Waking up to the election results on Wednesday, many Americans who opposed Donald Trump may have felt inclined to resent their neighbors. How could more than 70 million of them vote for a convicted felon who had hobnobbed with a fascist, showed little respect for the country’s institutions or alliances, and couldn’t even promise not to rule as a dictator? Some foreign observers on social media seemed to react similarly, seeing in Trump the worst traits of American caricatures: egomania, narcissism, chauvinism, carelessness.
But these prejudices were unfair on November 4, and they are still unfair on November 8. Yes, Trump is a true native son of this country, and some of its worst tendencies have allowed him to flourish. And yes, those who care about the future of the United States have every right to be worried about the trends he has unleashed or exploited—authoritarianism, misogyny, conspiracism.
And yet: This country has always been a big, beautiful land of contradictions. As an Iranian Canadian socialist who moved here from Europe in 2017, I hear my share of anti-American chatter from left-leaning Middle Easterners, Canadians, and Europeans. Many seize on simple stories about America as a land of hyper-capitalism, violence, racism, and imperialism—and such stories are not in short supply. The United States remains the world’s only developed country not to have public health care. It is by far the world’s biggest military power. And expressions of racial animus can be loud, deadly, and persistent.
But to reduce America to these clichés is to miss much that is extraordinary. This same country of megalomaniac capitalism is home to public libraries and research universities that are the envy of many European social democracies—institutions tended by millions of Americans deeply committed to their survival. Those who imagine America as a country of racists perhaps haven’t actually visited its small towns, where mosques, Hindu temples, and gurdwaras prosper next to churches and synagogues. In this supposedly immigrant-hating country, Trump banned entry by the residents of seven Muslim countries in 2017—only for thousands of Americans to show up at airports in protest. Thousands more Americans staff immigrant-rights groups. For a narcissistic country, the United States has a lot of excellent public museums that acknowledge historical injustice and encourage self-reflection.
This country got its start as a naively daring social experiment already riven with contradictions. A group of European slave owners on ethnically cleansed land pledged to establish a nation whose self-evident truth was the equality of all. And yet, what they founded was a breathtakingly dynamic republic whose tree of creativity has never ceased leafing. The hopes vested in the United States have been sometimes vindicated, sometimes dashed. Chattel slavery endured here long after it was eradicated in Britain. But in 1860, Americans did elect a president who brought about its abolition at the end of a bloody civil war. The postwar promise of Reconstruction gave way to Dixiecrat rule and Jim Crow, but the American civil-rights movement of the 1960s was to become the most inspiring example of civil disobedience of its era, encapsulated in the call of Martin Luther King Jr. for the United States to “live up to the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
American actions abroad have also been contested and contradictory. In the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, Washington played the role of imperial power. The same Washington helped establish the League of Nations in an effort to end all war—before the U.S. Senate refused to join it, undermining its efficacy. The United States first vowed to stay out of World War II, then joined the Allies to help defeat fascism on the beaches of Normandy and the plains of Manchuria. After the war, the United States helped establish democracies in Japan and West Germany—during the same era in which it took part in organizing an antidemocratic coup in Iran.
The essence of America has always been the battle over its essence. No one election has ever determined its complete or permanent nature, and that is as true now as it was in 1860 and 1876. If today’s America is the America of Donald Trump, it is also the America of those who would stand up to him.
Don’t give up on this beautiful country. Its best traditions are now in danger, and no special genius of constitutional design will automatically keep them intact. In the hands of a president who may wish to model himself on Vladimir Putin, democratic institutions will be tested like never before. Americans will have to fight to safeguard them at every level of government. Daunting as this task may be, I have faith that Americans will rise to it. Trump may be the Founders’ nightmare, but their dreams can still outlive him.
