How could this happen? How could all of the pollsters and pundits have been so wrong? So grievously and grossly wrong. The mainstream media delighted in mocking him and belittling his chances. He was a veritable cornucopia of material for all of the late-night comedy shows.
You’re still in a state of shock and disbelief, reeling before the unpleasant surprise to which you awoke week before last. This was not supposed to happen. You don’t even know anyone who voted for Trump! So how could it have possibly happened?
It happened, you see, because I – and there are many like me – never felt comfortable admitting in your presence that we were voting for Trump. Time and time again at work and in social venues you assumed that everyone around you was in lockstep agreement.
You labeled Trump supporters brain-dead, sexist, anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic, and so much more. You ranted about their intolerance and their hatred for anyone not like them. You employed every pejorative and ad hominem attack at your disposal without addressing a single one of his policies and you bullied and browbeat me and those like me into keeping quiet rather than risk having that opprobrium hurled at us.
After all, what defense is there against baseless attack? In a world of safe spaces and trigger warnings, we had neither. At best we existed in a realm of sitting-duck spaces and hair-triggers.
And so we sat there silently as Trump and his supporters became the punch line of every happy hour joke, as lecturers on utterly unconnected medical subjects couldn’t resist an unrelated put-down or cruel barb, and as you mercilessly mocked and maligned his voter base while standing around awaiting the arrival of that critical patient.
After all, you no doubt reasoned, all of those present are clearly too well-educated and elite to fall for Trump’s superficial, populist, jingoistic appeal. We all have college degrees! And so you interpreted our silence as affirmation and this drove you to greater and greater heights of verbal assault, defamation, and denigration. And this in turn begot more silence.
And now, post-election, after having it quantitatively demonstrated to you that there are in fact Trump supporters out there, you persist in your assumption that no educated or intelligent voter – no one you would interact with professionally or socially – could possibly have supported him.
Whether commuting to work, standing around in the break room, or making small talk in the brief moments of downtime our job affords us, you make it clear that this is the worst news of your lifetime and are confident it is the same for all those around you. You post vitriolic comments on social media suggesting that people who voted for Trump should no longer consider themselves friends of yours and should remove themselves from your life – a statement so divisive, hateful, and childish that I have to think you don’t truly believe that any of your social media friends fit this description.
You continue to talk about the uneducated white American racists who enabled his victory, oblivious to the fact that here, standing right next to you, babysitting your children, working alongside you caring for patients of all races, socioeconomic levels, and sexual preferences, might be an individual you now call a friend. But if you only knew my vote, you’d vilify me as a fascist, xenophobic, Islamophobic hatemonger.
And you call us intolerant.