catalonia has the legal blessing of the EU scares me.

Absolutely agreed. It's appalling.

. Also, as someone in touch with western left of centre politics I'm very aware that Nice Middle-Class Liberals relentlessly sabotage precisely those groups who have historically proved effective against the rise of fascism (with small edge-case exceptions for some Nice White feminisms), while wailing and wringing their hands ineffectively about the aforementioned rise of fascism.

Absolutely.

And I don't think the Democrats would've won if their candidate hadn't been a WoC either, that's merely the standard Nice Middle-Class Liberal racist backlash (the same MM-CL racism that blamed Trump's initial win on Obama being Black which wasn't true either - at least blame Obama for what he actually did and failed to do).

Idk - I'm very doubtful that the Democrats would've won with a candidate who wasn't a WOC myself, but I don't think saying they would have is necessarily blaming it on Harris. Trump has clearly benefited from and used to his advantage sexism and racism. But yeah obvs it becomes part of the same old "she isn't electable" thing for some people.

From:

spiralsheep

I'm not defending Harris specifically as a person (don't know her) or a candidate (don't think her campaign would've won it for a white Mr Harris either - Clinton otoh could've won and her campaign actively failed imo). The Democrat party machine is not there to elect people who are good for the majority of USians and unsurprisingly the majority of USians know that.

E.g. Tim Walz, the Democrats preferred white male representative, didn't have to make a public statement of support for a mass murderer generally unpopular amongst USian voters but he chose to do so because to him publicly supporting the normalcy of corporate mass murder of USians is important.

And, no, as I said about Obama in my first comment, telling the truth about Harris' disadvantages, actions, and failures to act, isn't racist but claiming the only way to win against a fascist candidate is to exclude Black people from public life is racist and is a response I've repeatedly seen from Nice Middle-Class Liberals (without looking for it).

Edited Date: 2024-12-11 08:20 pm (UTC)

From:

lokifan

claiming the only way to win against a fascist candidate is to exclude Black people from public life is racist and is a response I've repeatedly seen from Nice Middle-Class Liberals (without looking for it).

Oh yeah, same :(

From:

sabotabby

I wasn't surprised this time, even though I thought the Democrats campaigned better than I thought they would. TBH I was surprised when Biden won last time. It's like watching the elections in Russia—you know there is never any hope of real change.