Wednesday, November 04, 2020

The Not So Obvious America

"Why do Americans like Trump?" one of my coworkers asked me this evening as everyone in the staff room discussed American election results. "That's a complicated question," I said. As I started explaining to him the different theories that had been current since 2016, I felt the weight of the American political situation growing heavier on my shoulders.

I asked the same coworker for his take on how Japanese people feel about Trump. I'd asked other people here in Japan but no-one so far has been willing to answer me until I've told them my own preference first. I say I don't like Trump, and they agree with me and say Japanese people generally don't like Trump. I can't quite tell if this is politeness. One teacher even asked my opinion in front of a class. I told the truth but I explained later I was hesitant--I didn't want to alienate any students who do like Trump, though, honestly, I still find it difficult to believe Japanese junior high school students care that much about American politics.

All this caginess and instinctive wariness seems hard wired in me now. When I talk, I feel I'm a small voice among increasingly polarised shouts, and so, on this subject, inevitably won't be heard.

As I now write, the election results are incomplete but it looks like Trump will win. It looks like he'll win every state he won last time except Arizona. I've thought for months now that Trump will win. The media's attempt to destroy him has been too vigorous, has too often exaggerated or outright denied the truth. Whether it's mischaracterising something stupid Trump said to make it sound even worse or editing videos of Trump supporters to make them seem worse than they, the media has done an extraordinarily depressing job of making the truth seem like a lie because of how routine lying and lazy journalism has become. The tipping point for me was seeing the full video of the Covington high school students last year. Based on a tiny clip taken out of context, The Washington Post ran a headline referring to an innocent 16 year old boy as "the new face of evil" apparently just because he was wearing a MAGA hat.

It only takes a little googling outside a particular ideological set of news sites to see how flagrantly and often even the most prominent news sites deliberately skew a narrative. In other words, the lies are obvious to anyone but a partisan. Such a thing can only seem contemptuous to the targets of these lies. A lie is rude; an obvious lie is obnoxious. And the Democrats expected to sway voters with this strategy? In a democracy, offense is not the best defense.

I left a San Diego that seemed like it was falling apart even before Covid. Many businesses were closing their doors permanently while the number of homeless people in the street grew precipitously. I saw astonishing blocks of cardboard neighbourhoods in L.A. Then came the jobs lost due to lockdowns to which wealthy Democrats seemed tone deaf for too long. Trump was in charge for all these. These are all problems that happened on his watch. They should have made him unpopular, to say the least. But in the relentless, zealous push to smear Trump, the media continued to push people away. What should be an obvious choice between two candidates--between an incompetent reality TV clown and a former popular vice president--has become a tight race. The way it looks now, it may even be a bitter fight for days or weeks to come.

Surely now the need for reason and civility is clear?

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