The wounds inflicted on the American body politic by the election of 2016 are deep and could prove mortal. The campaign and its hateful rhetoric inflicted the initial blows — seemingly minor lesions that the society brushed off as nothing serious. The real damage was done on November 8 when millions across the country bought into the con game postulated by Donald Trump with his promise of “making America great again.”
Americans should have seen a foreshadowing of 2016 when they looked into the faces of the people who sided with Trayvon Martin’s assassin George Zimmerman — future Trump supporters all. Zimmerman’s smug attitude of white superiority and his folk hero status in pro-gun and pro-vigilante circles were the bellwethers of what was to come. Trayvon Martin wasn’t our child, so it wasn’t on our radar screen.
The final election results not only shocked many in the nation, but thrust a dagger into the spirit of American democracy, patriotism, and the dreams of freedom and equality that so many cherish. The election of Barak Obama lulled us into a sense of complacency. Reversing the trends of 2008 and 2012, the election of Donald Trump brought forth an outpouring of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and machismo that has festered just below the surface for generations. Like the early signs of cancer that people tend to disregard, suddenly the malignancy takes hold and spreads with a vengeance, while the patient sits around and opines that it is nothing serious, hoping it will go away.
The election of 2016 has caused friendships and marriages to end. There will be lots of people seeking alternate plans for holiday gatherings — they just don’t want to spend Thanksgiving dinner with Uncle Joe whom they know voted for Trump and will brag about it as he passes the gravy.
In the wake of the election, children in Royal Oaks, Michigan walked around the school cafeteria carrying Trump signs and yelling “build the wall,” as Hispanic children watched in horror. Back in March, when two Indiana Catholic high schools competed in a basketball game, the members of the largely Hispanic team were welcomed to the floor with chants of “build the wall.” The bishop reacted voicing his disgust but he had likely missed the signs that had simmered in his diocese for a long time, knowingly or unknowingly encouraged by parents who casually made anti-immigrant and racist remarks — remarks that were validated by Donald Trump.
Early in the campaign, when Trump attacked Senator John McCain, we all assumed that those comments would put the final nail in the coffin of a possible Trump presidency. But Americans — even veterans — gave him a pass. His supporters went on CNN to explain away his comments and tell the rest of us that we didn’t exactly understand what he said. It was like that mole on your check that you didn’t think was serious and everyone said it was nothing until the doctor said it was incurable skin cancer.
We didn’t “throw the bum out” when he attacked the handicapped, women, minorities and rhetorically asked “who would vote for a face like that” when debating Republican candidate Carly Fiorina. Maybe we didn’t really like Fiorina anyway, and it was easier to laugh the comment off as campaign rhetoric — it wasn’t our face.
Even the now infamous Billy Bush interview didn’t sway voters and the holier-than-thou hypocrites of the evangelical movement. They justified and explained away words that would have been career-ending for any black entertainer or athlete as “locker room talk.” Ironically, these are the children and grandchildren of the sanctimonious Americans who couldn’t vote for Adlai Stevenson in the 1950s because he was divorced and rejected John F. Kennedy because he was Catholic. But these self-proclaimed protectors of white womanhood, who like Trump instantly convicted the Central Park 5 and maintained their guilt even when exonerated by DNA evidence, had no problem altering their definition of sexual assault to justify anything and everything that Trump did relating to women — it wasn’t their wife or sister or daughter.
Not since the election of 1860 and the beginning of the Civil War has America been so divided. Back then it was the issue of slavery. Now it is bigotry, nativism, sexism, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiments which have risen their ugly heads and become acceptable, thanks to Donald Trump’s encouragement. But the proponents of these various “isms” don’t see it that way. Many, the direct descendants of immigrants, use the buzz words “make America great again” as an all-encompassing platitude that covers a multitude of sins that make whites’ skin — preferably Christian — superior to black and brown skin and live in fear of the changing demographics that will make whites the minority in the United States by 2023.
As a small child, my mother would take my sister and I to South Carolina to visit relatives. I remember changing trains in Cincinnati and riding in the segregated cars. There were no signs but when you got on the train, the conductor would look at you and tell you which car to go to. The nicer car for whites. The shabbier one for blacks. They were separate but not equal.
We visited cousins who attended segregated schools. When I asked my uncles if they voted — one physician and two pharmacists — they didn’t give me a straight answer, probably too embarrassed to admit that they didn’t try to register because they ran a business and didn’t want to rock the boat.
In elementary school, I watched The Mickey Mouse Club. It was all white. Blacks actors need not apply. As a teenager, everyone watched American Bandstand. Black kids never managed to make it onto the dance floor.
When I went to college in 1963, right here in Ohio, I was the only student on my floor excluded from the list of invitees to sorority rush parties. I lived in a room with five other girls. We were all pretty close until I came in from class one afternoon and everyone was dressing to go somewhere. No one wanted to explain that it was sorority rush and I wasn’t invited. We had a Chinese exchange student in our room. She managed to get an invitation even though she barely spoke English and was a communist — but preferable to me because she wasn’t black. It’s a memory that is burned into my mind — hardly the kinder, gentler America that most people would want to return to.
We, the losers in the election of 2016, will have to accept the final vote count, although I give my kudos to the peaceful demonstrators who show their disgust at the results. We will have to live with right-wing conservatives and folks like Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin as cabinet members — not to mention the horror of the idea of having gun-toting, neo-Nazi Milwaukee sheriff David Clark — a chocolate version of Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio — as a possible head of Homeland Security and Supreme Court choices that are likely to make Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas look like flaming liberals.
Americans cannot succumb to the wounds inflicted by the campaign and election of 2016. We must regroup and get ready to heal the wounds viciously inflicted on the body politic. If not, the history books of the comings generations will mark 2016 as the beginning of the end of the American way of life as we know it. Our nation will die of self-inflicted wounds unless we start now to heal the damage done by the election of 2016.
First they came for the Socialist and I did not speak out
Because I’m not a Socialist
Then they came for the Trade Unionist, and I did not speak out –
Because I’m not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –
Because I’m not a Jew
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemoller – 1946
C. Ellen Connally is a retired judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court. From 2010 to 2014 she served as the President of the Cuyahoga County Council. An avid reader and student of American history, she serves on the Board of the Ohio History Connection and was recently appointed to the Soldiers and Sailors Monument Commission. She holds degrees from BGSU, CSU and is all but dissertation for a PhD from the University of Akron.