America has chosen a misogynistic bigot to represent them for the next four years. Columnist Lucy Vine asks what next...
The first thing I did this morning – after crying a bit and sending some despairing texts about colonising Mars – was check Hillary Clinton’s Twitter. By 10am, she still hadn’t tweeted anything that referred directly to her loss, and a deeply depressing-in-hindsight retweet sits near the top instead, written by her running mate, Tim Kaine.
‘Thinking about my daughter right now. No little girl will ever again have to wonder whether she, too, can be president.’
Of course, when he wrote it last night, everyone thought Hillary Clinton was a sure thing to be the next President of the United States. All the polls said so. All the common sense said so. This morning we know better, and this morning, that retweet takes on a much sadder, darker meaning.
No little girl will have to wonder whether she can be president, because this result – this whole horrible, horrible 2016 election process – tells her she can’t.
Today could’ve been a day where America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, elected their very first female President. I was hoping to wake up this morning to shards raining down from the heavens, as Hillary Rodham Clinton smashed the ultimate glass ceiling. Instead, the world’s most powerful nation chose a man who says women are ‘disgusting’, ‘dog’, ‘pig’, ‘bimbo’, ‘slob’, ‘fat’, and ‘ugly’. A man who boasted about grabbing women ‘by the pussy.’ Who laughs about sexual assault.
How do we tell little girls to dream big, or indeed, women anywhere, to strive for greatness, to go for the biggest careers and fight for equality, when all it took to beat Clinton – who has dedicated her life to politics and feminism, graduating Yale Law School as one of 27 women in a class of 235 – was an angry, vindictive reality star with no qualifications. All it took was an ignorant orange man, who pathologically lies and directs hate at anyone who doesn’t look like him.
CNN anchor Van Jones said it well last night, calling the whole thing a ‘nightmare,’ and asking how he would tell his children this news; ‘You tell your kids, don’t be a bully, don’t be a bigot, do your homework, be prepared…’ Everything Trump isn’t.
He is the most racist, misogynistic, bullying, bigot ever to run for any office, and that’s why he won. Because certain people liked that. Everyone wants someone to blame when things in their life haven’t turned out the way they want, and Trump offered them that. He tapped into people’s darkest feelings, let them embrace good old fashioned, nostalgic hatred and fear of anything construed as Other. And why should Trump change that stance now – now it’s been validated by the people?
This whole election campaign has been an exercise in misogyny. Clinton’s ‘shrill’ voice was dissected, her outfit choices scrutinised, books like ‘Unlikeable: The Problem with Hillary’ were written. As Comedian Patton Oswalt tweeted last night, ‘What I’ve learned so far tonight: America is WAAAAAAAY more sexist than it is racist. And it’s pretty fucking racist.’
So I hope, in with the disappointment and horror Hillary Clinton is no doubt feeling this morning, I hope she is also thinking, fuck this. Fuck this and everything she has been put through. I hope she feels some relief that she won’t have to endure this vilification for the next four years. And there must be some small relief also, that she won’t now be the target she surely would’ve been had she won. A target for all that hatred Trump incited – remember that ‘joke’ about killing her? It is not brave to say, but sometimes it is safer when the loudest, most aggressive, nastiest voices win.
In his victory speech this morning, President Trump said, ‘Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division... I says it is time for us to come together as one united people.’
These are divisions created and nursed by him. These are wounds he gouged into and poured acid on, just so he could win this election at any cost. It worked, he won, so let’s see if he can now fix his own damage.
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