A Country Ill At Ease

Donald J. Trump is now President-elect of the United States. This is a result none of us wished for. It’s a result none of us could have possibly imagined. And yet, on January 20, he will be our president.

After a divisive, hard-fought campaign that saw much of the world question American leadership and much of the American public question the quality of its leaders, the voters have spoken. While his victory is a sign of the extent to which we, as a nation, have yet to overcome our historic demons, it represents the will of the people and ought to be respected. Trump has won a clear victory, and should command the legitimacy of a democratically elected leader.

Now that he has been elected president, however, Trump must work to bring the many groups his campaign has derided and insulted into his vision of a strong, united country, while facing the consequences of his unacceptable and demeaning rhetoric. Though he won by appealing to those Americans who accepted or tolerated that rhetoric, he must govern for all Americans—even those that his words harmed.

We need not rehearse every vile, hateful, and unpatriotic comment that Trump made over the course of his campaign to emphasize that he has alienated large swathes of people who have long felt excluded from the promise of American democracy. It bears noting that even Representative Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House and a member of Trump’s own party, has described himself as “sickened by” Trump’s comments on women, and that Ryan called Trump’s comments about a Mexican-American judge a “textbook definition of a racist comment.” African-Americans, Hispanics, women, LGBTQ Americans, Muslims, people with disabilities, immigrants, and those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of this country have all drawn Trump’s ire for reasons that, at best, pass human comprehension, and that at worst indicate a cynical electoral strategy of appealing to the worst elements of American life.

We must now hope that the President-elect can work to undo the damage that his campaign has caused to the “bonds of affection” that Lincoln described as linking each American to their fellow citizens. Fundamentally, in his rhetoric, Trump must make clear that all those he targeted during his campaign are in fact vital components of our national fabric. Our generation is the most diverse in American history, and the ones after us will be even more so. This election, however, has proven that that demographic reality is not enough by itself to fight xenophobia and hatred—two of the recurring themes of Trump’s campaign speeches. Unfortunately, for members of Harvard’s campus and in the wider public, the success of this negative rhetoric could have deleterious effects on the mental health of women, people of color, and others. All Americans must attend to the ongoing exclusion of our fellow citizens from our social fabric and body politic. All must be able to participate fully in our republican experiment and our shared democratic traditions, even under a Trump administration.

In terms of specific policies, we hope that Trump rethinks his most unjust proposals, particularly on immigration, where he has called for mass deportations that would break up families, destroy communities, and hurt our economy. It should go without saying that ideas like banning Muslim immigration are racist to their core and ought never be considered; discrimination on the basis of religion or race is antithetical to the Constitution and our Framers’ vision of this nation.