Trump Anxiety Disorder and the Change Election

Everyone insists that Trump represents change in this election. But the real change in 2016 is actually Hillary as she smashes that final glass ceiling.

I’ve been trying to come up with words. I’ve been trying to come up with words for a long time now. Not just since Friday, but since July. Maybe before that. Since February, when Trump started winning the primaries. I’ve been trying to find the words to express the emotional shock of watching the events of this election unfold.

It’s cliché to bring up the proverb “May you live in interesting times.” But we do. There’s been a seismic shift in this country over the 30 years since I first began to be socialized. Some of it is pop culture–based: when I was 16, I was bullied and sneered at as the nerd with her face in a book, the one who dated the guy whose mother made him a Starfleet uniform for his birthday. How does one explain how different it was in 1992 versus 2016, when now going to conventions is a chance for families to have a grand day out and everyone to wear their Halloween costumes? Or how it felt to watch those who once sneered at you for carrying around a Robert Jordan novel line up at midnight for the release of A Dance with Dragons?

It’s the same feeling I get when I try to explain to people that when Hillary went to China and said “Women’s rights are human rights” it was a radical statement. The ’90s were a different time. The phrase “rape culture” didn’t exist in mainstream circles. When people talked of Bill’s “bimbo eruptions,” no one stopped and said “don’t call them that.”

Hillary Rodham Clinton meets with reporters April 22, 1994 in Washington, DC. The caption from the time period reads: “The 41st First Lady, Hillary Clinton brought an unprecedented level of political power to the role of first lady.” (Photo by Diana Walker/Liaison)

Change is frightening. And the change we’ve seen since 2008 has been nothing short of stunning. Marijuana is legal in some states. Cuba is open. African Americans are standing up to the systemic racism they experience everyday and demanding that white people not only see it for what it is but acknowledge it. And women are standing up to the everyday sexism and the patriarchal norms that have defined our society for generations and insisting it’s time to respect us as equals. This is culminating in us having our first female candidate for President, a thing that many “less developed countries” have had no problem with electing for decades before us.

That there would be backlash to this was predictable. But that it would take this almost comically buffoonish, painfully obvious, freakishly id-like form of the candidacy of Donald Trump… it’s so on the nose that you can’t even believe it’s really happening. Everyone, including Trump, insists he represents change. But that’s a lie they are telling themselves. Hillary Clinton, and the advent of our first female president, is the real change. Trump is anti-change. He is retrograde. He is the patriarchal panic made flesh. I saw someone refer to him as “the last of the Old Boys’ Club.” Except the Old Boys’ Club was never so openly crass. At least, not where the cameras could catch them.

Trump had been crude, and in public, for months now. He has been openly racist from the beginning, all but openly promising a world where white men will be returned to their rightful place as “in charge” and these upstart people of color demanding we acknowledge the reality of their everyday lives will be silenced again. And let’s be real, the Republican party—which has been running on coded racism my entire life, from “welfare queens” to “Willie Horton”—was fine with it. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader of the Senate, has been running his own coded racist campaign against our president for eight years. Paul Ryan may be more Johnny-come-lately to the party, but he’s not stupid, and understands what side of the bread the butter goes on. This is the party of Pat Buchanan and Sarah Palin. Trump is merely the next iteration, just more crass.

But since Hillary became the nominee, the racism has been joined with the sexism. Again, Trump’s record here was public, much of it on camera, and obvious. That this tape that came out Friday exists should surprise no one. Trump is, after all, not just lewd and crude, he’s the type of man who is so terrifyingly insecure that he brags in this way to any beta male around. We’ve heard from many that “this is how men just talk.” Is it? As a woman who spent ten years in a male-dominated career where sexism was entrenched so deeply it was simply the air we breathed, I know that sometimes they do so much, they would even do so in front of me. And it’s always the loudest-mouthed, most insecure ones who wonder why those bitches fuck them over all the time.

Why is this the straw that seems to have broken the camel’s back? Because now Trump is talking about white women. It’s telling the language that those from Jeb Bush to Paul Ryan have used to condemn Trump. They all talk of how it’s not ok to speak like this of “our daughters,” “our wives,” “our granddaughters.” Not that it’s not ok to speak of women like this, but “our” women. The ones we own. Because in the end, the Republican Party agrees with Trump’s worldview. Women, like people of color, are lesser creatures. They just don’t like how he’s expressing it.

This drawing back of the curtain to see how deeply entrenched the patriarchy is in our society feels painfully disheartening this year. Watching Trump’s rise, and the openly racist and sexist worldview thrust into the mainstream, has been a year of being ambushed by a grotesque every time you read the news. I joke to my friends I have “Trump Anxiety Disorder,” (#TAD!), but what it really is is a deep depression borne from watching 35–40% of our country reject that women are equal, that our society can move forward. (This is true of both women and men. My own mother voted against the ERA in the 1970s and refused to vote for Hillary in the primary because “she has a fat neck.”)

“{it} has been a year of being ambushed by a grotesque every time you read the news.”

(Photo by Waring Abbott/Getty Images)

Change is hard, change is frightening. But I’ve seen us move forward, dragging that 35% of the country along, kicking and screaming. Back in October of 2008, we watched in horror as Sarah Palin drew crowds carrying monkeys and signs with nooses. But we rolled through them, and despite their faux “tea party” respectability, Obama pushed until they too had health care. And I believe we can keep moving forward. I believe that this violent explosion of open misogyny in these last few weeks is the rump’s final temper tantrum on the way to smashing that highest glass ceiling once and for all.

No, I don’t think it will go away when the election ends. Another “tea party” cover will rise out of the ashes, and spend the next 4–8 years fighting Hillary tooth and nail on every policy. But like Obama made it just a bit easier for the next person of color to run for president, Hillary living through this will make it so that next time a woman runs for president, people won’t think twice.

Next: Hillary Clinton, Defender of Bunnies

And maybe the next one will have a real opponent, not a narcissistic clown that the bigoted of this country can project their hopes and dreams upon. But until then, we have to live through this, and wait for the next tape to drop.