What We Just Learned about American Values

The American ritual of lionizing success and abhorring failure is in full swing after Donald Trump’s resounding victory in the U.S. presidential election.

In America, only the winner gets to smoke the cigar. And no doubt about it, Trump and the GOP were the big winners.

The White House, the Senate, and the popular vote all fell to the Republicans. The House of Representatives may yet be added to that string of victories. Politically speaking, that is game, set and match.

While most commentators have been busy praising Trump and dumping on Kamala Harris for this stunning result, I have a different view. Two weeks before this race ended, I wrote that the election wasn’t essentially about either candidate. Ultimately, it would be about the deciders, not the choices.

In other words, it was about the American people — what mattered to them in 2024 and what didn’t. What the country stood for, and what it was prepared to jettison.

Trump made political hay out of the “lived economy” of ordinary Americans, who were not experiencing the benefits of Biden-omics as touted by the Democrats.

The grocery store was a daily reminder that COVID-inflation had changed day-to-day life in America. Food cost too much, gas and energy cost too much, and transportation cost too much.

People were having trouble keeping their old clunkers on the road, let alone buying new cars or trucks. Housing had become so expensive that the American dream of home ownership was becoming impossible for a lot of people, including young men who were having trouble finding a job to get a start in life.

Just as bad, high interest rates for much of the Biden era had left a lot of people barely able to scrape by, let alone prosper. Trump blamed those rates on profligate government spending by Biden and Harris — conveniently ignoring the fact that both interest rates and inflation have been steadily coming down.

Trump was so effective at stoking the sense of aggrievement that by the time of the vote, 70 per cent of Americans believed the country was headed in the wrong direction.

If all of these things pressed the anger button for voters, immigration was the fountainhead of their fear and loathing. Donald Trump relentlessly exploited this supercharged, emotional opening.

The Biden administration, he argued, had sold out Americans with its so-called open border policies. Millions of illegals were siphoning jobs and resources from needy American citizens.

Worse, he claimed, other countries were emptying their prisons and insane asylums, directing the dregs of their citizenry to the U.S., where they were welcomed by the naive and misguided Biden administration.

Trump accused the Democrats of filling the country with thousands of rapists, drug dealers and murderers. He claimed that migrants were even eating people’s pets in Ohio. Kamala’s mantra of hope and joy was derailed by such dark and disingenuous musings.

By the numbers, those were the issues that paved Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the ones that mattered to voters. But here are the things that didn’t matter to Americans. It is a stark and telling list.

It didn’t matter that they were electing a convicted felon, sexual assailant and serial liar to the most powerful position in the world.

It didn’t matter that he is facing sentencing on 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records in the Stormy Daniels hush money affair.

It didn’t matter that in his previous four-year term as president he had been twice impeached.

It didn’t matter that their choice for president is currently facing federal criminal charges for inciting a riot at the Capitol in 2021 after Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

It didn’t matter that Trump has promised to pardon those in prison for storming the Capitol and assaulting 150 police officers.

It didn’t matter that Trump has mused about lifting the broadcast licenses of TV networks whose coverage he does not like, or that he calls the media “the enemy of the people.”

It didn’t matter that Trump spoke of being a dictator on day one, and mused about suspending the U.S. Constitution.

It didn’t matter that Trump had a soft spot for despots and dictators and was buddy-buddy with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.

It didn’t matter that Trump will likely take the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, again, and has boasted that his motto in power with respect to fossil fuels will be “drill baby drill.”

It didn’t matter that Trump and JD Vance, his soon-to-be vice president, made racial and misogynistic attacks on Kamala Harris. Trump repeatedly called her “stupid,” and Vance referred to her as “trash.”

No way to describe any woman, let alone the first Black woman to lead a major political party in the U.S., and to seek the presidency.

It didn’t matter that Trump stacked the Supreme Court in order to reverse Roe v. Wade, striking down women’s constitutional right to abortion in the U.S.

It didn’t matter that Trump has broadly hinted that he might withdraw American support for Ukraine, which is still under invasion by Russia. He has repeatedly stated that every time President Volodymyr Zelenskyy comes to the U.S., he leaves with $100 billion in aid.

It didn’t matter that Trump has vowed to prosecute his political rivals, using the justice department to settle old scores with “the enemy within.” A strange promise, given Trump’s repeated accusation that the Democrats weaponized the justice system against him.

All these things that didn’t matter are the big story here. They show that much more than the government has changed. American society has changed and changed profoundly.

In return for the promise of two chickens in every pot, and deporting millions of migrants, the majority of voters were prepared to look the other way on what used to be core American values. They shrugged off the rule of law, freedom of the press, support for democracy at home and abroad, and basic civility in the nation’s public discourse.

In the coming months, the U.S. will enter a tumultuous phase, where things may be seen that will shake the country to its foundations. The way that migrant children taken from their parents and locked in cages did in his first term.

Trump will undoubtedly close the border. Thousands of people could be summarily rounded up, detained and deported.

Ukraine may be abandoned in its life and death struggle with Russia.

Officials at the justice department prosecuting Trump may be fired. Special counsel Jack Smith is expected to end his prosecutions against Trump.

Trump’s bromance with Putin may deepen.

But those who put this man in charge can’t complain that they have been hoodwinked. Everything Trump may do, he clearly identified when he was running.

Perhaps the 248-year old experiment in democracy has failed and there is a major realignment going on. Americans want the strongman.

Those who thought that Trump’s most outrageous outbursts were mere political rhetoric, may be in for some unpleasant surprises. And Canada may face issues about water, the Northwest Passage, trade, and the manufacture of car batteries very soon.

But then when you uncouple character from the list of prerequisites of holding public office, what else can you expect?

Michael Harris, a Tyee contributing editor, is a highly awarded journalist and documentary maker.

[Top: Cartoon by Greg Perry.]