After Trump's Victory, The Case for Hope

I turned 40 today, and I spent the first few hours of my birthday staring at the television screen in disbelief. It is late at night as I write this, and, like many Americans, I am overwhelmed with emotion. I am terrified for what the future holds. I am ashamed that so many of my countrymen opted to elevate a racist, misogynistic bully to the highest office in the land. I weep for America, and I have no idea what I will say to my children when they wake up in the morning and ask how the man who has said so many hateful things about so many of us still managed to win the trust and support of so many others.

I’m a journalist, and so I feel the temptation to come up with stories that explain what right now feels like the end of an era in American history and the beginning of another, much darker chapter. Do we blame the regressive left for galvanizing frustrated working class whites into their own identity politics movement? Do we blame the Republican party for abandoning more or less every single conceivable conservative value in a naked push for power, and transforming itself into the haven of anti-Semites, xenophobes, conspiracy theorists, authoritarians, and other vile bodies? Do we point out to the obvious and considerable role that misogyny played in this putrid political drama, and question what it means to live in a nation that chose a man who had boasted about sexually assaulting women rather than a woman who, for all of her flaws, was a deeply capable, experienced, and responsible candidate?

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