Suzanne Harrington: Americans voting Trump back in is like handmaids voting for Gilead
Suzanne Harrington on Donald Trump: Americans had a clear choice, presented without ambiguity. They chose the horror movie option"
Well, they did it. The turkeys voted for Christmas.
The pigs voted for sausages.
The handmaids voted for Gilead.
Hispanics voted to deport other Hispanics, white women voted to disempower themselves, their daughters and their daughters’ daughters, and black men voted against a black woman.
They picked a racist over an extraordinarily competent woman. They did it freely, of their own volition. Nobody made them. Nobody forced it.
They walked into the booths, and they did it. It was only the black women who did their best to save the day, but their votes weren’t enough. White fragility won. Misogyny won.
I mean, it would make a great film. We all love a disaster movie, but dystopian horror belongs in the cinema, with reclining seats and salty snacks – not in real life.
Zombies belong on screens, not in polling stations.
“Defeatism and despair cannot be the answer,” wrote the New York Times sadly, the morning after.
Right now, it’s hard to think of any positives, other than fantasies about cheeseburger-induced heart attacks.
And no, I wouldn’t normally fantasise about the death of any living being, but here, for the good of humanity, I’d make an exception.
I find myself messaging American friends, using words you normally write when someone dies.
Bereavement words, mixed with natural disaster words, as though there’s been an earthquake.
Scream emojis ping back. Rage emojis. The Atlantic calls the election result “a national emergency”.
An online group, Cat Ladies for Kamala, is already reflecting the impact of this unnatural disaster, urging women to stockpile morning after pills, contraception, oestrogen “for our trans sisters”.
To pay using cash. To store it in fireproof safes. To think about putting daughters on the pill to protect them from unwanted pregnancy.
To buy copies of the books that will soon disappear from public libraries.
The Cat Ladies maintain a grim humour by asking if you can die from losing respect for so many people simultaneously. They send support to women who woke up “next to a partner who did this…and have to live with them every day”. Make bleak jokes about how you can’t spell hatred without red hat.
What’s so acutely disturbing about this result is not a far-right criminal accessing untold power – although that in itself is the stuff of nightmares – but that millions of ordinary people consider this to be a good thing, a desirable thing.
A goal reached. An aim achieved. A job done.
Americans had a clear choice, presented without ambiguity. They chose the horror movie option.
For what – slightly cheaper petrol? Or could it be that the citizens of Dumbfuckistan, as the red states are being called, just couldn’t stand the idea of a woman driving the car?
Instead they elected a car crash.
