The Aftermath of Grey Wednesday

One week ago, we here at the Academy bore witness to an entirely singular experience. On the morning after election night, we woke up to a completely different America. The polls were wrong, we had underestimated the strength of rural, white America, and we found ourselves living in Trumpland. The day opened overcast and cold, and it seemed a perfect metaphor for the way most of us felt. Several faculty confirmed that they had never seen and felt anything like what was felt on campus that Wednesday morning. It was a Grey Wednesday.

"So, in the aftermath of Grey Wednesday, we need to keep fighting. We need to protect what progress was made in the last eight years."

In the week after that devastating morning, we witnessed a nation in shock, and half of the country reeling from the greatest political upset in modern American politics. To be clear, I am well aware that some members of our own community were overjoyed at the outcome of the election. However, for most Exonians, and most of America, this was a far cry from the result we had wanted and expected. The scariest part of the victory, for me at least, was the vindication that racists and extremists seemed to feel following the election. That vindication in turn led to a spike in outrageous and dangerous hate crimes.In the hours following the election, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reported 300 incidents of hate crimes and racial discrimination or harassment nationwide. Activist Shaun King claimed that he had received over 3000 reports in the 48 hours immediately after the election. Some of the independently verified reports include high schoolers in a Pennsylvania school chanting “White power” while holding a Trump sign, and “Trump Nation, Whites Only” being scrawled on a Maryland church that offers weekly Spanish-language services. At the University of Michigan, a white male threatened to set a Muslim girl “on fire with a lighter,” a swastika and “Trump” were sprayed on the walls of a dorm at the State University of New York and a swastika and “Heil Trump” were sprayed on the walls of an Indiana church that supports same-sex marriages. “Make America White Again” and a swastika were drawn on a baseball field wall in Wellsville, N.Y., and the words “Colored” and “Whites Only” were sprayed above drinking fountains in Jacksonville, Fla. The reports go on and on, but this should not surprise anyone. Trump ran a campaign by calling Mexicans rapists, retweeting white supremacists, retweeting anti-Semites, claiming ignorance of the KKK’s endorsement of him in a live interview, tweeting false statistics about black-on-white and black-on-black crime, mocking the disabled, picking up one of the most homophobic men in the nation as his running mate, attempting to build a wall to keep immigrants out and promising that he would “bomb the s*it out of” his enemies. As I have said all election long, Trump is fascist, authoritarian, hawkish, anti-Semitic, anti-black, racist, xenophobic and has advisers as homophobic as Adolf Hitler. Do I believe that Trump will become Hitler? No, but the reason why we must remember, and we must never forget the campaign that Trump ran, is because we now have a responsibility as the electorate to keep Trump in check.The Republicans won the House, the Senate, will soon get the Supreme Court and have a supermajority of the state governors and legislators. There are no legislative or judicial checks on Trump, and there are no state level checks against Trump. We, the American people, are now the last check and the ultimate balance to counteract Trump. Perhaps Trump will shift to moderacy, as he has already begun to do, but we must remain vigilant, and forever watch his actions. There are no other boundaries against Trump’s actions but the American public. We the people must consistently denounce his hate speech when he says it, prosecute the hate crimes he inspires and defend the minorities he attacked this entire campaign.Now I have heard responses from the right wing claiming that the protests against Trump’s elections are equally bad, and yet, I fundamentally disagree with that claim. The protests against Trump are exercises of American democracy and liberty and an engaged electorate. We all agree in disavowing those instances where they have turned violent, but there is a fundamental difference between the hate crimes of racists and an exercise of liberty that does not harm others. There is no equivalency between the two. One is inherently evil while the other is not.In the effort to heal a partisan nation, some of us have called for increased discussion and conversation between everyone. They have called for an attempt to understand the sentiments that drove others to vote a certain way. That is certainly a noble and noteworthy cause. However, in these conversations, we must remember what the difference between facts and feelings is. One side of the conversation, more so than the other, has consistently been misinformed. Of 333 Trump statements, Politifact rated a jaw-dropping 70 percent of them as “Mostly False,” “False” or “Pants on Fire” false. By comparison, the same was true for only 26 percent of Hillary Clinton’s claims and 26 percent of President Barack Obama’s. In an interview with Alisyn Camerota at the Republican National Convention this summer, Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich was fact-checked by Camerota after he falsely claimed that violent crime is up in big cities. He responded to the facts by saying, “That’s your view.” Later, when Camerota pushed the issue, Gingrich said that, “People feel more threatened.” He concluded by saying that he, as a politician, prefers feelings to facts. Both sides of the conversations are not using as many facts as necessary, but there is no equivalence here: Trump and his surrogates built a campaign on using feelings instead of facts, and blatantly lying to the American public. In these conversations with Trumpers, we must remember that facts are facts. We cannot argue or debate over facts. When one side of the table refuses to use facts, it is our job to call them out on it. To understand feelings is a great start, but we must always correct the misinformed or worse, those attempting to misinform.So, in the aftermath of Grey Wednesday, we need to keep fighting. We need to protect what progress was made in the last eight years. John Oliver called for donations to nonprofits that protect the very minorities that Trump has preyed on this whole election cycle. He has also called for compensating newspapers to support them in the pursuit of journalism. Others have called for peaceful protests when possible. However, most importantly, what we as an electorate must do is stay informed. If Trump makes any move to discriminate, to hurt, to oppress, or is ignorant in any manner, we must be there to call him out on it. If misinformation is thrown around, or if facts are disputed, we have to correct the misinformed. Now more than ever is the time to be engaged and to take charge of our democracy. There are no safeguards for our liberties but us. The ultimate challenge of keeping our democracy is now upon us and us alone.