It was an incident after one of my happiest moments of 2024 – and it served as a warning that I didn’t see until now.
The New York Mets had just won the National League Division Series against the Philadelphia Phillies last month. Euphoric fans – including me – jammed the platform for the No. 7 train to Manhattan.
It originated at Main Street in Flushing and there were passengers aboard before the Citi Field stop. As joyous fans jammed the train, a young Hispanic man was standing by the opposite door.
He could tell the fans were happy, so he shouted “Let’s go Mets!” Which I thought was cute.
But for some reason that I’ve thought about since that moment, he shouted “Let’s go Donald Trump!”
Why the hell he would shout that- at that moment – bewildered me. Not enough, however, to stop me from shouting back “Fuck Donald Trump!” – language I don’t use in public. (Although I suspect I’ll be using it more for awhile.)
What was going through his mind that he would shout his support of Trump in as unsuitable a moment as that?
Tonight, I found out. According to CNN’s exit polling, Latino men voted for Trump more than ever before – in some states, a majority of them voted for a guy who has belittled or diminished Hispanic Americans for decades.
It’s amazing. He was first elected because of his racism toward Mexicans and Central Americans. And now some of those people are sending him back to the White House.
Why?
Is it the phony toughness he projects? Like those wrestlers he admires and who seem to support him en masse.
Were they suckered by “The Apprentice” into thinking that a guy who has claimed bankruptcy four times actually knows what it takes to make them more financially secure?
Can it be that they associate with his outlaw status? That they think he’s been railroaded they way some of them perceive themselves to be?
Do they, like some spoiled-brat white folks, believe there are people getting “free stuff” that they’re not getting- and either they want some, too, or no one should have whatever that stuff is?
And is the idea that a woman – and it doesn’t matter if she’s white or Black and South Asian – could be the most powerful person in the world so threatening and offensive to them that they’d put an incompetent male in the White House instead? Twice!
I’m angry and sad in a way I haven’t been in eight years. And what makes me most sad is seeing people voting against their own interest, taken in by a conman who is now going to avoid prison by claiming he’s above the law.
Or worse, that he is the law.
I do not pretend to understand why anyone sees a hero in Trump. There is nothing admirable or compassionate about him. He has no respect for people other than himself and anyone who can help enrich him.
It’s bewildering that anyone thinks the guy whose pathetic mishandling of the COVID crisis contributed to the inflation endured between 2021 and 2023 is the guy to bring down the price of eggs.
And because he respects tyrants, this is a moment of triumph from a diverse set of the world’s rogues – from Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinpeng to Benjamin Netanyahu and Viktor Orban.
I suppose the people who voted for Trump would say I’m being paternalistic – that they can look out for their own self-interest without my help.
Kamala Harris ran as good a campaign as I’ve seen in my lifetime – and she will have nothing to show for it. I’m certain that a key factor in her defeat is that, well, she’s a she. And that she’s also a Black she and a South Asian she.
But the loser in a democratic election concedes. With the grace that Trump refused to give Joe Biden four years ago.
I just hope she doesn’t congratulate him. He doesn’t deserve it. Neither do the people who voted for him.
As I said at a moment when some jerk zapped my joy of a Met win, “Fuck Donald Trump!”
SUBJECTISM 