Trump was always going to win.
I dragged Silas with me to a scummy bar in New Hampshire, because, truth be told, I needed a story. I needed to be around voters, human beings, sans the presence of cameras and the confidence of a crowd. In an election season like this, it’s rare to attend a political event and find sincerity over groupthink, so I went about this article like a social experiment, asking as few questions as I could and instead just observing. Watching what kind of person it takes to root for everything the Trump name brings to the table.
We spent four hours at Murphy’s Taproom in Manchester, N.H., watching election results trickle in at the official Republican New Hampshire Election Watch Party. I pregamed with a Celsius I chugged in the parking lot of a Market Basket with an interior design frozen since 2005. The mix of caffeine and adrenaline phoenixed when I used a decrepit bathroom with no toilet paper and Silas was nowhere to be found, and suddenly I became very nervous about the night to come.
The event stagnated around a dozen people, reaching 30 at most, a cohort initially skeptical of the girl with a notebook and the guy with a camera, but a healthy mix of triumph in the air and steady stream of alcohol and hors d’oeuvres warmed them up to us.
But for a group cheering for Trump and donning impressive collections of Trump merch (real underground—stuff I’d never seen before), they weren’t particularly ga-ga for the guy’s policies.
Most of the folks were blue-collar workers, a few younger people with college degrees whose fuss with the hats and T-shirts juxtaposed interestingly against their shockingly moderate agendas: anti-war, expansion of legal immigration, and very few expectations for follow-through on Trump’s end. So why vote for the guy?
“Trump promised a lot of things in 2016,” said Kacie, 21. “And when he was elected, we didn’t get those things. He promised a lot of the same things he promised in 2016 in the 2020 [election] and none of those things probably would’ve happened.”
I was surprised by her matter-of-factness and willingness to admit Trump’s shortcomings. Seconds before, she’d declared her love for him.
“It’s politics. It’s a game, and he says what he has to say to get votes,” she said.
As an individual, the man is a caricature of himself, each day compounding on the most Trump-self he was the day prior until he’s actually the furthest from selfhood he can be. While the masterminds operating MAGA recruit educated supervillains to operate the country from within, Trump is a friendly face that, behind his ridiculous media etiquette and occasional outburst, tells the downtrodden, hard-on-their-luck American that everything is going to be okay. Trump has evolved into something more than just a man; he inspires boldness and anger in the powerless, a dangerous combination.
I asked Kacie if she was disappointed in casting another vote for Trump, especially having acknowledged his lack of follow-through.
“With the base that he inspired, the legislation he inspired, and the movement that he created in 2016, it’s not necessary to be disappointed in Trump now, but to look at who’s going to carry on the movement and to look past Trump.”
Maybe that’s all it is. For now, Trump is parting the sea and dismissing all the woke obstacles and job-stealing immigrants, leading underrepresented Americans into utopia. There to greet you at the border-wall-pearly-gates is a cherubic JD Vance and a repented Mike Pence (Mike Penance, if you will).
Think of the problems an average American may experience: high grocery prices, excessive taxes, healthcare costs, and overwork. Sensibly, I determine a select few disengaged, wealthy individuals in our government and heading top corporations have created and maintained a system that can only exist on the exploitation of the working class.
Of course, this makes me a filthy commie, a Marxist, a moronic socialist. I am a danger to the institution of America because I fundamentally oppose this notion. So it is with a heavy heart that I say Kamala Harris is the furthest thing from a communist. Any American political party serves to uphold the system as it is, and Harris ostensibly lost the election, frankly, because she wasn’t left enough (this has the same effect as yelling BOO!).
Harris, who asserted Israel’s right to defend itself, alienated LGBTQ+ voters, served as vice president to an administration that failed to eradicate federal student loans or codify abortion rights, and focused her campaign efforts on gaining support from Republicans. No, she is certainly no radical leftist.
Why is that so terrifying for MAGA? One woman, admittedly a few drinks in, audibly gagged when Fox News aired a clip of Harris. Another guy showed up open-carrying. He was well within his rights in the state of New Hampshire, but what compelled him to assert that right among friends?
Because at the end of it, after all that hate and extremism has sludged its way down their gullets, there is calm.
MAGA operates on fear and faith. Faith that they are inches away from divine justice, that their founding fathers were godly (slave-owning) men who devised a godly system. And it could not possibly be that that government, especially not the ones in that government who are godly individuals themselves, is to blame for their misfortunes. And a hot, agonizing fear that comes with the idea that all this time spent having faith in a broken system was for nothing.
Andrea Dworkin said it best in her book “Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics”: “Many women, I think, resist feminism because it is an agony to be fully conscious of the brutal misogyny which permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships.”
The sentiment is applicable to every -ism that MAGA can subscribe to. What a much easier task it is to deport the immigrant, out the transgender student, and ban a few books to keep life simple and comfortable. Inciting a culture war amongst voters keeps them busy enough to ignore the real, labor-intensive solution that would rid you of your post for good: a class war.
That’s what we saw in New Hampshire and the United States. And it’s certainly no justification for the deplorable capabilities of many Trump voters, but Trump was always going to win. He’s confident in an era defined by its unprecedented-ness, and proactive on policies without giving the time to question the correlation between problem and solution.
Trump was always going to win. Disillusioned voters who’d been harmed by both Democratic and Republican policies find Trump’s belligerent frankness refreshing. COVID radicalized Gen Xers, young boys’ algorithms favor alt-right pipelines, schools are underfunded, reproductive rights are not federally protected, households under the poverty line are increasing by the day, workers are underpaid and overworked, and and and and….
And when the people turn, looking for an exaltation and bold solutions, Trump is there to lay blame. Americans will go back and forth forever debating the morality of abortion, take up precious time at school board meetings to ban an LGBTQ+ book, or start online donation campaigns for a border wall before we can agree that something, fundamentally, isn’t working here.
I expected raucous celebrations as the night progressed and Trump painted a new swing state red. Each win secured scattered applause and patrons returned to their conversations. They were excited, yes, but mostly calm. Relieved.
It was a horrible feeling to observe this group, who represented the winning majority of presidential voters in the country, be perfectly pleasant. They said “excuse me” and asked Silas and I where we went to school and demonstrated a sincere interest in our wellbeing. All while we knew who they voted for. We knew what they voted for.
A couple brought their son to the event. By Silas’ best estimates, he was 12/13. A college-aged guy took a liking to the kid and gave him some drunken advice on trans classmates: “If you see a girl with a sock in her pants, push her with a backpack,” and, “Tits are amazing, but don’t look at ‘em. They’ll ruin your career.”
And I thought about that boy going home, overhearing his parents’ opinions on women and drag queens and Puerto Ricans. And I thought about how he would certainly remember what that drunk stranger said to him because the ginger beer he was nursing was just for show. And I thought about how he probably has unrestricted access to the Internet and how easy it is for him to watch Adin Ross and pornography. And I thought about how he’s probably not getting as good an education as he should be because of budget cuts and Trump’s recent pitch to eradicate the Department of Education.
And if I said all those thoughts out loud, 75,000,000+ Americans would tell me I’m overreacting. But maybe that’s how it starts. Maybe that’s how it continues.
Silas and I played paper football until the bar closed. It was a very still, quiet night. I expected, at the very least, the country to go down with a fight, but who would we fight? The Democrat with no real stance on anything, or Donald J. Trump? The lesser of two evils aside, why are we so content with this being our reality?
The same guy who gave advice to the kid towards the end of the night said, “It doesn’t matter who wins. It doesn’t matter. We’re gonna wake up tomorrow and go ‘oh shit, this is life now.’”
My God. America goes out with a shrug.
