Seeking solace after Trump

NOVEMBER 6 was a gloomy day in Iowa City (IC), where many of my local friends were visibly dismayed at the news of the November 5 victory of Republican President-elect Donald Trump.

An immigrant writer living in IC wrote a poem on November 6 about waking to “clouds of bigotry” and “rain of terror.” It alluded to the fears many Democrats and liberals have that Trump’s second term will further empower the creeping trend of US fascism.

Though his win forestalled the likelihood of another violent armed insurrection like the one after his 2020 loss, many immigrants, members of the LGBTQ+ community, people of colour and women fear the implications of Trump’s presidency and a Republican Senate.

Between Trump’s stump speeches, salted with racist anti-immigrant rhetoric and peppered with open contempt of his mixed-race opponent Kamala Harris, and his VP-elect JD Vance’s anti-abortion record, many IC liberals believe this will result in open persecution of immigrants, minorities and women.

I have been here since September as a Fall Fellow of the International Writing Program (IWP), a longstanding soft diplomacy project of the University of Iowa (UI) and the US State Department.

IC liberals I talked to for this piece are certain the Republican victory will encourage the enactment of misogyny, racism and bigotry in both political and everyday life.

“Sorry you are here during these terrible times,” said one UI lecturer in an e-mail sent to the IWP cohort inviting us to a class that would bring “solace” with poetry about the temporary nature of tyranny.

The mood among political-minded IWP fellows was desolate as early as the night of November 5, when the Republican win seemed assured. Many of them were pro-Harris. They watched the election results roll in while at a karaoke bar.

But not everyone in the IWP group is concerned at Trump’s win.

“It’s a Jekyll and Hyde situation, because Trump is Hyde, but the ‘Trump lite’ version that the Democrats present is unlikely to counter Trump,” said one South Asian-born fellow. “They (Democrats) need to act on principles a bit more.”

Another, from Southeast Asia, shrugged in indifference when asked his opinion on the election results.

“It will not affect US foreign policy that much,” he said, and he has other things on his mind as we prepare to leave Iowa City on November 11 to complete our writing residency with a six-day trip to Washington, DC, and New York City.

Over our lunch on November 5, a Mexican UI grad student told me she couldn’t conceive of a Trump regime in 2024. How could a man with such a shady reputation be elected by intelligent people, she asked, expressing hopes that Harris would win.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is a woman, and abortion is not a federal crime in that country.

In the run-up to the election, another UI grad student – a genderqueer white American with whom I have never talked politics – regularly posted Instagram stories in favour of Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presidential nominee. Their stories decried the Palestinian genocide, noting that Harris and her running mate Tim Walz would continue incumbent President Joe Biden’s support of Israel in its war against Hamas.

“Since the start of the Israeli invasion,” according to a Wikipedia article, “over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, more than half of them women and children.” The same article cites Amnesty International as stating, “Nearly all of the strip's 2.3 million Palestinian population have been forcibly displaced.”

Stein garnered only 0.4 per cent of the national vote, according to AP estimates on the Iowa news site kcrg.com. The site did not show the number of votes Stein won in the state, where she was a write-in candidate.

The overwhelming mood on my social media feeds was one of despair, except for one friend in Trinidad, who said, “Watch how Trini go ketch cold after how dey name sneeze.”

On my feeds were other voices that echoed the Iowa City poet I quoted above, whose piece ended on a hopeful note: “The sun will rise,” she wrote.