In March, I wrote an article about how I was disappointed in how liberals were treating Trump as a joke rather than a serious threat. And yet, up until the night of the election, I also did not believe that Trump would win. I had ideas in my head of what a Clinton presidency would look like, how to protest her various hawkish policies, ready to get angry at people lauding her as a feminist idol. And yet, here we are, egg dripping down my face.
But although I was wrong about many things in this election, I think I was right about one thing: In March, I wrote that liberals have a hard time taking Trump seriously because he is the logical extension of American white supremacy and capitalism, and thus confronting Trump means confronting those systems. Trump is not an anomaly but is wholly American: racist, misogynistic, greedy, unrepentant — the physical manifestation of white America’s id.
I have seen liberals on Twitter and Facebook and in editorials call for people to resist the “normalization” of Trump and his policies. Yet I must ask: What isn’t normal about a Trump presidency?
Trump was recently criticized for calling for people who burn the American flag to be criminalized, but beloved liberal Hillary Clinton also wanted to jail flag-burners in 2005. Calling for people to be registered on the basis of religion and ethnicity: completely normal in American history. Sexual predators in the White House: completely normal in American history (Thomas Jefferson and Bill Clinton come to mind). Installing white supremacists (Steve Bannon) in government positions: America’s norm.
The “normalization” that liberals are noticing isn’t the introduction of racism and misogyny but rather Trump’s blatancy. The dog whistle has been thrown out.
Of course, fears about Trump’s presidency are completely valid. His rise has already pushed the more extreme fringes of the American right into the mainstream and has emboldened neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups.
Just last week, The News-Letter published an op/ed by sophomore Shelby Sprigg that stated Detroit’s majority black population “will not try to educate themselves or find work, because the government pays them to do absolutely nothing.” The fact that people are comfortable enough to publish this racist garbage on our “liberal” campus is deeply disturbing.
I do not mean to diminish people’s fears. But the strategies liberals are employing to resist Trump are, to be frank, useless. And their uselessness stems from the inability — or unwillingness — to view Trump’s policies as normal in the context of American history.
Wearing a safety pin, as some have been doing as a sign of support for marginalized groups, will not help a Muslim woman under attack for wearing a hijab (I ask where these safety-pin wearers have been for the last 15 years of anti-Muslim hate crimes). Some liberals have stated that in the event of a Muslim registry, they would register. Yet no liberal has made any such move for the current controversial No-Fly List and Terrorist Watch List.
In June, the Democrats in Senate staged a sit-in for gun control that included support for the No-Fly List that disproportionately affects Arab-Americans. On campus, liberals painted over anti-Trump slogans (thank you, whoever did those — It was wonderful to see post-election night) on the mural boards with meaningless phrases like “Blue Jay Pride” and “Do Something Nice.”
I do implicate myself in these moral failures: I signed and supported the petition to make Hopkins a sanctuary campus, yet I am ashamed it took Trump for me to support and push for that even though Obama has deported more people than any other U.S. president. One not need look further than Obama to see liberal hypocrisy.
Liberals are taken aback at Trump’s promise to deport 3 million people, yet Obama has deported 2.5 million with hardly a peep from liberals. Liberals are scared of what Trump will do to civil liberties, but the Obama administration is allowing the police at Standing Rock to brutally spray cold water in freezing temperatures at peaceful water protectors. What we are fearful of happening under Trump is already happening under Obama and the Democrats.
Therefore, the way to resist Trump is not to create new, useless measures of protest but rather to look and learn from people already resisting white supremacy, patriarchy, settler colonialism and capitalism. Donate directly to marginalized people (such as the #NoDAPL camp), support anti-deportation organizations like United We Dream, support local organizations like Baltimore BLOC and anti-fascist groups and educate yourself. There is a resistance infrastructure already in place, but liberals fail to tap into that infrastructure because doing so would implicate them in current systems of oppression.
Acknowledging that the evil of Donald Trump already exists in the United States implicates all of us who benefit from the American empire. It’s tough to do and means accepting your moral failures. And yet, the only way to resist Donald Trump is to resist the United States and what it represents: white supremacy, imperialism, misogyny and capitalism.
Emeline Armitage is a junior International Studies major from Cleveland.
