You’re probably feeling pretty smug right now. You think you won, after all.
You think you’ve struck a blow, voting against “corrupt” Hillary, against scary brown people coming to take your jobs and vote more scary brown people into office, against “libtards” who are ruining the country with all their free stuff and elitism, against everything that you think is the reason you are angry, and now it will all be better.
Here’s what you actually voted against, in no particular order:
- Affordable health care
- Social security
- Medicare
- Fair tax policies that do not favor corporations and the wealthy
- Free, quality education for your children
- Product safety
- Workplace safety
- Clean air and water
- Unions, fair wages, paid leave, safe pensions
- Your favorite National Park
- The First Amendment
- Unfettered free speech and vibrant debate that defines “democracy”
- Freedom of religion and association
- The right to petition the government with grievances
Maybe that smug look on your face will fade when you see these things being stripped away. And if you are a liberal, democrat, centrist, independent or otherwise reasonable, non-racist voter who voted for Trump, you also struck a blow against:
- The abundance of nature and diversity of species
- Any chance of addressing climate change
- Anyone you know and like or love who is of color, disabled, has a chronic illness, is non-Christian, immigrant, LGBT, or hoping to retire in some sort of comfort
- The future of progressive policy
You may think you voted for power coming back to the people, an attractive idea co-opted from people like Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren pasted like a mask over the republican party’s blind hunger to dismantle everything that stands between corporate avarice and the security of Old Money and our safety and well being and any chance we’ll ever have of actually having any of that power.
The one thing you think you voted for and will not get is that power — quite the opposite — and your vote against the “establishment” just handed the establishment more power than it’s ever had in the history of the United States. They’re not giving any of it to you.
They aren’t sitting in some room somewhere trying to figure out how best to serve the needs of the people who just voted them into office, or how to keep their promise to make life fair and wonderful for you. They aren’t thinking about providing for anyone an economy and set of rules that provides a good paying job and a decent standard of living — in the spirit of Darwin and Rand, that’s your individual problem to solve.
They’re not thinking about you at all. You’re not even part of the team. Your input isn’t required, just your votes.
Instead, they’re digging out every piece of cynical, destructive legislation they’ve ever tried to foist upon those of us without power, every attempt to further rig the economy so you and I will never have any power, and scrubbing their hands together that they can finally get all of it passed.
You must be so pleased. Like that guy in the picture above, anticipating the feeling of a job well done.
Unfortunately, the rest of us are on that limb with you.