Opinion: America’s Taliban chose Donald Trump. Why are we surprised?

In this Sept. 2017 file photo, a flag is waved outside the White House, in Washington. Carolyn Kaster / AP
Published: 11-16-2024 6:00 AM |
Robert Azzi is a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter. His columns are archived at robertazzitheother.substack.com.
‘Ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy of justice,” James Baldwin, “No Name in the Street,” 1972.
We know that to be true.
“That summer [of 2016] and into the fall and in the ensuing years to come, amid talk of Muslim bans, nasty women, border walls, and shithole nations, it was common to hear in certain circles the disbelieving cries, “This is not America,” or “I don’t recognize my country,” or “This is not who we are.” Except that this was and is our country and this was and is who we are, whether we have known or recognized it or not,” Isabel Wilkerson, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” 2020.
We know that still to be true — this election has reaffirmed it.
“The United States was born from a fundamental contradiction that has never gone away. On the one hand, the beauty of democracy, opportunity, freedom, and equality. On the other hand, the brutality that made that beauty possible: colonization, genocide, enslavement, occupation, and war,” writer and university professor Viet Thanh Nguyen posted on Instagram after the election.
Nguyen, author of “The Sympathizer,” continues, “So long as that contradiction is not resolved, it will return, and the country - and the world - will be haunted by the original sins that made this country and are still a part of this country. Too many Americans benefit from the contradiction. Some willingly embrace the brutality, others are willing to look away from it ...”
All that is true, too true, and it continues.
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On Wednesday, Nov. 6, not so much in despair as in disappointment, I spent my day mostly watching Monk reruns, taking walks, and trying to avoid friends who seemed bewildered by Donald Trump’s election. Why were they surprised, I wondered.
On Thursday, Nov. 7. I reengaged the world and spent the day reading op-eds and news reports, listening to pundits, politicians, and podcasters. To my mind they were mostly wrong and there was little insight to be gleaned.
The truth is the fault lies within us; this is who we are. Why don’t we all know this?
It’s been a week, my friends, a week and a lifetime.
In 2021, I wrote, “Today, no one could have foreseen that when the Taliban’s Minister of Education, Molvi Noorullah Munir boasted, ‘You see that the Mullahs and Taliban that are in the power, have no PhD, MA or even a high school degree, but are the greatest of all,’ he would be articulating a similar anti-elitist right-wing American trope embraced by MAGA millions so proud of their ignorance that not only are they willing to sacrifice loved ones on altars of idolatry but they’re willing to try and topple our government through insurrection.”
Too few people paid attention. It worked. America’s Taliban, MAGA, triumphed.
The mistake Democrats continue to make is to think we are a more enlightened nation than we are. We aren’t. Look at 2016, look at Jan. 6, 2021. Look at the Tree of Life Synagogue and the El Paso Walmart. Our Taliban is driving the country, their arsenal is mostly different than that held in Afghanistan, but fear and terror are the weapons most deployed.
The insurrection has achieved its goal: many are fearful, many others are terrified.
The election was waged, on both sides, along a political spectrum that included resentments, grievances, elitism, trans-rights, Gaza, Lebanon, abortion, sexism, socialists, apostolic white Christian nationalists, CRT, Ukraine, crypto, Nazis, inflation, drill-baby-drill, EPA, legacy media, COVID, vaccines, kale, cursive, childbearing, woke-ism, zionism, BDSers and, of course, incels.
Waged on the backs of my brothers and sisters in Palestine, victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing enabled by the Democratic Party and its leadership to this very day. We know that to be incontrovertibly true.
Trump’s victory, I believe, reflects who we truly are.
“It’s always about race,” I wrote in 2022, “and one of the most pernicious and persistent narratives promoted by white supremacists and Christian nationalists — and believed by too many parents, pastors and pundits who value prejudice, status, and tradition over the Constitution, truth and enlightenment — is that not all of humanity is created equal.”
Trump won because he embraced hatred and dehumanization of the Other, of Blacks, Asians, Puerto Ricans, Muslims, the marginalized, vulnerable, disenfranchised, of all people who don’t look like Trump.
Trump won because he embraced violence. Trump won because he embraced America’s shameful history of pogroms and violence, from Ocoee, FL and Tulsa, OK; from Selma and Birmingham; from JFK, Medgar Evers, MLK, and Malcolm X; from “fine people” in Charlottesville to insurrectionists on Jan. 6, 2021, to encouraging attacks upon an “enemy within.”
Trump won because too many Americans, including many of color, do not feel a need to be invested in our basic creed that “all [people] are created equal,” that while not all Trump voters are racists far too many of them are unbothered supporting an unreconstructed racist, misogynist, convicted felon, and adjudicated rapist.
I am not surprised by how many people of color, yearning for the false promises that proximity to whiteness appears to offer, were seduced by false promises of salvation and voted for Donald Trump: for too many people, embedded within the pernicious caste system that has persisted for over 400 years, America has been a really ugly and unwelcome place for generations.
That they voted for Trump is no guarantee of safety and protection, no assurance against deportation. As racist ideologue Steve Miller is fond of saying, “America is for Americans, for Americans only!”
Today, let there be no surprise who will try to define “American.”
In 1981, Republican political consultant Lee Atwater gave an interview and said, “You start out in 1954 by saying, “N, n, n.” By 1968 you can’t say ‘n’ - that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff ... and a byproduct of them is, Blacks get hurt worse than whites...”
In 2008, when Barack Obama was running for president, White America, understanding that it was no longer acceptable to use the ‘N’ word, described him as ‘Muslim’ and “Other.”
In 2024, as VP Kamala Harris was running for president, the “N-words” became “trans” and “illegal immigration” and “pet-eaters.”
Why is anyone surprised?
Today, in this post-election environment, I believe that delusional Democrats continue to think we live in a better country than we do, ignoring the fact that most Americans don’t believe that racism and misogyny are as systemically embedded as they are.
Americans may aspire for more — I do — but the reality is that we’re just not there yet, and that there any many Americans who don’t ever want to be there.
Americans, like Donald Trump and Steve Miller, who don’t ever want to be there.
I must admit that among the most difficult things for me to read this week has been the pollyannaish rehashing of tired, privileged (mostly white Christian) tropes that argue that all America needs to do now is gather in a field somewhere, hug, and love each other.
On Jan. 20, 2025, in proximity to sacred land desecrated in 2021 by America’s Taliban who, in acts of sedition, treason, and insurrection, built a gallows with lynching noose, paraded a Confederate battle flag, and threatened VP Pence; American will inaugurate Donald J. Trump as 47th president of the United States of America.
Hug that in a distant field.
“In difficult times, poets and writers have always provided lifelines,” - Lisa Suhair Mujaj, ”Geographies of Light,” 2009.
We could all really use a lifeline right now.