Red or Blue, Let this Radicalize You
A highly polemical rumination on the 2024 election results—opinions are mine and mine alone
Joshua Kloss
It’s not hard to succumb to apocalyptic imagery at a time like this: a ballot box on fire; blue dots swimming in rural Pennsylvania district lines; a CNN headline that Hawk Tuah got over 75,000 write-in votes. That last one’s fake; I had to look it up. But couldn’t you maybe even believe that too? Or maybe I’m just losing my mind.
There is a lot we do not know right now, but there is also a lot we do know. Take my hand, dear reader, or grip the page. Let’s sort out what we do know.
At the time of writing this, the number of votes tallied for Trump are about equal to the amount he had when he lost to Biden in 2020, hovering around 74 million. As of now, Harris has lost with 84 million votes, which is 10 million less than the number of votes Biden had in 2020. Many votes that would have been Democrat in the past either went to third party candidates or abstained completely. A small number of total voters, around 1%, voted third-party.
Thanks to American novelist and poet Maragaret Atwood, we also know that “nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.” Maybe it is dramatic to apply that quote to the United States, what with the Constitution and all. But a lot can occur under the guise of the God-given rights of freedom and the pursuit of happiness. When oppressive regimes rose to power in the past, the injustices they committed were not instantaneous. As Pastor Martin Niemöller recalls in his poem “First They Came,” the Holocaust was the culmination of years of fascist policies. Many saw what was happening but remained unflinching in supporting Hitler; many were enamored with the Nazi party’s promises of a better market and the ease with which came scapegoating social and economic problems onto select minority groups.
It is true: rights cannot be stripped of a group of people without first setting the groundwork for doing so. Abortion access only became a forefront issue for the wider public once the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022 (though, for those with uteruses, I imagine it has always been a key issue). Effectively, one such decision then laid the groundwork for further attacks on reproductive rights. If you doubt it is that serious, I assure you it is. Many individuals with uteruses have already died of miscarriages because doctors refused to operate on them, out of fear of being charged with a felony and losing their jobs. Take Neveah Crain of Texas, for example, who died with “blood-staining her thighs,” on Oct. 29, 2023 after her mother took her to two different emergency rooms. Doctors didn’t provide Crain potentially life-saving treatment because a Texas abortion ban prohibited them from doing so without legal repercussions. That ban cost Crain her life. She was 19.
The government has already overstepped its reach into our private lives, and under Trump, it will continue to do so. Trump already plans to carry-out mass deportations starting his first day in office. One major group especially at-risk are dreamers, children who came to the U.S. and are undocumented but currently protected by Consideration of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Trump already tried attacking DACA in 2018, which was thwarted by a court battle with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that lasted until his term ended. If Trump goes after DACA again, deportation of dreamers by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will be particularly easy because, in order to have deferred deportation, dreamers must be registered, which makes their whereabouts easily known to ICE officials. Undocumented migrants in general are at-risk too, many of whom have been working in the country for over a decade according to James Stout, an investigative journalist with years of experience working along the U.S.-Mexico border. Not only have they been contributing to the economy for years, but these migrant families pay taxes as well—in 2022, migrant families paid an estimated $46.8 billion in federal taxes alone. Beyond the disastrous economic effects of Trump’s proposed mass deportations, might I invoke your own humanity in making the argument against deportations by assuring you that deportation inevitably always separates families, whether that be by taking illegally-status parents from their birthright citizen children or else. This just highlights another example of Trump meddling with our own personal lives.
Our trans friends and neighbors, as well as LGTBQ+ people in general, are at-risk as well. According to the Associated Press (AP), Trump plans to delete prior amendments to Title IX made under the Biden administration that bans discrimination against trans students in public schools. He also ran on promises to cut federal funding of any school that teaches critical race theory and “transgender insanity,” though the AP notes that widespread defunding of such schools would require action from Congress.
My dear reader, I feel Trump’s overreach into our personal lives is weird as hell. In fact, I find all of Trump’s policies weird, and even weirder that his own voters pride themselves on advocating for a government that stays out of its citizens’ private lives. Trump’s tiny paws are on everything now, and a readthrough of Agenda47 confirms this.
I won’t parade around words or project objectivity—I’m pissed that we must endure four more years. Trump likely won because fear is capital, and rising rates of hate crimes in the wake of his reelection confirm this. We are a country where pursuing higher education is almost certain to cause debt, and where literacy rates continue to drop in most states; hence, we are a severely uneducated nation. Yet, education is the cornerstone of a functioning democracy. When citizens fail to understand the nuances of this nation—for example, that economic policy takes 4 years for its effects to be felt; or, that the reason crime is high among certain demographics is because of historic injustice and discrimination—it is easy to present fear as a compelling voice of reason. Fear, then, becomes a way of thinking, and that is dangerous, yet unfortunately something that has been achieved in past fascist governments as well. It upsets me that there are other people who would so easily be fooled by a candidate who happily plans to put the rights of many in peril, but it does not surprise me. Hate is an easy art to master, especially when those practicing it are fearful.
I know, dear reader, this all sucks. I recognize that the effects of Trump’s presidency will be felt in practically every realm of our lives, and nobody is safe; even the most privileged will see prices rise as companies prepare for Trump’s proposed tariffs. Though, effects will not be felt proportionately. At the same time, I recognize that I cannot wallow in the disappointment of the election—I quite literally cannot, because there are still assignments with deadlines, articles with deadlines, and of course laundry to fold.
No, amidst the sandstorm of deadlines and unfolded laundry, dear reader, let us feel what we feel and employ that to motivate us, not estrange or further disempower us. Much is the work we have yet to do. So: where do we go from here? What now?
Those of us who care about human rights must stick together here. I do not recommend hurling your anger at those who voted third-party, because 1% was not enough for Harris to win. For you liberals feeling disenchanted at the moment, allow that gut-wrenching feeling of “How did this happen?” to radicalize you. In fact, I want you to radicalize your entire way of thinking, instead of thinking through fear or hate. These are much too simple methods of thinking about such complex things. Dare to think how our own world might be different. After all, everything is the way it is now because of a complex sum of past choices. Nothing must remain the same, and nothing must persist simply because it has for so long.
I will also say that we must organize. From the limestone bluffs over the Mississippi to the mangrove swamps down south; from sea to shining sea; we must make ourselves into a force to be reckoned with. We are strongest when united. To help you get involved with your community, we at The Wake have compiled this super rad resource that outlines some local groups, and all you have to do is scan the QR code to get started. Organizing can be done in many ways, and activism is not always about showing up to a protest. Much of a revolution occurs backstage, so to speak.
Dear reader, I thank you for sticking around. I hope, after all is said and done, you will hold your loved ones close, you will organize, and remember why you are doing so, and you will radicalize your imagination, and think of ways you might fight or what is now at stake. In spite of it all, the soul crushing and the mundane, the fear and the hate, I hope, I hope.
I hope.