For a couple days following the election, it was hard for me to look at my Instagram feed and see anything but messages that were either “if you voted for Trump, you cannot be my friend since your vote implicitly means you are OK with rape, political violence and subverting human rights” or messages that were “unfriending someone over political beliefs is a ridiculous thing to do.” Although both are sentiments I understand, it was clear the message one sent was more based on political ideology rather than simply moral beliefs.
You all know my qualms with Donald Trump. This includes my solid belief he will get more people killed abroad as well my belief that he is a criminal due to his business dealings, his interactions with women and his handling of government matters (Jan. 6, classified documents and more). I also believe he is selfishly motivated, and if something is good for him, he will advertise it as if it is something that is good for you and me, even when it is not.
Therefore, I will admit it is hard for me at times to comprehend Trump voters. I say this despite being good friends with several Trump voters from Sartell, the military and even here in the liberal bastion that is the University of Minnesota. In my mind, the criminality, threat to democracy and threat to life Trump poses are end-all be-all issues that decided my vote, despite my disillusionment with Harris.
However, a critical part of this great experiment is understanding that different people have fundamentally different values and/or different motivations. It may be easier to understand a Trump voter through the lens of being fed up with the establishment, even though they abhor Trump’s personal conduct. After all, we are voting for someone who we now understand is most importantly a political leader, rather than an explicitly moral or spiritual one.
Therefore, the results of this election I would assume are less a referendum on Trump’s character and more a referendum on what people think of traditional American politics, which is one that seems to be fixated less and less on every individual American and their condition. Although I would argue the Democratic Party is better equipped to improve said condition, it is obvious the existence of the Democratic and Republican Parties – in their pre-Trump condition – for decades did not meaningfully improve American well-being in many senses, certainly not to the extent promised. The Democratic Party’s lack of consistent policy when it came to the border and foreign affairs did not help either.
Looking at those factors helped me understand the frustration a lot of Trump voters feel. It also makes it clearer to me the sentiments my more liberal friends vented on social media, while understandable, are unproductive. The liberal movement spent eight years learning how we should perhaps engage those who disagree with us by meeting them at the issues that matter to them, rather than the issues that we feel so desperately should matter to everyone (a lesson I will admit I stand to learn from). Then, when Trump got re-elected, instead of fully committing to that idea, we reneged on it in the 24 hours following the election.
Thus, the only meaningful way to bring about change continues to be activism and raising awareness. It is of course exhausting to find one’s self having to perform activism about issues we thought were already settled – especially issues pertaining to basic human rights – but until we either learn more about what other issues matter to people or learn how to express clearly the policies we support that will help regular people in the ways they desire, we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over.
Janagan Ramanathan is a Sartell High School alum, former U.S. Naval Academy midshipman and current aerospace engineering major at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
