Around the world, it’s been alarming and frightening to read about the rise in hate crimes and the boost that Donald Trump’s presidential victory has given to white nationalists. Unfortunately, some aspects of Trump’s impending presidency have also triggered a sense of déjà vu.

As a journalist in Singapore, America’s skew toward authoritarianism, particularly Trump’s dismissal of and threat toward press freedom, is starting to hit close to home.

Singapore is often portrayed as a global success story. It’s known as an expat safe haven with a high GDP where the streets are safe, things are efficient, and it’s easy to do business. These outward signs of development and modernity often lead to the impression of a well-functioning, democratic state, but the reality is somewhat different: Under the impressive sheen of the city-state’s achievements, Singapore’s social and political sphere continues to be run with a patriarchal authoritarian streak under the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) — a party that has held on to power for over five decades.

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Under the sheen of achievements, Singapore continues to be run with an authoritarian streak.
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Authoritarianism often conjures up images of societies where people live like automatons within a police state, accompanied by the overt brainwashing and top-down dominion displayed in George Orwell’s 1984. This mental picture makes claims of Trump turning the U.S. into an authoritarian state seem melodramatic and over-exaggerated.

But authoritarianism isn’t just about show trials or disappearing dissidents. It’s about the gradual consolidation of power through the erosion of democratic institutions and processes, the reduction of transparency, and the increase of conflicts of interest. In Singapore, a long list of offenses, including non-violent ones, are deemed “arrestable.” This means that the police can search your home and seize your property without a warrant. You are only required to have access to legal counsel within a “reasonable” time, which means that people, even 15-year-old teenagers, are questioned by the police without being able to have their lawyers with them. With a single party dominating Parliament, bills are passed at a stunning pace, leaving little opportunity and space for contestation.

These cutbacks often don’t have an immediate day-to-day impact on people’s lives, which means that most people don’t see it as a big deal or an urgent problem, but the effects are more insidious than you might think. As power gets more centralized and checks and balances recede, people start to feel like everything is out of their hands.

“What can you do? It’s just like this,” is something you hear a lot from Singaporeans. Your country feels less and less like it belongs to you, and more like a place in which you are allowed to live only as long as you play nice and stay obedient. It’s disempowering, discouraging people from taking action and perpetuating the vicious cycle.

The loss of control creeps up on you on many fronts. One of the most profound and irreversible ways is through assaults, subtle or overt, on press freedom. For all its faults — and journalists will be the first to tell you that there are many — a free press is crucial to a functioning democracy, because it’s how citizens and voters get informed, and how the powerful are scrutinized and held to account.

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As power gets more centralized, people start to feel like everything is out of their hands.
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But that’s not the way Trump sees it. After the off-the-record roasting TV networks received, one source observed to The New Yorker that Trump “truly doesn’t seem to understand the First Amendment . . . He thinks we are supposed to say what he says and that’s it.”

This is how Singapore’s PAP government sees it too. The idea of the press as the Fourth Estate holds little sway here. Instead, the media is seen as part of the country’s “nation-building” exercise, and expected to perform an “educational role” to help Singaporeans understand the government’s policies. This means that principles like freedom of the press and freedom of information have been made subordinate to the interests of the state, as demonstrated by the country’s consistently dismal press freedom rankings.

The environment that Trump and his supporters have threatened to create for the press? We’re living it in Singapore.

What Liberals Don’t Get About Free Speech In The Age Of Trump

When Trump declared that he would “open up” U.S. libel laws (a position that he may have reversed, because he doesn’t want to risk being sued himself), Singapore was already way ahead of him. PAP politicians have a long history of favoring defamation suits when countering both political opponents and media outlets: Local opposition politicians J.B. Jeyaretnam and Chee Soon Juan, as well as international news publications the International Herald Tribune and the Far Eastern Economic Review, have all been on the receiving end of the PAP leadership’s litigious bent. Most recently, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong took out a civil defamation suit against local Singaporean blogger Roy Ngerng, winning S$150,000 in aggravated damages that Ngerng will only finish paying off in 2033.

In a further assault on press freedom, prominent Trump supporters like Sean Hannity have suggested that press outlets that have been critical should be denied access to the Trump administration, something Trump has enforced before and after the presidential campaign. This, too, is common in Singapore and other authoritarian states, where the powerful seize the prerogative to offer information only to those who might be easier to control. They are able to restrict access to particular events like press conferences — even to those who have media accreditation — and foreign journalists have reported being denied visas to work in the country.

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When Trump declared that he would ‘open up’ U.S. libel laws, Singapore was way ahead of him.
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Off-the-record meetings also appear in the Singapore government’s playbook; confidential meetings with select groups, organizations, and individuals — from civil society, business, academia, and the press — are par for the course, resulting in the government’s ability to claim “public consultation” without having to actually be accountable or public about what the consultation entailed. As Margaret Sullivan observed in The Washington Post, such meetings result in skewed power dynamics where one side is able to control the narrative while the other is bound to silence.

Since November 8, the U.S. has been caught in a messy, confusing transition. Every day that the president-elect makes any move (including a tweet), it comes off as one step forward and two steps back; what will, or won’t, he do after his inauguration? How is he denouncing white supremacists and installing them in his team at the same time? Is he going to expand libel laws or not? What is his position on the “One China” policy? Does he or does he not intend to deport immigrants and implement a registry for Muslims?

With FREE SPEECH Act, Trump Fights Hostile Press, Makes America Great!

There is an argument among journalists to “wait and see,” to report on Trump like they would anything else. Michael Wolff recently argued that the press shouldn’t see Trump as a threat, but as “a story that needs to be told in rather conventional ways.”

“Yes, you do want to be stenographers,” he said. “You’re there to literally convey what someone in power says, and you bring it to people who want to know.”

That’s basically what the Singaporean mainstream media has been doing for years. And we are not better off for it. Instead, what we have is a culture where the government is assured of dominance, not just in the political sphere, but in controlling the narratives and frames that we use to understand the society we live in.

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What we have is a culture where the government is assured of dominance.
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For example, when migrant bus drivers from China staged a strike in 2012, the mainstream media was reluctant to use the word “strike” in their coverage, until the Minister for Manpower denounced the collective action as an “illegal strike,” thus delegitimizing the workers’ action and setting the frame for all subsequent discussion of the issue. The question of whether outlawing strikes is a breach of freedom of assembly and labor rights fell by the wayside — an opportunity to have an honest conversation in the media woefully turned into a series of pronouncements directly from government sources.

Without the media’s necessary role as watchdog, we’ve seen sustained normalization and justification of policies that further erode fundamental rights and freedoms. Earlier this year the Singapore government introduced, and eventually passed, a bill on contempt of court, criminalizing comments about ongoing court cases that might “prejudge” proceedings. The mainstream media, faithfully conveying the information dished out by the law minister, reported it as a good thing for Singapore, a simple consolidation of points of law. It wasn’t until later that civil society groups and actors — myself included — pointed out the implications on free speech and media freedom, but by then it was too late and the bill was passed a mere month after its introduction.

Fair, balanced reporting is important. But that has nothing to do with journalists becoming stenographers, or treating Trump like any other story. We’ve already seen how this strategy has led to the normalization and mainstreaming of extremist, racist rhetoric; just look at the absurdity of CNN hosting a debate on whether Trump should denounce supporters who question whether Jews are people.

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If journalists keep acting as if things are normal, they’ll eventually end up creating a new normal.
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This is how it begins. If journalists keep acting as if things are normal, they’ll eventually end up creating a new normal, in which the erosion of democratic freedoms are obscured.

It’s fair to see Trump as a threat, because he is. He is not a “conventional” president-elect; he is a man who has indicated a fundamental disregard for the First Amendment, for transparency and accountability, and many other democratic values that the rest of the world has long seen America as the embodiment of. This is not a time for stenography; it is a time for scrutiny and tough questions. Journalists — and everyone who cares about democracy — must keep an eye on the processes and institutions on which a democratic society is built.

Take it from someone who operates in an environment where the First Amendment is a faraway aspiration. It’s really going to hurt when it’s gone, and everyone loses.

A t his last-ever press conference as president, Barack Obama fielded a question about the reason for Hillary Clinton’s loss in November. Part of his response concerned left-wing outreach to those Trump voters the left has been self-flagellating over for weeks:

“How do we make sure that we’re showing up in places where I think Democratic policies are needed, where they are helping, where they are making a difference, but where people feel as if they’re not being heard?”

The myth of the unheard Trump voter, ignored and forsaken by a wonky liberal establishment that alone must work to regain the trust of its political opposite, has pervasively taken hold (here, here, and here — also here! And even on Saturday Night Live!) and it is the most tiresome bullshit in a genre known throughout space and time as being the most rife with tiresome bullshit: the American political conversation.

It’s hard to know who the politicians, pundits, and indeed even the current president are actually talking about when they implore progressives to come down from their coastal towers and meet with real Americans, the unheard Americans. Let’s assume that these unheard Americans are those people who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton and who instead ushered in the reign of Donald Trump because a bunch of mean, monocle-sporting opera fans in California (or somewhere like that, the specifics aren’t important) failed to heed their clamoring calls for apple pie and something something the economy.

That means we’re mostly talking about white people. Educated white people, not-educated white people, white women, and, especially, white men. True, economic inequality and anxiety is a real problem in this country, but it’s ridiculous to act as if this is a problem exclusively among mostly white Trump voters — many of whom, it should be noted, are doing just fine financially.

It’s day 48 of the resistance against Trump’s despicable fall to power, and I want answers.

By who, exactly, do these Trump voters feel as if they’re not being heard? Is it the liberal (outgoing) president, whose policies they disagree with? Maybe. Now, I’d argue that it’s not so much that the Obama administration and its would-be Clintonian successor didn’t hear their desire to, say, build a 90 foot concrete wall from San Diego to Brownsville, but rather that they undoubtedly found this suggestion to be a dumb fucking idea, but sure. You say “unheard,” I say “had a fundamental policy disagreement,” but we can agree to unhear with each other on this, I guess.

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By who, exactly, do these Trump voters feel as if they’re not being heard?
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Perhaps these Trump voters feel they are not being heard by our (overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male, right-leaning) Congress. That seems plausible! Local elections are more likely to have a direct effect on peoples’ daily lives than anything a president alone can do. I can certainly sympathize! I, too, found an obstructionist Congress that spent most of the last few years bitching about Obamacare without building anything close to a viable alternative to be more than a little frustrating.

Strange, though — Congress is now under complete GOP control, so I guess if it was those elected officials who the Trump voters felt “unheard” by, voting to put more people like them in office is a weird way of showing it. (And if Trump voters felt their right-leaning governors weren’t listening to them either, well, they elected two more right-leaning guvs in 2016, a similarly bizarre reward for an out-of-touch political establishment.)

Maybe the Trump voters feel unheard by the media? After all, there is but one 24-hour international television news network solely dedicated to the proliferation of racist malarkey, rife Islamophobia, unrepentant misogyny, and blatant misinformation in the service of right-wing politics. And indeed, only one national online publication formerly headed up by the racist, anti-Semitic Steve Bannon. (Oh, and about that lefty media — it’s white people, just like Trump voters.)

Did Trump voters feel as if their stories were not being told in mainstream film and television? Did they think their realities were not being reflected back to them on their screens? If so, they ought to get out more. Like, to the movies, at all . . . ever: Both behind and in front of the camera, people involved in Hollywood films are men. Both behind and in front of the camera, people involved in Hollywood films are white. The biggest and most powerful gatekeepers behind the scenes? Work with and for white people.

Trump voters weren’t “unheard” by anybody. The truth is, we had a black president and a woman frontrunner to replace him, and white guys (and a hell of a lot of white women) didn’t like it. People with privilege perceive equality, or even the spectre thereof, as oppression. They, and a number of other people in a position to make it so, declared Trump voters (white people, mostly dudes) the “real” America, and it doesn’t matter if the rest of us bought it. That’s because — and lean in close for this epistemological deliciousness, friends — our cultural centering of whiteness, and in particular white maleness, means that if the mostly-white-dudes who dominate and shape the American political conversation say we’re not paying enough attention to mostly-white-dudes, then we aren’t.

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People with privilege perceive equality, or even the spectre thereof, as oppression.
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Trump voters weren’t unheard by the political establishment — they were friendly with, and liked, their right-leaning representation at the state and congressional levels, so much so that they put more of them in office. Trump voters weren’t unheard by the media — people who look, sound, worship, and believe as they do dominate the airwaves, news publications, and mainstream filmmaking. Trump voters weren’t unheard by liberal elites — they were simply disagreed with by people who rightly identified the powerful intersection of racism and misogyny (and not, it seems, actual economic anxiety) that prompted most white people to vote for Donald Trump.

If we want to talk about unheard voters, we might instead look to the nearly 3 million or so Clinton voters who gave the former New York senator and secretary of state an overwhelming popular victory. Those voters — a racially, culturally, geographically, generationally, and religiously heterogeneous bunch who cannot claim the wealth and breadth of public and historic representation that Trump voters can — are one Hillary Clinton short of being heard in the White House, and, it seems, of being heard by anyone else.

It’s a goofy feature, but also one that in many ways perfectly encapsulates what Us Weekly and other celebrity gossip publications like People, OK!, and Closer are all about. The mission of these pubs is simple: exalt celebrities while attempting to bring readers closer to them. And so, we’re treated not only to photos of A-listers paying the meter or catching their flight, but to “inside looks” at their private lives, and interviews in which they share their favorite movies, open up (clandestinely) about their love lives, or reveal how they mended a broken heart.

In many ways, this is a relatively innocuous mission, particularly when compared to more incendiary, lie-peddling tabloids like The National Enquirer or Star. But problematically, this approach has also been applied over the years to presidential candidates and sitting presidents. Cover stories about Obama have included “Exclusive Photos: The Obamas At Home” in People; “What She’s Really Like: Michelle’s Private World” in OK!; and “Barack Obama’s Girls: ‘I Think I’m A Pretty Cool Dad’” in Us Weekly. People magazine has taken us “inside” the ranch where George W. and Laura Bush live, and offered glowing coverage of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and George H.W. and Barbara Bush.

“Presidents,” the implicit message goes, “They’re just like us!”

And this, to some extent, has always been problematic. After all, there’s a marked difference between glorifying and sanitizing a movie star, and doing the same with a world leader who has influence over millions of peoples’ lives. But never has this mission raised more red flags than at this particular juncture in history. Because never in the history of these publications has there been a president as dangerous as Donald Trump.

It’s easy to underestimate the influence of celebrity magazines, but to do so would be a mistake: Us Weekly and People, for instance, each claim a monthly readership of around 50 million people. And while tabloids like Star or National Enquirer are known to be outrageous, these outlets are relatively trusted, boasting readers who turn to them for weekly escapism and, yes, news.

All of which is important to consider when assessing the unscrupulousness of these publications’ sanitizing coverage of Trump — who, it’s important to remember, launched his campaign by calling Mexicans “rapists,” has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault, has perhaps not paid taxes in two decades, has openly mocked a disabled person, and was officially endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.

People magazine began rolling out “Hey, it’s just the Trumps, no biggie” propaganda while the rest of us were just starting to come to terms with what the next four years would hold. The magazine’s Babies vertical published a story on November 9 entitled, “27 Photos of Ivanka Trump and Her Family That are Way Too Cute” (emphasis in the original). The very first photo is one of Ivanka with her husband, Jared Kushner, and their oldest daughter Arabella on their way “to vote for [Arabella’s] grandfather for president.”

People also ran a Trump cover in April asking “Who Is The Real Donald Trump?” that, while it addressed issues with his character and record, also engaged in plenty of sugarcoating. In the article, Trump’s friends described him as “caring and kind” and “thoughtful and measured,” and Donald himself proclaimed, “I’m a much nicer person than people would think” — the quote the magazine highlighted in its online version of the story.

Most egregiously yet, People quickly rolled out a Trump cover after he was elected, presenting the world with a glamorous version of the president-elect. On the highly criticized cover, Trump is pictured in a navy suit, a red tie, and a white shirt, smiling softly into the camera, appearing to stride forward. If someone had been living under a rock for the last few decades, they might never know that this photo was of a person who maliciously targeted immigrants, people of color, women, and pretty much every other marginalized group at every possible opportunity.

In the days since, the softball anecdotes about him and his sweet family have continued, with headlines like “Inside Melania’s Decision to Stay in N.Y.C. Instead of the White House: ‘She Loves Her Independent Life‘” and “How Donald Trump Told PEOPLE That Son Barron Found a White House Move ‘a Little Scary.’”

People’s approach to Trump is all the more insidious when you consider the fact that one of the publication’s own reporters, Natasha Stoynoff, published a disturbing retelling of a time when she was “attacked” by Donald Trump. In an attempt to rationalize its cover, People’s editor-in-chief, Jess Cagle, wrote an internal memo to his staff, saying:

Of course, this is true — the media can’t pretend it didn’t happen. But it’s disingenuous to assert that a cover and story where Trump seems like someone Mr. Rogers might have been buddies with was the only way to go.

People, of course, is hardly alone in presenting our president-elect and his family in this sanitized way. Us Magazine’s recent stories include, “Ivanka Trump Posts Heartfelt Thanksgiving Message With Husband and Children: I Feel Incredibly Blessed.” And earlier this year, in lieu of actual reporting, the publication invited his wife, Melania, to write a gushing cover story entitled, “The Only Donald I Know.”

Certainly, we can expect this approach to continue; tabloid magazines will, in a serious breach of ethics, continue to try to sell the American public on the idea that the Trump family is “normal.” They will try to cute-ify Melania and Ivanka (who supported her father’s campaign and was in fact the one to introduce him before he gave his infamous campaign announcement speech). And they will try to sell us different kinds of Trump: grandpa Trump, husband and father Trump, underdog Trump, among myriad other false Trumps.

Tabloids will try to sell us different kinds of false Trumps.
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True, tabloids are unlikely to ever go so far as to make bold political statements on their covers — but they can mitigate the spread of the propagandist treatment of a white supremacist president-to-be. And one way they can do this is by taking cues from their more reputable counterparts.

Plenty of traditional, respected media sources, of course, have similarly, problematically airbrushed Trump and his policies — like, recently, the Associated Press and NPR’s Morning Edition. But others have been more pointed in taking on Trump and the dangers he poses to the democracy, offering an approach People or Us Weekly could emulate.

In the wake of Trump’s election, New York Magazine, for instance, ran a victory cover that was bold, grabbing, and most importantly, accurate. The cover used a close-up black and white photo of Trump looking hideous with the word “loser” sprawled across his face in all caps — appropriating a term Trump himself has hurled at anyone who opposes him, while making it clear that his policies do not align with the values of the American public. Compare this with the airbrushed, glorifying People cover, and the dangers of fluffy, sanitized reporting become chillingly clear.

It’s not difficult to discern why People, Us Weekly, and those like them have resorted to propagandizing Trump; in addition to a milquetoast ethos that seeks not to offend, there’s profit to consider. The issue with People‘s post-election Trump-celebratory cover story, for instance, sold 20% more copies than the same issue the year before. And as CBS head Les Moonves made painfully clear made painfully clear with his “It may not be good for America” quote, that kind of financial upside is hard to pass up . . . ethics be damned.

Much has been made about how reputable media outlets have a responsibility to, as Christine Amanpour recently put it, be “truthful, not neutral.” And certainly, examining the reporting of outlets like The New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN is crucial, as such publications have played their own chilling role in normalizing Trump. But we mustn’t overlook the role celebrity-gossip publications can play in shaping public opinion as well, in more subtle but no less potent ways.

These tabloids may not be in the business of taking a political stand, but to treat a politician as dangerous as Trump like just another celebrity — replete with soft-focused images and heartwarming tales of familial bliss — is to play a significant role in normalizing him, making him seem relatable to the typical American. Who’s going to want to resist a man who loves his grandkids, whose wife cherishes him, who has such an adorable family?

But here’s the thing: Trump is not a celebrity (though “former reality TV star” is about the only successful line in his resume); he’s about to become one of the most powerful people in the country and the world. Treating him like a Kardashian seriously downplays the immense power he holds over millions of marginalized people all over the globe.

Put another way: We shouldn’t really care if he’s maybe a good grandpa; we should care about the families his policies will rip apart. We shouldn’t care if his wife thinks he’s great; we should care about the women whose reproductive rights may be stripped from them under his watch, and the normalization of sexual assault that he’s already engendered.

The consequences are simply too dire for People and Us Weekly and their ilk to glossify and glorify Donald Trump, even if it is their business to worship at the altar of celebrity, including presidents and presidential candidates. The nation faces a reality that while certainly not entirely new (racism, misogyny, and xenophobia have dominated colonial American society from the start), is in fact much grimmer than before November 8. It’s a reality that could have dire consequences for millions of the very Americans who eagerly await their weekly tabloid.

Any contribution to the idea that Trump is “business as usual” — or worse, palatable — is unethical and beneath the standards of what media should hold themselves to.

Sexist, racist authoritarians aren’t just like us. And we must never forget that.

“And they wonder why those of us in our twenties refuse to work an 80-hour week just so we can afford to buy their BMWs . . . as if we did not see them disembowel their revolution for a pair of running shoes.”

I must have watched the opening sequence of Reality Bites dozens of times in college, a decade removed from its Gen-X cast, an early Millennial abandoned between generations. Winona Ryder’s Lelaina sticks it to her parents in a valedictorian speech about the failings of the Baby Boomers to preserve a functioning society for generations to come. The tension between political action and nihilist resignation staccatos throughout the film, never really presenting a resolution. Leilana continues, “But the question remains, what are we going to do now? How can we repair all the damage we inherited?”

Many UK millennials woke up wondering the same thing after Brexit, fearing that a decision spurred in large part by older conservative Brits would plunge them into even more despair. A young Brit who has since been asked by the Financial Times to expand on his thoughts had his comments on the site go viral. In his post he said, “Freedom of movement was taken away by our parents, uncles, and grandparents in a parting blow to a generation that was already drowning in the debts of our predecessors.” Other outlets, too — like the Washington Post — have written about young Brits being upset by the older generation deciding their future.

Their frustrations are well-founded — it was indeed the older generation that used its voting power to influence Brexit. According to the Guardian, 64% of 18- to 24-year-olds (and 65% of 25- to 39-year-olds) voted, compared to 74% of those aged 55–64 and an incredible 90% of those over 65. And there’s no doubt that things could’ve turned out differently had more of the younger generation made it to the voting booth; after all, of the younger people who did vote, three-quarters didn’t want Brexit to happen.

If this sounds dire, it pales in comparison to what’s happening in the U.S. The United States would be lucky to have a youth turnout in the 60% range. In fact, it would be lucky to have any turnout in the 60s. The midterms of 2014 had a historically low turnout, especially among young people, who according to CIRCLE at Tufts University, only voted at 22.2%, compared to 36% overall. While young people have been a huge part of both Obama victories, they’ve dropped off in midterm years, when the ballot is closer to their block. And as in Britain, the younger generation in the U.S. is more progressive, and the older generation predominantly conservative.

This fact has led many to ring the alarm on Trump; after all, young people are not only more liberal, but particularly anti-Trump, so it’s worrisome to think they may not come out in full force on election day. And indeed, if young voters voted as they did in 2012, a relatively good year for youth turnout, the projection is that we’d wake up to this in November:

And if they voted like they did in the historically low-turnout 2014 election? It’d look like this:

Still, this story of young liberals hampering progress by not voting in the same numbers as older conservatives is often told at the expense of understanding how nuanced the big picture of voting patterns actually is. While youth turnout certainly plays a significant role in election results, it only tells part of the story.

Not Just Age, But Coming Of Age

A 2014 study from the Pew Research Center draws some interesting conclusions about how voting patterns aren’t dictated just by age, but by the political climate during someone’s coming of age.

The graph below, adapted from the Pew data, shows how despite our common wisdom that old people are conservative and young people are progressive, those in “The Greatest Generation” (who served in World War II and ushered in the New Deal) faithfully voted Democrat in presidential elections into old age. On the flip side, those who came of age between Ford and the first Bush administration (also known as Generation X) have voted Republican since the early ’90s, even when they were in their early twenties. So while Gen-Xers’ laissez-faire nihilism may have helped usher in my own artistic pursuits and reckless early-twenties dating, it has not done our country any favors.

Common wisdom has held that as we get older, we tend to become more pragmatic, which is (problematically) code for more conservative. It seems though, that the only generation this is actually true for, of those still voting today, is the one that came of age between the end of the Roosevelt administration and the beginning of Nixon.

A pattern seems to emerge that those who came of age during a time where government did good and worked well continued to vote for government supports, while those who came of age during times that government was seen as the enemy continue to vote against public resources. (The verdict is out on millennials, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if this again held true.)

Fear Factor

Many pieces have reflected on the politics of hate, scarcity, and fear that drove Brexit and could lead to a Donald Trump presidency. This wouldn’t be the first time negative emotions won out . . . or that these emotions were tied up specifically in fear of the other.

In the 2010 election, following the historic election of our first Black president, fear and anger pushed back hard, with Democrats suffering their biggest defeats in 70 years. As The Guardian wrote in a post-mortem the following day:

At times, presidents have leveraged this fear into long-standing political success. Take the case of Reagan, whose “Welfare Queens” rhetoric was devised under the advisement of Lee Atwater, who also advised George H.W. Bush in the making of the now infamous “Willie Horton” ad, which attacked opponent Michael Dukakis for lax prison policies when he was Massachusetts Governor by relying on the racist trope of a dangerous Black man. In both cases, this fear-mongering was a “success,” giving the GOP an unchecked 12 years of power.

In other words, it’s no accident that GOP leaders are focusing on rhetoric raising alarm about Muslims, Latino immigrants, and other marginalized groups. And we must accept that, over the course of our history, this fear-based approach has often worked.

Why Voting Patterns Matter

Too often, the dominant discourse surrounding voting patterns — young liberals don’t vote as much as older conservatives — limits our ability to see other forces at play. But it is imperative that we do pay attention.

Returning to my maybe irrational love of Reality Bites, Leilana closes her graduation speech flustered by missing answers to her own question: How do we repair the generational damage left to us? “Fellow graduates, the answer is simple. The answer is . . . The answer is . . . I don’t know.”

There are no easy answers when it comes to politics — but it’s important that we ask the right questions about why we vote the way we do. Especially in an election like this one.