Bisexual writer Roxane Gay warns it would be “shameful and cowardly” to compromise any progressive values because Donald Trump won the election.
“To suggest we should yield even a little to Mr. Trump’s odious politics,” wrote Gay, best known for writing Bad Feminist, in an op-ed for the New York Times, “to suggest we should compromise on the rights of trans people, for instance, and all of the other critical issues we care most about, is unacceptable… We cannot abandon the most vulnerable communities to assuage the most powerful.”
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“Even if we did,” she continued, “it would never be enough. The goal posts would keep moving until progressive politics became indistinguishable from conservative politics. We’re halfway there already.”
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She lamented that Trump’s election shows “how American tolerance for the unacceptable is nearly infinite” and that “Trump is successful because of his faults, not despite them, because we do not live in a just world.”
Trump voters, she said, must be treated like the adults they are, who “want to believe anything that affirms their worldview” and do not deserve the “care and coddling” they continue to receive.
She added that we must all refuse to participate in the “mass delusion” of lies from gender-affirming surgeries taking place at schools to babies somehow being aborted after birth.
“Time and again, we hear the wild lies these voters believe and we act as if they are sharing the same reality as ours, as if they are making informed decisions about legitimate issues. We act as if they get to dictate the term… All of us should refuse to pretend that any of this is normal and that these voters are just woefully misunderstood and that if only the Democrats addressed their economic anxiety, they might vote differently. While they are numerous, that does not make them right.”
Gay contrasted Trump’s vision of America “as a dark and foreboding place, festering with immigrants and criminality” with that of Kamala Harris, who “articulated a hopeful vision, a way forward for a fractured country” and who “positioned herself as a moderate, a leader willing to work with her political opponents, one who embraces diversity and cares about the middle class and recognizes that many people are struggling in one way or another and want those struggles acknowledged.”
Gay said she thought the last straw would be Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden just before the election, which was a parade of bigotry and included the moment a comedian referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”
“There have been so many occasions when I thought finally, we have reached the apex. Finally, he has revealed too much of what lies behind the mask. Finally, this country will stand up and draw an unbreachable line in the sand. Finally, Americans will say this is not who we are and actually mean it.”
“That time hasn’t come.”
As such, Gay warns that we all must be prepared for the absolute worst over the next four years, that we cannot yet again be enough to believe what Trump has threatened could not actually come true. She says we must confront all of this “not out of surrender, but as a means of readying ourselves for the impossible fights ahead.”
“The biggest challenge of our lifetime will be figuring out how to combat the American willingness to embrace flagrant misinformation and bigotry,” Gay wrote. But she made clear that giving up is not an option, that we all have no choice but to confront this challenge head-on.
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