My wife came down to breakfast on Thursday morning still in a daze over the outcome of the election. She said, poignantly: “I feel just like I did after my father died. I used to wake up each day with a sense of dread saying ‘That really didn’t happen, did it?’ But it did happen, just like this election happened, and I’m having that same sense of dread.”
She’s not alone. Millions of Americans, myself included, are in shock. Some are telling us to get over it, to respect the democratic process, accept the will of the people and honour the integrity of the office to which Donald Trump has been elected. But, with all due respect, I cannot.
Pundits are horrible at predicting, but great at dissecting after the fact. And so, despite being wrong for months, they have now discovered why Mr Trump won. They are saying that he spoke to voter anger. He tapped into their fears. He connected with their alienation from and frustration with the establishments of both parties. Voters simply didn’t trust Hillary Clinton. She was inauthentic. She was an elitist who embodied the establishment. I get all that.
What I don’t get and what is disturbing is that the president-elect is a crude, corrupt and contemptible charlatan. He is a self-proclaimed billionaire whose bankruptcies have cheated thousands of workers out of their pay cheques.
Feigning concern for the “forgotten middle class”, Mr Trump did prey on the fear and anger of those who have felt betrayed by a system that was, in fact, rigged against them. But he provided no constructive solutions, offering instead the vague promise of a return of “lost glory”, all the while fuelling their fear and stoking the embers of their anger with scapegoats to strike out against: Mexicans, immigrants, Muslims, and the urban poor. He made fun of the disabled and displayed a deplorable lack of respect for women. And he brazenly encouraged his supporters to use violence against those who opposed him.
The pundit class never understood Mr Trump’s appeal. During the primary season they repeatedly and mistakenly predicted his demise. What they failed to understand then, and only now see, was that Mr Trump had tapped into a vein of raw anger in a portion of the electorate. He might be a crude bully, but he was their crude bully.
It is wrong to argue that Mr Trump’s values are un-American. They are, sadly, very much a part of our history. We’ve seen it before: rage and violence against African Americans, Native Americans and successive waves of immigrants from foreign lands, to name a few. As Mr Trump unleashed his campaign of hate, the pundits never understood, until it was too late, that he could win. Now that he has won, they want us to put our concern aside and move on. I disagree because even if he surprises us by pursuing a moderate agenda, the hate he has unleashed will not easily be contained.
The other reason I cannot easily move on is because throughout this long election season Mr Trump’s language has been so vulgar and his behaviour towards women has been so disgusting that parents had difficulty explaining him to their children.
It became so problematic that my own children agonised over whether or not to let my grandchildren watch news coverage of the election. The entire campaign was a nightmare.
It now appears that the nightmare is only beginning. What we are struggling with is how to explain to our children and grandchildren that the man who said what he said and did the things that he did will now be president.
I, too, have done a postmortem of this election. Within the Democratic Party, I am arguing, as I have for decades, that we have slighted the white working class. Despite their having been the backbone of the party, we ignored the hardships they endured as they became victims of economic and social dislocation. We forgot to speak their language and failed to identify with their narratives. I agree with the arguments advanced by Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden: it is precisely because we turned our back on this constituency of Americans that we left them vulnerable to the hateful message of Donald Trump.
I accept this criticism and am committed to changing this sorry state of affairs. But what I can’t accept is that Donald Trump will be my president.
Now some might suggest that I am being un-American. I profoundly disagree. By working with allies in Congress and civil society to defend those who have, in just the few days since this election, been targets of acts of hate and violence in schools and in their neighbourhoods; by defending women from being degraded and assaulted; and by drawing the line between what is acceptable and what is unacceptable, I am being very American. Working for justice is also a proud part of our history. Our children need to learn this lesson. They need to know that we will protect them and others who are victims of injustice. And they need us to teach them right from wrong. They deserve this from us. And so, I respectfully dissent and proudly state that I will not accept Donald Trump as my president.
Dr James Zogby is president of the Arab American Institute
On Twitter: @aaiusa
