I Do Not Understand You People

Donald Trump gave us the two most surreally enraging moments of his first presidential term on his way out the door. The first was on June 1, 2020. After Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd to spur nationwide protests over police brutality and structural racism, Trump left the White House on foot for St. John's Episcopal Church. Law enforcement violently charged, gassed, and shot with rubber bullets demonstrators in Lafayette Square so that Trump could peacefully walk to the front of the church. There, he awkwardly foisted a bible in the air with the reverence of a baboon considering its own turd. Then, after hardly uttering a word, he walked back to the White House.

It was a galling yet confounding display of autocratic force and vanity, pettily wielding agents of the state as a cudgel to serve no end except his own image. The image Trump chose for himself, meanwhile, was devoid of symbolic power or popular appeal, contributing to the perception that he was (and is) mentally deteriorating with age.

The second, of course, was on January 6, 2021. The culmination of two months of false claims he had won the 2020 election, the Trump cult descended on the Capitol to disrupt the certification of that election's results. While some were your run-of-the-mill suburban racists on a tour of imagined grievances, many rioters were legitimate extremists from militia groups such as the Proud Boys, carrying zip-ties meant for members of Congress and planting pipe bombs around D.C.

Trump held a rally at noon that day to incite the insurrection and call on Mike Pence to overturn the election. As the attack proceeded, Trump refused to intervene. In the previous days, he in fact had ordered the Department of Defense to protect the rioters.

For his action and willful inaction encouraging a coup, the House of Representatives impeached him, and the Department of Justice indicted Trump. He left office with a 34-percent approval rating, tied with those of George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, who departed during economic crises (which Trump, presiding over the COVID-19 pandemic, also oversaw), and only trailing corruption-allegation-plagued Harry Truman and post-Watergate Richard Nixon. Though Trump maintained a devout base, the public rejected him.

Yet here we are. The societal causes are numerous — and in some cases, even in the wake of Trump's initial defeat, were foreseeable. While people smarter than me are already interrogating that, I am taking this moment to rage at the American electorate itself.

When the problem of Trump was immediate, people appeared to understand its weight. He had not won the popular vote in 2016 or 2020, but in the latter case, he was booted from office. There are no shortage of largely apolitical Americans who loathe Trump for reasons beyond his actual policies and actions in office: his self-centered personality, his criminal record, his background as a celebrity and New York elite. To apparently forget the danger and despicability of Trump is unfathomable.

The Republican Party platform is free online, known as Project 2025. News outlets reported on it extensively; if you somehow missed it, among its actual positions and aims for a second Trump term are:

• The government's arms of environmental protection should be defunded if not outright dismantled, and the United States and its allies should pursue fossil fuels again — despite the incontrovertible truth of human-caused global warming.
• The government should prioritize the heterosexual nuclear family at the expense of queer people, unmarried couples, and single parents (namely single mothers). This includes making it more difficult to access welfare programs such as TANF or the Child Support Tax Credit, increased meddling in sexual health education for teenagers, repealing a 2016 law that made it illegal to discriminate against queer couples looking to adopt, redirecting funds for child abuse prevention and adoption or foster services to "healthy marriage and relationship education," and limits on contraception.
• Acknowledgement of queer people, particularly transgender people, should be removed from all policy. The document's foreword describes gender-affirming care for trans teenagers as "child abuse."
• Abortion should not considered healthcare, even as women die as a direct result of restrictive abortion policies, and should be made harder to access across the board.
• The federal government should reduce its support for public healthcare and add requirements for citizens to access its services, favoring private insurance companies.
• The Department of Education should be abolished, and free lunch for low-income children should be curtailed.
• Tens of thousands of federal employees, who for decades have been hired not for their political leanings, but for their expertise, experience, and general competence, should be replaced with appointees loyal to the president.
• The president has the right to deploy the military against citizens or as law enforcement to pursue his aims.
• The military should expand its nuclear arsenal and be prepared specifically for war with China, something the manual's authors seem to actively desire.
• Consumer protection organizations, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Federal Trade Commission, should be abolished or disarmed.
• Corporate taxes should be significantly cut, with higher taxes for the lower and middle classes.
• The president should expand the death penalty and "obtain finality" for those currently on death row.

The 922-page document contains countless regressive proposals, some euphemized more than others. They add up to this: The stated goals of Trump's administration will be an unprecedentedly powerful executive, dictate more of individuals' private lives, cut funding to social programs, expel immigrants, and prioritize the interests of the rich.

But you do not even have to go through the minutia when Republicans so often say what they want to do. Everything Trump threatens lines up with historical examples of fascism: illegally jailing political opponents and minorities, threatening the constitutional freedom of the press, imposing high tariffs that will isolate and kneecap the national economy. The comments of J.D. Vance, an uncharismatic lizard who is now a heart attack away from becoming president, echo Nazi family policy when he gets to discuss how childless women "really disturb" him.

This party is telling you what they are. They always have.. White supremacists, the incel subculture (who would probably oppose Project 2025's foreword saying pornography should be banned), and the richest people on earth steadfastly support Trump for a reason. He advances policies that hurt minorities, hurt women and queer people, and jeopardize your livelihood so that capitalists can make more money. I have no respect for the "swing" or "middle-ground" voter who could not pick between Trump and literally any serious candidate opposing him. Whatever your opinions are on Kamala Harris — a mostly milquetoast Democrat who is well short of my ideal candidate — it took astonishingly little effort to see which candidate is a dangerous tyrant and which is not.

I cannot attribute Trump's re-election entirely to short memories and ignorance, though. The truth is that millions of Americans — specifically white Americans, particularly men — signed up enthusiastically for fascism. This result is an endorsement. They have co-signed the idea that every person who does not look like them is a murderer or a predator who must be pushed out of Western society before the great replacement. They view terrorist attacks by angry white men and murders by police officers impassively. They believe every absurdly false internet story about educational curricula and use them to harass overworked teachers and infiltrate school boards. They support attempting to supersede democracy. They approve of the monstrous decisions of this Supreme Court and the near-certainty that Trump makes sure it stays composed like this for a generation. Or if they do care about any of these issues, they will gladly trade those concerns in for temporarily cheaper gasoline.

This is a hate-ridden, stupid country. With the far right gaining ground internationally, there are many others like it, which provides no comfort. There will be ways to fight back, but aside from saying that it has long been obvious that the Democratic Party should run on an actually progressive agenda and help people economically, I will for now defer to optimists on that. While the shock of 2016 prepared me for 2024 and makes it easier to act tomorrow, today, I choose indignance. This is the only home I know, a nation I genuinely love despite its innumerable sins, and its choices disgust me.

What has not changed since 2016 is that I am afraid. The world will be a worse place as a direct result of Trump's two terms. Will my gay friends be safe? If I try to have a child, and my partner miscarries, will she die because the hospital is legally barred from aborting the pregnancy? I may live to meet my grandchildren, but will the planet be habitable long enough for them to get to meet theirs?

These are serious questions I have as a straight white man, born in this country to a Christian family and living in a blue state. Such questions do not begin to encompass all of my fears, and I have it far easier than the people who will hurt the most because of the next four years. But we all will hurt, in ways reversible and not. Take care of your neighbors, since half the country proudly will not.