There are tons of explanations for it. Here's a roundup of a few perspectives that helped me wrap my head around it all.
Last January, British journalist George Monbiot predicted this possibility as a result of the American culture:
"People with a strong set of intrinsic values are inclined towards empathy, intimacy and self-acceptance. They tend to be open to challenge and change, interested in universal rights and equality, and protective of other people and the living world. People at the extrinsic end of the spectrum are more attracted to prestige, status, image, fame, power and wealth. They are strongly motivated by the prospect of individual reward and praise. They are more likey to objectify and exploit other people, to behave rudely and aggressively and to dismiss social and environmental impacts. They have little interest in cooperation or community. People with a strong set of extrinsic values are more likely to suffer from frustration , dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, anger and compulsive behaviour.
Trump exemplifies extrinsic values. . . . Ever since Ronald Reagan came to power, on a platform that ensured society became sharply divided into 'winners' and 'losers', and ever more people, lacking public provision, were allowed to fall through the cracks, US politics has become fertile soil for extrinsic values. As Democratic presidents, following Reagan, embraced most of the principles of neoliberalism, the ratchet was scarcely reversed. . . . The American dream is a dream of acquiring wealth, spending it conspicuously and escaping the constraints of other people's needs and demands. It is accompanied, in politics and in popular culture, by toxic myths about failure and success. . . .
When a society valorises status, money, power and dominance, it is bound to generate frustration. It is mathematically impossible for everyone to be number one. The more the economic elites grab, the more everyone else must lose. Someone must be blamed for the ensuing disappointment. In a culture that worships winners, it can't be them. It must be those evil peopel pursuing a kinder world, in which wealth is distributed, no one is forgotten and communities and the living planet are protected."
Canadian journalist Max Fawcett thinks it's more to do with a sticky allegiance to the party:
"There is a subset of the American public that's been willing to vote for almost anyone, no matter how debased or depraved, so long as they're identified as a Republican. Back in 2005, screenwriter John Rodgers and a friend coined this as the 'Crazification Factor.' . . . In most parts of America, there's a non-insignificant chunk of the voting public that is, as Rodgers said, 'either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision-making is so flawed they may as well be crazy.' After eight years of Donald Trump, I think it's fair to say that the Trumpification Factor is now closer to 40%."
Culture writer, Paul Anleitner, said he saw it coming for years by noticing how well Top Gun: Maverick did at the box office because it "leaned heavily on classic modernist heroism themes. . . . Maverick represented more traditional American values of meritocracy over aristocracy amid what was supposed to be a cultural revolution intended to set up a new inverted aristocracy." He also points to the increase in anti-woke comedians, corporate cuts to DEI programs, enrollment surges at Christian schools, the resurgence of the band Creed, and the divisive Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
"Silly as it may sound to some, Star Wars has become an important myth in our culture and challenges to mythos means challenges to cultural power and influence. One faction of the Star Wars War wanted the storytelling to reflect more progressive, postmodern, and postcolonial values. . . . The divide between professional reviewers and average fans was emblematic of the cultural divide between the intelligentsia and middle America."
Others point to something Chomsky's being saying since forever: that the far right billionaire class owns the media. Yes, they own newspapers, but more importantly the far right owns social media, like Twitter, and we've seen all sorts of weird shit happening there: certain posts disappear quickly and can't be found again, and sometimes we know we followed this person, but they keep being unfollowed. And the BOTS. There are masses of bots on there, which Musk claimed is a problem he's been working on, but high profile people on the site have been commenting about the sudden loss of followers right after the election and concluding that they were all bots there to manipulate their message. We need our own Twitter equivalents. So far, Bluesky feels the closest. Politicians getting their message out and convincing people they're loved by all is what helps win elections.
Some people are pretty sure there's a white nationalism element to it, like in this TikTok, where one white nationalists provides his reasoning around his desire to stop immigration. But Sunny Hostin, on The View, explains that she's not worried about herself, as a Black woman, but she really worries about the working class. She thinks it was a "referendum on cultural resentment."
But, if you're side-eyeing your neighbours, there's always the possibility the numbers are completely bogus and Americans did vote for a kinder, gentler world. Why else did Trump keep saying, over and over, that he doesn't need anyone to vote: "You'll never need to vote again, and you don't even need to vote this time!" It's almost as if the dramatic "stolen election" of last time was a set up so no Dems would dare use the same line, even when possibly many mail in ballots weren't counted because of questions about their signatures and others suggest the line ups at the voting booth don't seem to align with the numbers who voted. So curious!!
(ETA: Some people have gone to vote.org and there's no record of their vote despite having gone in person and waited for the green checkmark. Other sent mail-in ballots and were told their signature didn't match after the election. Over 14 million votes appear to be missing. If yours is one of them, you can file a complaint.)
Some think the push to the extreme right happens after a pandemic if spending isn't in the right places:
"The 1918 influenza pandemic 'profoundly shaped German society' in subsequent years and contributed to the strengthening of the Nazi Party. . . . Areas which experienced a greater relative population decline due to the pandemic spent 'less, per capita, on their inhabitants in the following decade.' The paper also shows that 'influenza deaths of 1918 are correlated with an increase in the share of votes won by right-wing extremists. . . . The influenza pandemic's disproportionate toll on young people may have 'spurred resentment of foreigners among the survivors' and driven voters to parties 'whose platform matched such sentiments.'
Another potential effects of the pandemic is that they get us acclimatized to sickness and death, so we're less reactive when shit goes down, and we've straight up been told to accept that "the vulnerable will fall by the wayside". And Covid damages the brain, specifically the frontal lobe, which is responsible for the execution of empathy, emotional regulation, moral competency, and the ability to evaluate risks.
Yesterday, Andrew Nikiforuk explained it as more of a evolutionary shift that has little to do with Trump:
"Fascism overwhelmed Germany so abruptly in 1933 that few writers, cartoonists and artists had time to leave. Hardly any could appreciate the danger, let alone the fragility of democracy. . . . The globe's now 74 autocratic regimes outnumber 63 faltering democracies, proving one thing: globalization has not expanded, let alone improved, democracies as promised. . . . Around the world the power of cartels, totalitarian states and wealthy oligarchs grows in a perverse economy that increasingly treats working people as Lego-like components. . . .
Defining fascism satisfactorily, argued [George Orwell in 1944], just might lead to some uncomfortable admissions about the development of modernity that neither fascists nor conservatives nor socialists really want to talk about. These admissions might include the tendency of all political parties in technogical societies to serve money and power. They might also include the increasing use of propaganda by governments, corporations and political parties of every political stripe. . . . A development of modernity capable for poisoning public life over time, like a coal mine releasing arsenic or selenium into a river. . . . [Timothy Snyder] notes there is probably no technology more conducive to fascism than social media. It offers finely engineered propaganda tailored to the individual. It steals and narrows attention. It cements dread and anxiety as the foundation of one's intellectual home. It reduces life to formulas and platitudes. Most importantly, it destroys imagination. . . . It is a conditioned response to disorder, marginalization and loss. . . .
Fascism, [Jacques Ellul] observed, is not created by a leader, as so many American liberals mistakenly believe. Instead, the leader is 'the creation of a pre-fascist mentality.' . . . Comparing the new tide of populists like Trump to Hitler misses the point entirely. American fascism exists and has marked American life since the 1920s. That nearly half of Americans found theselves attracted to the likes of Trump should have prompted a moment of deep reflection among U.S. liberals a decade ago. It has not. . . . Comparing Trump to Roy Cohn [lawyer for McCarthy in the 50s], his longtime counsel and adviser, gets to the heart of the matter. . . . The law was there for the powerful to evade. . . . Be careful, [Camus] warned: 'When a democracy is sick, fascism comes to its bedside, but it is not to inquire about its health.'"
(ETA: Eco's 14 signs of fascism.)
What bothers me a bit about the Hitler comparison, is that he was one person with a grand plan. He called the shots. When he killed himself in that bunker, it was a clear victory for democracy. Trump didn't write Project 2025 - sometimes he can barely get through a coherent sentence. Other people behind the scenes are running everything, so it doesn't matter if Trump loses his faculties or dies. Vance appears to me to be the real target for chief anyway. It feels like he wasn't chosen by Trump as much as by Peter Thiel.
To me, this all feels like a small group of psychopathic billionaires around the world about to use the rest of us as soldiers and slaves of one sort or another. We are trespassing in their kingdom, those vile gods on earth who, like Zeus, use their power to take whatever they want for themselves, and they abhor humanity. It might be the natural evolution back to a feudal state - that might be how our species prefers to organize as a whole, more like ants or bees than any other mammals - but I've seen Bug's Life. There are more of us than them. We just have to get organized!
They've already desensitized many from the violence of killing children with tons of videos of Israel's destruction. People protested in the US and Canada, but not like older protests, where everyone left their jobs, refusing to work, for over a month in ongoing protests until there was change, like the Winnipeg General Strike or the secessio plebis in ancient Rome where all the workers would just abandon the city to revolt. Instead, we show up at an assigned time for a few hours, then go home feeling like we've done our part. We have NOT done anything significant enough to stop the slaughter over there. Will we do anything significant enough to stop it here?? Or will we just try to get on with our day?
But I tend to go to the darkest places.
Then again, Geo Group, a private prison giant, saw its stock soar after the win:
What now?
People are worried about all the changes that might come with Project 2025 (read the full manifesto here), like gutting abortion access, mass deportations, unleashing undue force on protestors, censoring critical discussions in classrooms, rolling back trans rights, and, according to George Monbiot's article today, leave the UN climate framework altogher. Right out of the gate, though RFK Jr. will have a "key health role", and Trump is open to his proposal to ban vaccines, one of the most impactful innovations ever developed. Where do we go from here?
Chris Alvino, and many others, puts it all in the lap of Democrats to do a better job next time.
"We need a repeat of what happened to the Whigs and the founding of the Republican party back in the 1800s. The Democrats are basically the Whigs and they need to be dissolved and replace with a new party. . . . All of our modern woes are tied back to this one root cause: corporate oligarchy. Very similar to how many of the woes of the 1800s could be tied back to the singular issue of slavery. . . . Just like the Whigs were fractured due to slavery, the Dems are fractured due to corporate controlled interests. . . . The ones not beholden to neoliberal values or corporate oligarchs would join the newly formed party . . . and then you'd actually have a coalition of third party congresspeople and could run a viable third party candidate (the exact way Lincoln was elected). Only downside is, if history repeats itself, it COULD start a civil war. But c'est la vie."
But he says that like there will BE another chance to vote.
Daniel Hunter compiled 10 ways to be prepared if Trump wins includes everything from grieving to finding a path to get needs met if public infrastructure goes under, particularly if you need trans meds or birth control.
Unfortunately there's nothing in there about how to protect Canadian water. Maude Barlow has been concerned about the US taking it by force or policy for decades, and right now almost all states are facing a drought. Michael Harris writes,
"No doubt Trump will be putting things back on the table that weren't settled during the NAFTA renegotiations of 2017-18. Like Canadian water. . . . Access to clean, safe drinking water was recognized as a human right by the UN General Assembly in 2010. Then Canadian PM Stephen Harper signed on to Resolution 64/292. As ecosystems reach tipping points, and the climate crisis becomes more dire, will others pressure Canada's political leaders to fulfil the country's moral obligation to share our water resources? You can count on it. What you can't count on is Canadian political leaders standing behind the prudent policy of forbidding bulk exports of water. After all, water is now on Wall Street, and item on the commodities market. Count on this, as well: Any country that turns water into a commodity and peddles it like lumber or soybeans is not merely selling a resource. It is selling its future."
A lot of people are commenting that Canada will be the next Poland, or Czechoslovakia, or Austria, or maybe France. I worry Canada will be the next Iraq, except completely unprepared for an invasion. We really need our ducks in a row before it's our turn.
Rebecca Solnit deserves the last word:
