Donald Trump’s presidential victory is a moment of uncertain, undefinable triumph for the populist’s voter base. Then mythical unease, unprecedented fear for everyone else. The victory has resulted in men online taking to social media and proclaiming in posts:
“Your body, my choice.”
Symbolically, Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris will be insurmountable for women in the United States. This man has beaten a woman in a race for the White House not once, but now twice. Not to mention, he’s done it with a rap sheet of numerous convictions, as well as sexual misconduct and abuse trials as we saw with the E. Jean Carrol case.
Even if the Republican Party won’t make a point of never living this fact down, their supporters will, and will always remember Harris’s loss. Because of this, we may never see a woman in the White House, much less a position of power of that caliber for a very, very long time, if ever.
As Harris lost the White House, the Democrats lost the Senate, and still, the Republicans control the House. The government will soon be one solitary, red estate of the Republican party. The Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of government are all red franchises of 725 5th Ave, New York, NY 10022, all owned by Trump.
This is an incredible upset, one that will be studied by historians for the years to come to try and understand how and what this Election Day will be the new mark of. America’s “no going back” moment.
Similar to events such as the rise of the Internet and 9/11, for better or worse, we now exist in a new political era, crawling out from Ground Zero of a bomb that’s culminated from the misfires of the Democratic party.
A most grave incompetence that has shaped the party for the last two years since the repeal of Roe v. Wade in 2022, when the state of abortion in America was left to the states. One by one, but a few, trashing reproductive rights entirely. While this was a Judicial move by the Supreme Court, other than some words about the risk it puts on American lives, President Biden ultimately did nothing to challenge or act in response on behalf of those lives. A misfire of defense or care for what is one of the party’s most prominent interests. Since then has seen stories of women who have had to endure pregnancies they were not ready for, pregnancies that have killed them.
Another strike would be the Biden administration’s approval of the Willow Project, an oil drilling operation in the plain of North Slope in Alaska. Another oil drilling that will result in further pollution and environmental damage to the world, contributing to the state of the climate crisis. An unpopular development that was protested by Americans, sparking ranges of online activism and petitions. However, the calls to President Biden to, for lack of a better phrase, “act accordingly” were deafly unanswered. Americans were ignored for the interest of oil production at the cost of adding damage to the planet and spoiling the future for the young and those not born yet.
While the third strike would be easy to place on Biden and Trump’s first debate earlier this year, it should really be what Democrats have struggled the most with:
Their near unadulterated support of Israel.
In response to the Hamas attack, on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel retaliated with extreme prejudice against the Palestinian people. In what has since then been defined as a genocide. A slaughter of more innocent civilians than of Hamas terrorists and successful retrieval of Israeli hostages, which many democrats have supported with only a little hesitation. Democrats such as Vice-President Kamala Harris, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
Support from the Biden administration in the form of weapons and ammunition, and recently 100 American troops to arm a specific weapon named Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), according to CNN. In addition to bombing Yemen, and getting into more escalation with Iran, fighting and conflict in the Middle East, which the president supposedly said he was against when he took office.
This has been an overwhelmingly unpopular campaign for the president and Democrats to support and be an accomplice of. So unpopular amongst Americans, especially that it should not come as a surprise that Harris did not win Michigan, a state with the highest population of Arab Americans in the country.
While President Biden was at the wheel when these neglects of what make people vote for the Democratic Party occurred, we should not, we cannot ignore that the remainder of the party was next to him. When Biden finally stepped down from his re-election campaign, we should not have been surprised when he endorsed someone who would steer the ship in no other direction than the one it was already facing.
A direction that the passengers have expressed they don’t like, one that Democrats are now paying for as they have lost the government all across the board.
The party has always meant well, intending and claiming to provide a deliverance of action. Action for critical matters regarding the financial, medical, and environmental well-being of its voters. Similar to that, impressionist paintings that deliver soliloquies and symphonies inspiring new eras of life into those who hear.
Yet the joke here is that impressionist paintings don’t do that. They don’t speak. They’re just paintings. They don’t hear you, either. They just sit and hang on a wall, waiting for you to compliment them. Maybe grant them a legacy for them to retire with and be proud of.
While we experienced this moment, this loss for what a lot of students desired to be a win, a win for Harris, under a thunderous typhoon that swept over campus that night, we must take solace.
Some solace in the fact that Kentucky’s governor is Andy Beshear for the next three years. Some solace despite Trump’s victory, abortion rights won across several states and were enshrined in state constitutions. We must take solace in being active. Being active means continuing to do what we do.
If you witness injustice on this campus, then be the justice to remedy. If you witness or experience malpractice on this campus, then be the better example this campus needs. If you understand that someone needs help, your friends, your fellow students, someone you don’t even know or maybe don’t care about, help them.
Because when we walk down the tunnel of darkness, we are often obliterated by the trains of that same darkness.
But when the train passes, we must find our legs and our arms, so we may continue to find our light which shines, brightly, as we may someday, at the end of the tunnel.
In these uncertain times, we cannot sit down in our grief and fear of what’s to come.
For that, if we do, we may never stand again. Do not sit down, my friends. Stand, and walk bravely on the path of doing good things.
Be unafraid of the times, so that the times will be afraid of you. If we succeed in this, then it does not matter who sits in the White House or on Capitol Hill.
