Our good friend Kalyan, a gay Indian-American, was so distraught by rising discrimination against Blacks, Jews, Asians, Muslims and queer people during Donald Trump’s first presidency that he moved to Mexico in 2020.
Lots of Americans threatened to leave for the same reasons back then, and I suspect many more are considering it now that Trump has won again, using the same old lies and fear-mongering to animate his base and stunning Vice President Kamala Harris, the second woman Trump prevented from breaking the ultimate glass ceiling after Hillary Clinton in 2016.
It’s true that Trump’s immersion into the body politic nine years ago illuminated economic and social distress of citizens that we coastal denizens had simply ignored or failed to comprehend. Fair enough. But Trump demonstrated how he could carry things far afield, turning whatever sympathies he had for his followers into exploitation for political expediency. Not that they objected, especially the economically challenged: as his America First movement grew ugly, crude and vengeful, they cheered him on. His tactics are now so embedded that they will remain long after he departs the scene.
By stretching the political spectrum to one extreme, the Harris campaign appeared radical in the opposite direction. The middle is virtually gone, leaving a nation so broken and angry that stitching it together is almost impossible over the next four years. Trump created political crevasses so deep, policy divisions so wide, dread of the “other” (read: non-whites) so entrenched, that four years is scarcely enough time to sand the edges of the hatreds that separate us. Lincoln’s anti-slavery words of 1858 could not have been more prescient for contemporary America: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
And the house is teetering despite Trump’s resounding victory with a pliant Senate now behind him. Subjects unimaginable a decade ago have seeped into the conversation. Secession is one. Not unlike the divisions that led to the Civil War of 1861, we have states with antithetical approaches to governing and the social contract that defines everyday life. We also have millions of people who own guns. Violence, indeed, was under consideration if Harris had won and would not be unprecedented. Just three years ago a Trump-incited mob stormed the US Capitol to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory.
Much of the national divide has been cleaved by discrimination based on race, religion and gender
Here’s what it’s like now: some states favour total freedom for women to decide their own reproductive rights while others have
enacted total bans on abortion, several with laws that would allow for prosecuting doctors performing the procedure. Some states make voting easy, whereas in Georgia, where midday heat and humidity induce discomfort, a law introduced in 2021 made it illegal to offer food or water to anyone waiting to vote.
The most explosive issue that worked for Trump was fear of illegal immigration, as Trump equated it with rising crime rates that federal authorities said were actually falling. He also managed to flip Latinos and other demographic groups once solidly Democrat.
It was clear throughout the year that Trump and Harris despised each other. As Trump took it to obscene lengths, calling her “dumb”, “stupid”, “a communist”, “a Marxist” and “a shit vice president”, his rally crowds whooped in delight, egging him on. Harris was more nuanced, focusing her criticisms on Trump’s age (78), far-right tendencies bolstered by generals who served under him and what appeared to be mental dissembling.
The final map showed America a sea of Red, with only 19 states, most of them coastal, favoring Harris. It suggests an historic rightward shift, aligning the US with other counties that recently disposed of the ruling party, including Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy and Japan. And so we see a sharp severing of states, Reds aligned with Trumpism and Blues clinging to traditions of democracy as we knew it before Trump came along. Even here in California, where I live, citizens talk of making California its own country, much like Liechtenstein, Andorra or Monaco in Europe.
Call it Calexit, if you will. The rationale is twofold: one, as the world’s fifth-largest economy, California could sustain itself, and, two, state residents are chagrined by the Constitutional mandate that gives each state two US senators. California’s nearly 40 million residents have the same representation as Wyoming’s 576,000.
In his new book, Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley law school, makes the case that America needs a new Constitution. The title: No Democracy Lasts Forever.
Much of the national divide has been cleaved by an overlay of economic concerns and discrimination based on race, religion and gender – feelings now so ingrained that it could take another generation or two for enlightenment. Never mind that leading economists predict that Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on all imported goods would squeeze family budgets even tighter.
The animosities come in all shapes and sizes and often pivot on a single issue. Arab and Muslim Americans disdain Democrats for unyielding military support for Israel and the countless deaths in Gaza and Lebanon. Right-wing isolationists want to end support for Ukraine. White Christians view other religions as antithetical to America’s foundational intent. Citizens of colour object to white majorities in politics, academia and business. Jews fear those who equate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Homophobes and anti-trans commentators cite Bible verse to support their bigotry.
A common refrain by Democrats on the morning after the vote was, “Is this who we are?” The answer, sadly, is yes. “Compromise” is now a quaint concept from days of yore. For the time being, political success will be achieved by impregnable majority votes and disregard for opposing views. Harris lost and, I fear, so did compassion and open-mindedness.
Which brings me back to Kalyan. A former work colleague of my wife, he’s been a friend for more than a decade, who first felt the slings of discrimination growing up in conservative Texas. As a young gay man, he moved to progressive California, hoping its open-mindedness would allay his early-learned fears. It didn’t.
Trump’s campaign rhetoric in 2016 roused bigots and white supremacists everywhere, giving his most ardent followers tacit permission to exercise their own versions of nastiness and bigotry, especially on social media. A brown-skinned gay man was an easy target, even in California. Shortly after Trump lost in 2020, Kalyan moved. Trump had left his mark, and not even Biden and Harris, who championed diversity as a national strength, made much of a difference. Full disclosure: I’ve never read or heard of someone leaving the country in fear of a Biden or Harris presidency.
“Obviously I was very happy that Biden won and felt as though the patients would no longer be running the asylum, so to speak,” Kalyan told me last month from his home in Mexico City. “But my time in Mexico was really just getting started in 2021. So returning to the US didn’t cross my mind.” Unsurprisingly, with Trumpist minds cemented in the American firmament, returning has still not crossed his mind.
“I would say it was Trump who initially influenced my decision,” he said. “But the closeness of the (2024) election demonstrates how the MAGA phenomenon has really taken hold. It’s as though he was a cancer that metastasised. And until it’s fully in remission, I couldn’t see myself returning.”
That’s a long way off and a real loss for my wife and me. We don’t get to see Kalyan as often as we once did. But it’s more a loss for the country. We cannot afford to lose our Kalyans. They help build bridges over our troubled waters and by losing them, the banks of our rivers move ever farther apart. It might have happened after a Harris victory, as well, but with Trump back in the White House, his opponents may be smaller in number but no less disgusted — and fearful — that he’s back.
After all, this is a unique character in America history: a convicted felon and sexual abuser, an adulterer, a twice-impeached former president and a beloved figure returning to lead a government he has vowed to blow up.
This is now who we are.
Nothing about Donald Trump has surprised me since that first car ride
Trump and me
In my early years as a journalist at the New York Times during the 1980s I was a reporter covering the National Football League (NFL) when Trump was the owner of the little-known United States Football League (USFL), so I called him to set up an interview.
We agreed to meet in the lobby of Trump Tower in mid-town Manhattan. It was late summer 1985, and he had a box at the US Open tennis tournament in the outer borough of Queens. He invited me to join him and said we could talk in his limousine riding to the matches.
It was all routine until the driver missed the turn-off for the tennis complex. Trump grew angry and instructed him to turn around. Turn around? We were on the Grand Central Parkway, a major highway leading towards Long Island. As I remember, Trump had the driver drive over the central reservation in order to head back towards the exit he’d missed. Minutes later, a cop pulled us over. Trump rolled down a window, said something I couldn’t hear, and we pulled away without a summons. Trump appeared pleased. What chutzpah, I thought. I felt terrible for the limo driver.
Nothing about Donald Trump has surprised me since that first car ride. Lies, narcissism, machismo, bigotry – I had an unforgettable insight long before his brash qualities leeched into the country’s nervous system.
Michael Janofsky is a writer and editor in Los Angeles. He previously spent 24 years as a correspondent for The New York Time
