This is America: Facing the reality of my nation’s values

This is the first of my blog posts. I hadn't planned to start with politics, but it makes sense given where we are right now.

Written and published Thursday November 7th, 2024

Over the past few years, I’ve faced a tough reality—this is the country Americans want. At its core, America is conservative. Progressive ideals and leftist visions simply don’t resonate here the way many of us thought they might. The election of Trump wasn’t an accident. His popularity is no fluke. The unsettling truth is that Trump reflects the values at America’s core. He’s not an outlier. He embodies what this country stands for. Those of us who hold other values are not what America is, and that isn’t going to change.

Blaming those who didn’t vote for Kamala Harris doesn’t make sense to me. She was a stopgap—a convenient fix by a party that failed to allow a real primary process to unfold. They stuck with Biden even when doubts about his ability to lead were clear, then scrambled to select Harris when things became shaky. Harris wasn’t the result of careful, forward-thinking planning. She was simply the most available choice.

I could go on about structural issues all day, from the absence of a genuine left-wing party to the fact that the Democratic Party, firmly centrist, continues to drift rightward in a desperate attempt to “win over” Republicans as the Republican Party sprints further and further to the right. But there’s no quick fix for the depth of issues America faces.

In 2016, I could see how some Americans might not fully understand Trump’s character or impact. But that excuse is long gone. People know exactly who he is. They know what he stands for, and they chose him anyway. This is what America wants.

My frustration doesn’t stop with Trump. Biden wasn’t even close to my top choice in 2020. It was disappointing to see Warren drop out and throw her support to Biden, especially when Sanders was finally building momentum. The party’s ongoing push toward the “middle” has been disastrous. Either there’s an American left, or there isn’t, but after forty years without a true-left candidate, we have no way of knowing. What’s clear, though, is that this so-called “middle” is no match for the forceful momentum of the right.

So, as difficult as it is to accept, I don’t expect any transformation. America has made its choice, and it’s not the country many of us thought (or at least hoped) we lived in. Sure, a Democrat may win the presidency again at some point, but even that Democrat will probably be some centrist who will give the right all the more reason to move further to the right for the next election. America is a right-wing country. That is not going to change.