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“I’m starting with the man in the mirror / Take a look at yourself and then make a change”
Michael Jackson
America’s recent election handed us a mirror in which we can see ourselves as we really are. The votes of 155,992,024 citizens present a faithful image, “warts and all.”
It was a close election in which the winner received 49.9% of the vote while the runner-up received 48.3%. While neither candidate received a majority, the disturbing visage in the mirror demands a close look.
We see a nation in which deceit, debauchery, corruption and outright criminal behavior have become entirely acceptable. After a decade of excusing the inexcusable and accepting the unacceptable, we have become thoroughly de-moralized. Eighty percent of those fine, church-going folk who fashion themselves as “the moral majority” led the charge to make an infamously immoral man our chief magistrate. For a plurality of Americans, character no longer counts.
Election results remind us racism in America still exists
But race does. This election reminded the whole world that racism is not merely America’s original sin, but our besetting sin. The winner, who launched his first campaign by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists,” kicked off his second with the oft-repeated claim that “undocumented immigrants are poisoning the blood of our nation.” Racism was not a footnote to his campaign. It was his campaign. Carefully crafted racial slurs, thinly veiled as concern over immigration, public safety or employment security, formed the heart of his message.
The man we chose to become our 47th President ran the most consistent, cynical and cleverly racist campaign in American history. Exit poll data revealed that his bigotry did not cost him the election. It won him the White House!
Democrats, always talking about the future and “the arc of history,” can’t face this reality, and Republicans, who always varnish and venerate the past, won’t admit it but racism still sells in America. This narrow election was not decided by the price of eggs.
Like it or not, the man in the mirror is not only amoral and bigoted. He is also proudly anti-intellectual — a characteristic as American as apple pie. Since the nation’s founding, a key component of our national character has been what Isaac Asimov dubbed “a cult of ignorance” — a perverse notion that, in a democracy, one person’s ignorance is just as good as another person’s knowledge.
Trump’s election is a bitter reflection of all of us
In the 2024 election, this quintessential feature of American culture manifested itself as a virulent popular distain of the educated by the less educated, a suspicion of science and science-based facts and a distrust bordering on disdain for all expertise and institutional authority.
The man we just elected is no Thomas Jefferson. He boasted that he “loves poorly educated people” and promises to close the Department of Education. He gives face and voice to their contempt for those of intellect, virtue or expertise. Sadly, the man in the mirror — Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” — is who we have become.
The election of 2024 featured the world’s richest man, who had recently purchased and poisoned one of the world’s premier information platforms, contributing $277 million to the corrupt and corruptible candidate of his choice. From Monterey to Montauk, races were bought and sold as openly as a used Toyota on Craigslist.
Before you protest that “the man in the mirror is not me,” remember that elections produce a family photo and we are all in it. Religion without morality. Racism without apology. Ignorance compounded by arrogance. Corruption and greed without shame. That is who “we the people” have become.
T. Robinson Ahlstrom is a university administrator and Chair of The George Washington Scholars Endowment. He is an independent who has consulted with and written for office holders in both political parties.
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Publish date : 2024-12-30 01:49:00
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