Trump's triumph

How Oklahoma enabled the president-elect

“I’m betting that America will reject a politics of resentment, a politics of blame, and choose a politics that says we are stronger together. I’m betting you will reject fear and choose hope. I’m betting that the wisdom, the decency and generosity of the American people will once again win the day.” —Barack Obama

Yeah, how much?

This is not the column I was going to write. This was not the column I wrote. On the Sunday before the election, it was done, all except for the percentage of the vote Trump would get in Oklahoma (I predicted 67 percent; it was actually 65 percent), and the final draft of the closing paragraph, on which I wanted a few more days to process an America that had elected a president whose name was preceded by a Mme—and how Oklahoma had embarrassed itself by missing the revolution.  

In the piece, now in an electronic file labeled DATED, I wrote about how Governor Mary Fallin called Donald Trump a “racial healer,” even though he talked of building a wall to keep out Mexicans, threatened a ban on Muslims who wanted to come in, threw out African Americans from his rallies (even those who supported him), flirted with David Duke, ended his campaign with an anti-Semitic screed and then appeared with noted humanist Ted Nugent, famous for calling President Obama a “subhuman mongrel.” I wrote of Markwayne Mullin, who believed the president-elect had the sensitivity and intelligence to grasp Native American Affairs, even while repeatedly calling Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas.” I wrote of Senator Jim Inhofe extolling Trump’s love and feel for the military even though Trump said military generals are “embarrassing our country” and told Hugh Hewitt, “nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me.” I wrote how Senator James Lankford cried as he put his kids to bed because “neither candidate is a role model for my children,” but decided to support the thrice-married groper of genitalia anyway.  I wrote of Congressman Jim Bridenstine, a veteran who supported Trump even though the president-elect dissed John McCain and Humayun Khan, encouraged Russia to hack Clinton’s emails, praised Vladimir Putin, gave credit to Kim Jong Un, and expressed admiration for Saddam Hussein for killing so many without trials.

And then Tuesday happened.

Either our state leaders did not see the short and long con of Donald Trump, or saw it and didn’t care.

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.”

That was George Washington. He would have hated Oklahoma.

Oklahoma is the Petrie dish of one-party GOP rule. America, come to Oklahoma City and see the roads, schools, rates of beaten and incarcerated women, deficits, and attempts at religious establishment—we’ve got it all. This, as has been said in this column many times before, is the state we’re in. While statewide politicians failed on every moral and practical level to lead, to warn against this pending disaster, 947,934 Oklahomans voted for Trump—and that wasn’t Jim Inhofe’s or Jim Bridenstine’s fault.  

So, how many of those 947,934 laughed when chants of “lock her up” began to make the rounds? How many believed that by increasing tariffs on China, workers in Poteau would benefit? How many believed there was nothing amiss in the tax returns he refused to release?  How many believed Trump when he said he alone would fix things? How many believed a wall between Mexico and the U.S. will do anything for the undocumented workers already here? (How many still believe there will be a wall?) 

Worse, how many compartmentalized all of that—the misogyny, nativism, incuriousness, duplicity, laziness, the fascistic leanings—because Trump, like some crazy uncle who lives upstairs and only comes down at meal times, promised to get their factory jobs back from Guangzhou or tells it like it is or because Hillary Clinton had her own email server or was secretary of state when four were murdered in Benghazi?

You can’t love this country and hate everyone in it who doesn’t look or pray like you; you can’t give the keys to the place to a man who mocks the disabled and pageant winners; you can’t vote for someone who promises to protect your 2nd Amendment while also threatening to jail those exercising their 1st; you can’t allow a man who plays footsie with a Russian dictator and lies about it in the Situation Room; and you can’t call for insurrection if an election doesn’t go your way. 

But of course you can. We did. 

Something happened on November 8, and it’s not entirely about Donald Trump. Any Republican would have won—and probably by a wider margin—for not one person who voted for Trump wouldn’t have voted for Rubio or Cruz or Bush. Clinton didn’t lose this. The GOP base would have voted for a lawn chair over her. Clinton ran a good, if flawed, campaign. 

Whatever is loose in America—call it fear, call it entitlement, call it racism—is stronger than anything Nate Silver can measure. That’s what won. That’s why the GOP retained the House and Senate and Sarah Palin will be in the cabinet. That’s why the GOP picked up seats in the Oklahoma house and senate, even though this legislative body, led by Republicans, failed in every way in 2016.  That’s why men like State Representative John Bennett, who called for Clinton to face the firing squad and tribunals on Muslims, gets re-elected, but men like John Waldron, an admired schoolteacher, who called for increased education funding and decency, doesn’t get a chance to serve.  

We’ve lost our heart and replaced it with a sneer.  

The weekend before the election, when asked what if he lost, Donald Trump said,  “I will consider this the single greatest waste of time, energy…and money.”

This from a friend:

“Our grandson was adopted at a very young age from Korea. He is now eight years old, bright, handsome, just a great little kid, very loving, very much a part of an equally loving family of parents and siblings, whom he treasures and who treasure him. It is impossible to know this little boy without falling in love with him. In school today [on the Wednesday after the election], he was told that they were going to send him back to Korea now.”

Anecdotal, sure, but not as much as you think. 

I have a scarf on. Passed by someone on the platform today and he says, “Your time’s up, girlie.”

And that’s what Trump and his movement have unleashed. Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, John Kasich, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton did not have skinheads at their campaign rallies. The KKK didn’t plan victory parades for any other candidates. 

This doesn’t happen if anyone else is elected on November 8. 

A softball dugout in Island Park in Wellsville was defaced with the words “Make America White Again,” accompanied by a large swastika.

Of course not all who voted for Trump are racists, but the lever pulled in those voting booths, the machines that tabulate the filled-in ballots do not measure intent—they just count. And they count all the Trump voters the same—David Duke and Mary Fallin.

(What will get lost in the narrative is that more Americans—close to two million, as of this writing—actually voted for Clinton. But in a campaign where facts were ridiculed, why should that matter?)

So, for all those who are not racist but still feel vindicated to have gotten America back, are elated to be rid of the Clintons, are stoked about sticking it to the liberal press, this is the result: women wearing hijabs being threatened on the way to work, dugouts in America being marked up with Nazi insignias on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, and 8-year-olds who are scared because they don’t have white skin.

For more from Barry, read his article on Yuval Rabin, son of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.