The Misery that Will Come: Notes on the 2024 US Election
By Marcia Pally
When you strike a tuning fork, for a moment you hear not only the odd A-note designed for musical instruments but also an atmospheric suspension. The air’s sub-atomic particles, hovering. That was election day 2024, a moment of suspension. And then the noise smashes in. The world returns to its tumult.
Donald Trump won the electoral college, the Senate, the House, and by a small margin the popular vote (48.2% for Harris; 50.2% for Trump)—only the second Republican to win the popular vote since the 1990s—meaning many Americans are jubilant, relieved that, as Trump said upon winning, “This will forever be remembered as the day the American people regained control of their country.”
I am in the minority. I have learned the meaning of “heartsick.” I am heartsick at the cruelties that will now come—from Robert Kennedy undermining vaccine programs (Trump has nominated him as Secretary of Health and Human Services) to lowering safety standards for food, water, medicine, and labor; from Trump considering “terminating the Constitution” to aggravating climate change in favor of fossil fuels (“Drill, Baby, Drill”; nominating fossil fuel advocate Lee Zeldin as Head of the Environmental Protection Agency); from mass deportations to detention centers; from firing thousands of government workers deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump to de-licensing media critical of him; from prosecuting political opponents to abandoning Ukraine and NATO. More than 700 national security officials declared Trump unfit for office. Trump’s former chief of staff called him a “fascist.”
I am heartsick not as a political analyst but about the suffering that will come to Ukraine, among undocumented migrants, and among children sick from measles and e-coli poisoning.
But let’s say one doesn’t care about civil rights or Europe and one thinks vaccines lead to autism (as RFK does). Let’s say one cares about the economy, the national debt, and high prices, the top issue in the election. I am heartsick at the inflationary effects of Trump’s promised policies: his mass tariffs will raise prices for consumers; mass deportations create labor shortages that raise prices; his opposition to labor unions depresses wages and benefits; and his tax cuts raise the debt.
I speak not as an economist but as one heartsick for those whose costs in food, housing, healthcare, day care, and education have risen substantially in the last 40 years.
From the corner of 9th street, New York City:
the day after the election, two immigrant women were there as always, selling neatly-packaged hot lunches to the (immigrant) workers at the corner construction site. We have a housing shortage; the builders are getting a building up. The women have clearly figured out how to be American entrepreneurs. The governor of Ohio—where Trump said immigrants were eating pets—praised the immigrants’ economic impact. Come see it on my corner.
Immigrants are not taking the jobs of native-borns. Under Trump, the US gained 182,000 jobs/month (excluding covid). Under Biden, 277,000 a month (excluding the post-covid bounce-back). Since 2021, the US has had between 2 and 5 million more jobs than workers. Rising wages since covid outstrip inflation.
I speak not as a financial analyst but heartsick for those who will lose jobs, earnings, and healthcare because Trump will cancel Biden’s investments in manufacturing and microchip production and hopes to undo the “Obamacare” health insurance program.
Trump will further his 2017 tax cuts on the wealthy and make them permanent. No wonder that, just hours after Trump’s win, U.S. stocks rose; the euro fell 2% against the dollar, its worst daily decline since 2020.
Conversation from the corner of Waverly and Mercer streets:
(A): Is this the way the Jews felt in Germany in the 1930s? Were they roaming around the streets, dazed like we are, wondering what to do with themselves and how bad this is going to get?
(B): Don’t be ridiculous. The situations are way not comparable …
(A): If Trump fires “unloyal” government employees and uses the justice system to prosecute opponents and silence media and puts people in detention camps, then how the f…. are the situations not comparable? In the 1940s, the US and UK in a bizarre alliance with Stalin stopped the Axis powers. Who is there to do that now with Russian, China, N. Korea, and Iran working together? And oh yeah, Orban…
This made me think: we have not, as (A) fears, forgotten the lessons of the twentieth century. We have forgotten the lessons of the 500-year fight for liberal, representative democracy. We have forgotten all those since Sebastian Castellio (1515–1563) who fought, were imprisoned, and died to wrest power from kings and autocrats and place it in the people.
I speak not as a historian but as someone who is incensed at the amnesia and at the hardship it causes the people whom democracy was to benefit.
I know we have forgotten those lessons not because of Trump but because long before, we forgot that liberal democracy is based on the idea that the demos—not only priests and nobles—is educable. And we have forgotten the responsibility to educate. When upper-income earners vote for Trump because he benefits profits, it’s a coherent if self-absorbed choice. When those who suffer from his policies vote his way because they feel he fights for them, we have something of the tragic. In scores of interviews, I hear that the prices of eggs and gas are higher than in 2019 and so that’s a vote for Trump. End of story. No one over age 14 should have such limited tools to understand their lives.
I do not think, as some “progressives” do, that we are in an autocratic moment. Rather, both “sides” in America believe there has been a breach of the political compact. On one hand, some see racist, xenophobic, sexist, and homophobic attacks on the bonds that should include all in the republic. Yet those on the populist right say: where are your “democratic bonds” when it comes to us? They too believe the societal compact has been broken, leaving them vulnerable to economic loss, to an indifferent government, and to the contempt of the fancy people. Populists seek to restore their democracy. Many saw the Jan. 6 riot as the people speaking. They certainly see the 2024 election as their voice.
I am heartsick because I fear they’re going to get screwed—or paid just enough in the “bread and circuses” of culture wars to keep their votes going to the Republican party. Let’s spend our time and energy on whether Heather Has Two Mommies should be in the library while the next tax cut enriches the top 1%—as the last one did.
From Broadway at West 4th street:
(X) So are we going to lose gay marriage?
(Y): Nah. It would create business havoc. Some states would keep it, and states have to recognize marriages performed in other states… So many businesses have branches in more than one state. It would be a corporate mess.
(X) Remember when we used to carry those documents everywhere for emergencies—the powers of attorney, the health care proxies. Let’s hope your faith in corporate greed is correct.
The progressive writers are already telling us to fight back. But I am heartsick.
(An earlier version of this article appeared in Der Tagesspiegel, Nov. 9, 2024 online, Nov. 11, 2024 in print.)
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Marcia Pally, professor at New York University, held the Mercator Professorship in the Theology Faculty of Humboldt University, Berlin, where she is now an annual guest professor and member of the Center for Interreligious Theology and Religious Studies and the Berlin Institute for Public Theology. Her most recent books include: White Evangelicals and Right-wing Populism: How Did We Get Here? / From This Broken Hill I Sing to You: God, Sex, and Politics in the Work of Leonard Cohen / Commonwealth and Covenant: Economics, Politics, and Theologies of Relationality / America’s New Evangelicals: Expanding the Vision of the Common Good.
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Photo credits: “Emotional Statue of Liberty.” Image created with AI, downloaded from Freepik.
