There has been no shortage of effort to explain the man who's been the main character of American politics for the past decade and who will, now, remain said character for at least the next four years: attempts to rationalize his support, assemble his platform with the stray planks and nails he wantonly tosses, construct a passable salad out of the many angry, nonsensical, and often contradictory words he says when trying to convince people only he can fix "it."
The one that has always stuck with me - and baffled me, as we’ve heard variations of it over the years - is the idea that we need to take him "seriously, not literally." How we're too focused on what's coming “out of his mouth rather than look[ing] at what’s in his heart." It’s the excuse you'd give for someone who says "great to see you" to a grieving family at a funeral, not for someone petitioning to represent us at the highest levels of public service and wield unprecedented executive power.
Because if he doesn't literally intend to deport 11 million or so odd immigrants from the country, then what does he seriously intend to do? If he doesn't literally intend to pull funding from schools with a vaccine mandate, or decline to recognize the existence of transgender citizens, or remove the protected status of legal migrants, or increase tariffs to anywhere from 20 to 60%, or provide "record breaking military funding" (but probably not to Ukraine), then what can we, the citizens, actually expect?
Presumably, somewhere between "what we're doing today" and "the thing he said," regardless of how terrible the results actually turn out to be within those shades of gray. And if he should stop short of the upper bound, then it's a concession. It's a win. It could have been a lot worse. Be grateful.
Plus, politicians fail to fulfill their campaign promises all the time, whether due to changing priorities or checks and balances, and so being a braggart doesn't make him much different from other politicians, you see. He's got a lot of feelings, you see, a list of grievances just like 51% of the country, but because he wants to be president, because he actually needs to put pen to paper and do something about all of it, he has to list some specifics, so here they are, but they're not important. If he doesn't do exactly what he says, he's going to try. Take him seriously, you see, not literally.
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I've talked with several friends and family members over the past year or so who were still solidly in Trump's camp. They offered various explanations for their support: "He's better for business." "I need to look out for what's best for me and my family and my neighbors, not immigrants." "He's friends with Elon Musk, and say what you will but that guy knows how to run a business." Largely, it came back to business, either literally or as a proxy for the economy, as if the economy OR business is strictly about the figures in the books instead of the people exchanging the goods and services.
I explained my positions on the man to them in kind. Some of my counterarguments were on the basis of policy and (un)intended consequences, but if any of this actually had to do with policy*, it would have ended as soon as the man said he had "concepts for a plan" to replace the Affordable Care Act, or any of the times he floated economic ideas that grabbed traditional small-budget, free market Republican values and shoved them over a desk.** For a substantial portion of the country, this is about feelings, about what's in your heart, serious feelings about less than literal concepts or factual stories. It's about a present sociopolitical environment that reassures instead of challenges, that takes a sales-oriented approach to governance, that says "damn the facts, what you're feeling matters, and here's some sirloin to satiate those feelings, rare, just how you like it.”
And if that red meat causes fear and distress for others, if it curtails or threatens to erase their liberty or their livelihood, it can't be helped. Freedom, prosperity, joy, safety...they're all zero sum concepts after all. Maybe not factually, maybe not literally, but seriously.
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I am not a Democrat. I am not a Republican. I'm somewhere between "libertarian" and "center left" these days, which in South Jersey essentially makes me Barry Goldwater. This stopped being about *just* policy for me too a long time ago, but in particular around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the man's willingness to put his head in the sand, hide facts from the public, and generally dismiss the immediate needs of the medical field made the work of healthcare workers (like my wife) materially harder and jeopardized or ended the lives of millions of his own citizens.*** It's augmented by the way he carries himself in public, the way he talks about my country and my family members and my neighbors and my fellow citizens with such disdain, the way he comported himself on January 6, 2021. I'm insulted by the man, and I - a straight white male - am seldom his target.
Because if we must take a man seriously but not literally,**** it means taking the whole of him seriously, warts and pocks and venom and selfishness and all. If we can't take what he says literally - if it's about what's in his heart - it means taking him seriously as an avatar for the nation, as a standard bearer for the values and virtues we should aspire to as citizens of said nation. It means telling the next generation - your sons, daughters, grandchildren, nieces and nephews - that this is the man you believe should lead us, this is a man you should be more like. Or it means telling them that none of that stuff matters after all if it's in service of some other goal.
Over half of the country***** - including many people I love, many people you love, maybe you - looked at the full record of this man's public life over 40 years, and in particular the last nine or ten years he spent either being or angling to be president, and agreed with one of the above.
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The world does not come down to one man occupying one job in one building, as uniquely unfit and unqualified as I believe that man to be. (and as much as that man would like it to come down to him) There is a world beyond those walls, as much as it can bend to the will of that one building sometimes.
And when I say he is unique, I mean in part that people seem to flock to him and him alone. His vice president elect was, until the last weeks of the campaign, historically unpopular. The ideas proposed by his political opponents are, largely, popular. "Cult of personality" is not an overstatement for a man whose previous campaign ran on a platform of "whatever I feel like, man." He said what many wanted to hear, ugly as it could be, and they have rewarded him with dauntless support regardless of policy position. He is one of one and will not be around forever, even if many of the policies and appointments and edicts he makes will outlive him. No one will storm the Capitol for JD Vance. No one will go to jail for Nikki Haley.
The nation survived his last presidency and all its risk, though one can make the argument that the three years before COVID were "lucky." I believe it will persist again because it already has, because I want it to, because I have to. I believe it will persist because my wife and I owe it to the two beautiful, joyous children we brought into this world, into this country, who aren’t old enough to understand most of this yet and just need us to take care of them, to dance with them, to read them “Spoonful of Frogs” for the dozenth time, to let their minds focus on growing and not worrying.
We owe it to them to make it so, whether by continuing to work hard for them each day, getting and remaining involved in our local politics, straddling the fine line between "staying informed and diligent" and "doomscrolling,"****** and simply not allowing our anxieties about the future to wash over them, too. We owe it to our friends and family who will be more affected by the new administration's stated goals than we will. We owe it to ourselves.
I don't know if that's helpful or comforting or not. I'm no historian or political scientist. I'm just a guy trying to keep chugging along, trying to keep finding the good in life, trying to take things seriously.
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*Also, it wouldn't have taken many long to find many, many similarities between Trump's positions and those of Kamala Harris, particularly on the economy, the thing most will couch their support of Trump in.
**I still cannot believe a man who partook in this has won the highest office in the land twice.
***Operation Warp Speed was an objective success. Whether it offsets his other actions between January and November 2020 is up to you, I suppose.
****Even if you do not take Trump "literally" on what he intends to do, or if it isn't important to him, it is worth taking literally the ideas of those he chooses to surround himself with, because it's important to them and they're about to have varying abilities to enact them. (I am of course speaking of the guy who wants to ban Doritos)
*****Worth noting that Trump won just about the same number of overall votes in 2024 that he did in 2020, but is beating Harris by over 5 million votes this time after losing to Biden in 2020. Nonetheless, the move to the right was a nationwide phenomenon.
******For anyone who cares (no one should care), I actually fell asleep at 8:45 last night in the chair outside our daughter's room, then woke up at 9:30 and migrated to our bedroom without checking the news. I then stirred awake at 4 AM and, having trouble going back to sleep, decided to rip the band aid off and check the results to that point. Good morning!
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