What Happens to America If Trump Loses?
Many Americans are afraid of what the U.S. would look like if Donald Trump won November’s election. Would President Trump really ban Muslims — including American citizens — from crossing the border? Would Mexican immigrants have even more to worry about than they do now? Would he usher in an era of American fascism?
But in a nation in which Donald Trump has a huge number of riled-up, racist supporters, the question not enough people are seriously considering is: What happens if Trump loses?
Some presume that a defeated Trump would slink away to ponder a new method for attracting attention, while his loyal supporters would return to their homes, jobs and pre-Trump lives, begrudgingly accepting the start of the Sanders or Clinton administration. But I’m not so sure. While we have witnessed many divisive campaigns and candidates before, we’ve never seen such a volatile, socially regressive political crusade as Trump’s in modern American politics. If he loses, don’t bet that all his angry, hate-filled, xenophobic supporters will go gently into that good night.
Trump’s base is so damn scary because it’s not so much made up of people with shared policy ideas — it’s more of a battalion filled with angry, mostly white folks who’ve been hungry for emancipation from the supposed scourges of political correctness and diversity. The reason Trump’s campaign events sell out, sometimes overwhelming entire towns, while his Republican opponents fail to attract similar audiences (like Rubio’s embarrassing, near-empty rally in his home state of Florida) is because Trump and his campaign rallies offer attendees something no other candidate does, to quite the same extent: an unfettered taste of good ol’ fashioned bigotry.
A Trump campaign event is less a political rally than a time machine to an era many conservative Americans ardently long for. Stadiums act as asylums for those aching to call Mexicans rapists and “A-rabs” terrorists with an ease their parents and grandparents might have gotten away with. And now that Trump is advocating violence against protesters, especially those of color, rally attendees can enact the same type of violence we’re more accustomed to seeing in grainy black-and-white films from the Sixties Civil Rights movement. The ability to say whatever the hell you want, violently lay hands on whoever disagrees with you, and publicly castigate those who are different from you are the unofficial selling points of a Trump rally, something no other GOP candidate can offer.
And Trump’s supporters hope this environment is indicative of President Trump’s America — it’s an ideal the Trump rebels are literally fighting for.