{"id":17028,"date":"2024-11-13T15:02:48","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T15:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=17028"},"modified":"2024-11-13T15:02:48","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T15:02:48","slug":"america-the-bisected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2024\/11\/13\/america-the-bisected\/","title":{"rendered":"America The Bisected"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like most of us, I spent the past week in a state of deep reflection over our collective national fate. Like some of us, I mourned. The American political sphere seems to have reached an anti-zenith, one culminating in some dystopian rhetorical Babel tower built and sustained by hatred. What have I seen in my life and times? The death of nuance and curiosity. The death of (real) tolerance.<\/span><\/p>\n

I spent the past week reading status after status beginning with the words \u2018Go fuck yourself if you_____\u2019 regarding the election results\u2014a decisive Trump majority. Trump himself engendered\u2014I imagine because he had so much to gain, and now enjoys the fruit of his labor\u2014this exact brand of vitriol, something like near-total dismissal from the left of the humanity of the right and vice versa. He now rules supreme over our fragmentation, the sole beneficiary. I cannot emphasize the extent to which I am certain the \u2018go fuck yourself if\u2019 approach to our fellow Americans\u2014as sympathetic as it is, frankly\u2014will keep men like Donald J Trump in power forever. I cannot emphasize the extent to which the left\u2019s patent refusal to acknowledge a single human quality in the right* decisively lost what appears to be the entirety of the working class,* once a democratic bastion, and catapulted Trump to victory.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking about stereotypes, which served as the oil-slicks upon which we\u2019ve slid rapidly down to where we are. The left\u2019s general profile of the typical Trump voter is this: uneducated, uncultured, evangelical\/fundamentalist, nationalist, and white. I hope they\u2019re now asking themselves why Trump won 45% of the Latino vote, the highest for a Republican presidential candidate in history. Stereotypes run a troubled livewire between truth and untruth. Thanks to my up-bringing in a tiny conservative Midwestern town, I know many Trump voters personally, although few from my own inner circle voted for him (with some exceptions) \u2013 they are not, by and large, toothless xenophobes.<\/p>\n

They are\u2014if you\u2019ll allow me to generalize\u2014rural, religious, and educated, but not to a standard that approaches the left\u2019s quote unquote elite. Many of them remain in the small towns of their origin, and are proud to be there sustaining those communities. They pay attention to their money, hopeful for Trump\u2019s promised economy, which is also the issue that solidified his Latino percentage. I\u2019m speaking of people I actually know, people I grew up with, people worth understanding and\u2014here\u2019s something subversive\u2014people worth learning from. Is their perspective on 21st<\/sup> century life in America smaller than or inferior to that of their left-situated counterparts? I\u2019d say sometimes it is, and attribute this reality directly to the narrowness of perspective that\u2019s nearly inevitable, should one never venture meaningfully away from one\u2019s place of origin\u2014meaning one receives any and all education (including four years of college) in that very place alongside\u2014this is key\u2014the same kinds of people and ideas they\u2019ve always experienced, and the same norms they\u2019ve always inhabited. Rural Americans typically can\u2019t experience the demographic diversity (and this kind implies many other kinds) urban dwellers take as a matter of course. There are fewer ways of seeing and being, and more assumptions, therefore, about the \u2018right\u2019 ways to see and be.<\/p>\n

The curled-lip sneer of the left-elite for the entire right\u2014its steadfast refusal to attribute any moral integrity whatsoever to no less than half of America\u2014will take us from Trump era to Trump era. It\u2019s only a prediction, but let\u2019s see. The Trump supporters I actually know (and I assume many of those I don\u2019t) are not only NOT going to go fuck themselves, but continue to show up to the polls and vote for whatever powerful person that allows them to feel\u2014however deceptively, however crudely\u2014valued, seen and understood.<\/p>\n

The grief and pain of marginalized communities in view of a new Trump era makes more sense to me than I can rightly convey\u2014the queer and trans communities, POC communities, immigrants. So let me be clear about those to whom I make this appeal. If, like me, you are white, privileged, educated, and generally able to tolerate and engage true ideological diversity and diversity of lived experience\/identity, part of the \u2018work\u2019 to be done now may be disabling your elitist gag-reflex long enough to sympathize\u2014not with racism, sexism or fascism\u2014but the human beings to whom you hastily and even lazily ascribe these isms from your ivory tower. The more deeply we cling to our \u2018fuck yous,\u2019 the more robust Trump\u2019s victory becomes\u2014he has successfully deafened his supporters\u2014your fellow Americans\u2014to any condemnations you now choose to apply. ‘Fuck yourself’-style public engagement has led to two separate waves of Donald Trump. Can we agree it\u2019s categorically failed, and will continue to fail?<\/p>\n

Trump (and men like him) are only in trouble when we award the status of full humanity to the opposing party. I\u2019ll be more radical\u2014it\u2019s actually when we reawaken to that immutable status. I admit my hope is small, but I\u2019ll do what I can. If you voted for Donald Trump, you won’t hear ‘fuck yourself’ from me, or see me stare down my nose. But if you want to participate in meaningful dialogue about why many people\u2014specifically many oppressed people\u2014so fear and despise him, please, let’s talk about that. Let’s open each other up and see what new things we can find. The old things have ceased to serve us well. If you are celebrating the incumbent POTUS, I guess I leave you to your victory. But I question whether any of us\u2014any<\/em> of us\u2014should celebrate the completely bifurcated America we’re now forced to accept for four years\u2026don\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

Feature Image: ATC Comm Photo<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like most of us, I spent the past week in a state of deep reflection over our collective national fate. Like some of us, I mourned. The American political sphere seems to have reached an anti-zenith, one culminating in some dystopian rhetorical Babel tower built and sustained by hatred. What have I seen in my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":17029,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[462,463,1001,1360,1819,3937,3944,8922,9555,9561,9623],"class_list":["post-17028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comment","tag-america-the-bisected","tag-america","tag-bisected","tag-cassandra-voices-comment","tag-comment","tag-haley-hodges","tag-haley-hodges-comment","tag-the","tag-trump","tag-trump-supporters","tag-u-s-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}