I keep thinking about how I felt back in ’16. I remember thinking, “WTF?” I remember thinking it was a joke and there was no possible way this dude won. Then I remembered thinking, “of course he did. Nobody likes Clinton.” I remember in 2020 thinking Trump had no shot, despite his 8 years of vitriol about illegal votes. Now it is 2024 and 8 years have become twelve and that idea has sank so deeply into the American consciousness that it cannot be removed. He has grown into a way of life more than a brief and powerful counter-movement. MAGA is code for generations of Americans who believe in a particular style of Republican ideology. It is also bro-code for a generation of men being cast in the ultra-masculine fakeness of Andrew Tate and the thousands of social media goons who want to be him (or idolize him). None of it is healthy. None of it is keeping to the idea of what I want this country to represent.
That’s the whole of it though. What do you want the country to represent?
The president is a figurehead. While there is real power there, a lot of what happens comes from the other assortment of figureheads representative of states. That is what a representative government is, and we are now visibly showing our divisions in what we, as a nation want to represent. It is not a melting pot. It is a partition plate, often laid along state lines and church parking lots.
This vote is, in part, a referendum on those divisions and the idea of what it looks like to move forward or backward along a well trod socio-political timeline. Where we are heading is going to be decided today. I for one stand for moving forward. I don’t want to make America great again because the kind of greatness being offered in that statement is from a world that has moved on. It is time we move on with it.