Patriotism in the Age of Trump
“America is great because America is good.”
- Hillary Rodham Clinton
These words have become just a little bit harder for Americans like myself to believe.
Desperate for collective mourning and perhaps some words of hope as the election results rolled in, I scrolled through my Facebook feed and messaged my friends back home on election night. Though some of my peers managed to muster a semi-optimistic message, the most common themes that emerged were disgust, horror, fear, disappointment, and trying to find someone else to blame: third-party voters, protest voters, and non-voters alike. Perhaps the most common theme I saw, however, was shame.
“I am ashamed of my country.”
"Today, I am ashamed to be American.”
I empathize with this. I have felt a whirlwind of emotions since the election was called, as I am sure many others have too. As Donald Trump began to rack up electoral votes, there was a sense of dread hanging in the air amongst my young, mostly liberal peers. Yet there was also a harrowing sense of familiarity.
As I sat in a room late into the night with a diverse, international group of students, the parallels my British friends felt to the Brexit vote this summer were unmistakable. They couldn’t bear to see this happen again. How could the world possibly harbor so much hate?
Of course, hate is not the only thing that drove Donald Trump’s supporters to the polls. There are serious social, political and economic concerns that many of his voters have. They are furious with a system that left them behind when many of them used to be comfortable, if not on top. The door to the American Dream, as they saw it, was being shut in their faces whilst being opened for others. So, just like in Britain (albeit mostly England and Wales), they used the power of the ballot box to send a message — and to dismantle the system that screwed them.
Yet to ignore the role of racism, misogyny and xenophobia in this election is irresponsible. And to take a play out of Trump’s book, it would be too politically correct. Let’s keep the facts straight: Donald Trump is openly endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. (The Klan’s newspaper, The Crusader, denies its support as an endorsement. It’s an endorsement.) He based his campaign around insulting a whole range of minority groups and women. I’m not saying all of his supporters are racists and misogynists. But a whole lot of racists and misogynists are his supporters. Van Jones expressed a lot of voters’ concerns about the mainstream embrace of these views eloquently on CNN as the election’s results became clearer.
So I get it. For many of us, we no longer recognized the country we thought we knew. We thought we were more welcoming, more open and more tolerant than this. As a result, many of us expressed that we were ashamed to be American. But how many of us have stopped to think: the exact opposite is how many of Trump’s supporters feel about us? The diverse, liberal, cosmopolitan society we uphold as our America is not the country they thought they knew. These people are no less American than you or I.
As should now be evident, we are at a critical crossroads. It shouldn’t be surprising that many Americans still harbor anxious feelings towards the kind of change that I (and I assume, many of you) see as progress. America is a huge country with a whole range of ideological, social and political views. What we are realizing, however, is that there are essentially two sets of values that characterize views of America which are fundamentally at odds with each other.
One set of values, as put by Rob Ford at the University of Manchester, is one that emphasizes communitarianism, tradition and stability. In this worldview, change is a source of anxiety. On the contrary, the socially liberal set of values emphasize change, dynamism, freedom of movement and cosmopolitanism. We must recognize that both are valid sets of social goals. The problem is that they’re incompatible. Many people already know this, but this conflict is reaching an apex — and not just in America.
We have politics as a means of carrying out the fight between these values. Yet it is a fight deeply entrenched and entangled in age, race, gender and ethnicity. A map of a pre-election poll (see below) was recently released showing that if only people aged 18–25 voted, Clinton (who embodied these socially liberal values) would have won in a landslide. Exit polling also shows this divide pretty clearly among voters up to age 44.
Source: SurveyMonkey (2016), available at Policy.Mic
So I have not lost hope. The values of cosmopolitanism and inclusion are deeply important to me, because the other view of America does not include me or my family. Evidence shows that if young voters manage to defy the odds and stay engaged, we can continue to fight for these ideals that are important to us. If we give up, then I will be ashamed of my country.
As it stands, I am still in shock. I am deeply fearful that when I return to the United States, I will be treated as if I am not American— that I will be profiled, questioned and harassed. I have already experienced what it is like to be profiled at the airport, to be looked at with an aura of suspicion because of the way I look or because of the color of my skin. In Trump’s America, I worry that these stereotypes and suspicions will be held not just by some of my fellow citizens, but by my own government as well. And that shakes me to my very core.
At the same time, I realize how fortunate I am to have grown up in a part of the country that welcomes, cherishes and celebrates diversity. My heart aches for those Americans who do not. But we do not have to subject ourselves to being second-class citizens during a Trump Presidency.
“America depends on you — you, all of you. America has never been about what one person says he’ll do for us. I didn’t say ‘Yes, I can.’ I said, ‘Yes, we can.’ It’s about what can be achieved by us, each of us, together, through that hard, slow, and, yes, sometimes frustrating work of self-government. That means all of us.”
- Barack Obama
So the fight starts now. We can all take a day or a week to mourn, but we cannot let this defeat us. I still believe in the country that accepted my parents as immigrants and gave them a shot at the American Dream. I still believe in the country that accepted me, as a first-generation American and taught me what it is that truly makes America great.
Donald Trump may be our next president, but I refuse to sit on my hands and let him strip away everything that matters to Americans like me. If that means protesting, I will protest. If that means marching in the streets, I will march. I will continue to fight for the America I know: one that is accepting, tolerant, kind and optimistic about the future. Because I still love my country.
About the author
Nealay Vasavda is a graduate student reading for the MSc in Comparative Social Policy at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford. He was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and received his Bachelor's degree in Anthropology and Political Science from Union College in Schenectady, NY.