Dignity

I pay tribute to Kamala Harris.

Her campaign was flawless. When Joe Biden dropped out of the race, she stepped up. She is gracious, dignified and highly qualified.

Even so, she lost.

As Michelle Obama said, she was held to a higher standard – while Trump was held to no standards at all.

I’m still baffled that a man who has taken six businesses to bankruptcy (including a casino, the kind of business considered to be a license to print money) is somehow considered more qualified to run an entire economy.

What is it about him that makes so many people willing to overlook a long list of crimes and misdemeanours that would surely have disqualified any other person who ran for office?

There’s definitely charm. But there’s also an ability to play into the parts of human nature that are driven by self-interest and fear.

An unfortunate trait of humans is that we tend to think we are separate and that others – especially those who are different to us – are bad. Buddhist teacher Tara Brach calls this bad othering:

Sadly, through human history, much suffering has come from perceiving others as bad-others, flawed humans who are excluded from our heart.

Bad othering – whether based on gender, race or any other characteristic we don’t have – comes from fear. This is a primal fear, one deeply embedded in our psyches. It’s also strangely close to our desire to belong. We all know the sting of rejection or the pain of not being included in a group. And a group that bands together to do some bad othering can be incredibly strong.

In Trump’s case, he built a tribal movement based simultaneously on othering and belonging. His primary message: let’s come together and hate.

In his victory speech, Trump called this the greatest political movement in America, perhaps the world. So, fear won at the ballot box – again. Fear won in Australia in 2023, and in the UK in 2016.

I’m finding it challenging to reconcile the fact that so many of my fellow humans don’t share my values of compassion, dignity and equity. The consequent sadness I’m experiencing is not invigorating me to fight. Right now, I’m done.

But, considering what has just happened in America, there isn’t really any time to spend being sad. People’s rights and wellbeing (economic, social, environmental) may be unravelled quickly, and misogyny in particular is an immediate threat: witness the terrifying spread of ‘your body, my choice’ thinking.

Is this enough to mobilise us to fight again? It’s hard to get up off the mat of reality, where we feel pummelled by hate.

Yet I remain inspired by Kamala Harris. The way she modelled dignity and compassion – especially as she conceded – will stay with me, beyond the hatred that Trump’s win embodies. It’s almost as if she taught us how to fight in a principled, informed way. I know she lost but she also showed us something of what’s possible. Even though I’m not quite ready to fight, I’m definitely not ready to give up on her. I’m excited to see what she does next and I only wish that, as an Australian, I had the opportunity to vote for her.