1 week Ago
From all appearances, Election Day at the China Spring ISD Administrative Building was reassuringly all-American. As I walked by the long line of voters assembled in the foggy dark that morning, it was eerily quiet. No one seemed to be talking; faces looked strained, bodies tense, like those one sees in a hospital waiting room where one expects the surgeon to appear with news of a loved one who has undergone a life-threatening operation.
Once I entered the building, however, the mood changed. In large part this was because of the election judge. A middle-aged white Republican woman, dressed in a black cowboy hat, western-style dress and black cowboy boots, served as the sugary-sweet, consummate host to all who entered the polling station.
The assistant judge — a Black Democrat — was a grandmotherly figure who commanded the room with her booming voice and good humor. The Black, white and brown election workers — all women, by the way — were professional, courteous and friendly, keenly intent on doing their jobs. Many in line thanked these volunteers as they picked up their ballots, unhurried, without hassle.
And despite my anxiety as a poll watcher that morning, I walked away hours later thinking I’d seen a miracle: a functioning democracy with Americans — Democrats, independents and Republicans — voting peacefully, something we’ve long managed throughout our tumultuous history. It struck me as miraculous because it suggested this was just a normal election. But was what happened on Nov.
5 normal? I got a not-so-subtle hint of what was coming that day as I left the polling station and headed to my car. Passing by a couple with their teenage daughter who were also leaving, I heard the man say, “Hey, let’s take a picture for history.” “Sure, how ’bout here, Honey, next to the trash can,” the woman giggled.
“Perfect,” the man said, then adding just loud enough for me to hear, “I just voted, and I just took out the trash.” Laughter followed as I walked on by. The man’s joke echoed the words of the Republican candidate for vice president who at a campaign rally two days earlier proclaimed that “we’re going to take out the trash in Washington, D.
C., and the trash’s name is Kamala Harris.” ‘She doesn't matter’ The following morning as the nation began to digest what happened on Election Day 2024, I began to hear from friends, many of them women.
After learning that 55% of the men in the United States had made their voices absolutely clear by voting for a 78-year-old misogynist, rapist and convicted felon over a qualified and talented woman of good character, Kaity texted me: “America hates women.” I received another text that day from Emma, a friend who recently lost her three daughters in a custody dispute. Emma sent an excerpt from a diary she is keeping for her girls during this traumatic period when she has limited rights to see them: To my children: I want you to know that I am still fighting for you.
The election results are in, and Trump has won again ...
If my heart had not been broken on October 3 [when I lost the three of you] by a biased and corrupt court’s decision for us, this might hit differently. What happened to us is endemic. This is the America we have always lived in.
The enslavement of minorities, women and children is alive and well and supported by all major institutions. ..
. Our microcosm of injustice and violence is a reflection of the broader state of things. Living it personally prepared me for the results that I woke up to .
.. I am hopeful that this pain point may open the hearts of those who have not yet seen the pervasive injustice we live in.
That is my prayer. A third message about the election came from Ericka: Significant contributors to Kamala Harris’ defeat were systemic discrimination because of her intersectional identities — a woman and her mixed African and Indian ethnicities (double ethnic minority) — and the weaponization of her identities by her opponent and members of his party during his campaign. Trump called Harris “weak, ” described her as “dumb as a rock,” “low IQ,” and claimed foreign leaders, presumably males, would treat her like a “play toy” and “walk all over her.
” He pandered to young male voters and claimed he would protect women, “whether the women like it or not,” although the truth is that women need protection from him, a predatory rapist who boasted about grabbing women by their genitalia. No doubt, conservative Christian ideologies (women are not called/positioned to lead) intersected with deep-seated patriarchy, misogyny, sexism, racism and white supremacy which contributed to her loss. A fourth text came from Erin about a conversation she had with her 18-year-old daughter, a college freshman: When I first talked to her following the election, she was angry.
But I think that underneath the anger was also fear and hurt. She said she felt defeated, like she doesn’t matter. She talked about being scared to have a child in the future, because medical care, particularly emergency medical care, and especially in Texas, is insufficient or withheld from women and will get worse before it gets better.
As a mom, my heart breaks for her. My daughter no longer feels like a majority of this country values or respects her simply because she is female. I think she used to believe she could do anything she dreamed, and now she feels that someone else can control the direction her life takes.
Men sent message The women who reached out to me were making something very clear. From their perspective, this was, in fact, a normal American election. The miracle would have been had America elected as president a woman, something that would have happened if only women had voted, since exit polls suggest that 54 percent of the women of America voted for Harris.
What does it mean to our wives, daughters, granddaughters, sisters, mothers, grandmothers when it is the men in their lives — their husbands, sons, grandsons, brothers, fathers and grandfathers — who are responsible for putting an unqualified and indecent and profane and deceitful man back into office over a qualified and good woman? Kaity, Emma, Ericka and Erin have told me what it means to them: Their country rejected a candidate for the highest office in the land because she was a woman. Though 70 countries in the world have elected female heads of state during the 20th and 21st centuries, America has never elected a female president. It’s hard for me not to see their point.
Unpacking motivations of those who voted for Trump will require decades, yet what already seems clear is that many are interpreting the election campaign and its Nov. 5 conclusion as a message from men to women. Beneath the genteel Southern hospitality that permeated our polling stations in the bright red heart of Texas beats a darker heart.
While it usually lies hidden from polite company, it was graphically exposed for the whole world to see. Women are now wondering which of the men in their lives voted for Trump not in spite of his sexual predation but because of it. Their partners, fathers and uncles voted for a man who days before the election emulated a sex act in front of hundreds of daughters, sisters, mothers and grandmothers.
These men, casting ballots in secret, made their message crystal clear, saying, like Trump in the "Access Hollywood" video, “When you're a star [substitute “man” here], they let you do it. You can do anything.” Far-right men are now harassing women on social media with variations of a message that neo-Nazi livestreamer Nick Fuentes posted to his X account: "Your body.
My choice. Forever." I drove away from the China Spring polling station that day wondering about the future of that teen taking a photo with her parents who heard her dad say: “I just voted, and I just took out the trash.
” Blake Burleson is an ordained Baptist minister and a faculty member in the Department of Religion at Baylor University. Author of such books as “Entempling: Baptist Wisdom for Contemplative Prayer,” he is a member of the Tribune-Herald Board of Contributors. Catch the latest in Opinion.
