As the U.S. has just elected a xenophobic demagogue to lead the country, SIEGESSÄULE editor Joey Hansom wonders how we can come to grips with what's sure to be a disaster

Nov. 9, 2016 – Last night, I couldn't decide whether to stay up and follow the election results in real time, or just go to sleep and be surprised in the morning. I thought that in a group setting, the prolonged suspense might be kind of entertaining. But ultimately, I decided in favor of sleep. After all, what if Trump would really win? Even after exhaustion from staying up till 6 a.m. or whenever, would I be able to fall asleep to such horrible news?

Upon waking up this morning and immediately flipping open my laptop, I had a visceral reaction. I thought I had braced myself for this possibility, but it stunned me. On the days leading up to November 8, some of my friends had asked me if I thought Trump actually stood a chance. I didn't think that being American gave me any special insight into this shitshow, but I did tell them: I can't believe we live in a reality where this freakish, white supremacist demagogue could even make it past the primaries – and all these scandals too – so, anything's possible at this point. Polls indicated Clinton had a continuous lead, but Trump was favored by the same artificial intelligence that accurately predicated the outcome of the last three U.S. presidential elections. And after seeing Brexit and the AfD's gains, I should be properly desensitized by now, right? But no, I feel sick with despair, heavy, without a center of gravity.

As some sort of defense mechanism, I'm trying to convince myself why this isn't as bad as it seems. After all, the President doesn't have much direct influence, right? But actually, he does, and it's more than just foreign relations and picking Supreme Court judges and so on. His racist and sexist words and actions will continue to mobilize hatred, directly within the American public. Bigots will see Trump's win as a validation of their own hateful views. The freedom of millions of Americans is threatened, and millions of lives will be further devalued, systematically and individually – mostly POC, women, Muslims and queers. 

How to be optimistic? Maybe if we take that accelerationist approach. The idea that in order to create a better way of living, we need to watch the old system completely crash and burn, so we might as well try and speed up the process. Maybe Marx would have voted for Trump. In his 1848 speech “On the Question of Free Trade”, he said:

In general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.

Like many, I voted for Clinton only reluctantly. It was a vote for the status quo, the one upheld by Obama (whom I first voted for enthusiastically) and Bush, Jr., before him. Still, I would have preferred the status quo over a volatile clown. I don't believe Trump has the prowess to dismantle our corrupt system as he says, but hey, maybe his ineptitude will cause such irreparable damage that we finally have the chance to replace capitalism with something new. Maybe not. Whatever the case, things are going to get much worse before they get better. Especially for minorities.

A lot of my fellow Americans abroad have said things like, “If he gets elected, there's no way I'm going back.” But there's clearly an inescapable global pandemic of rising rightist ideologies. The bubble of Berlin barely even feels safe to me like it did when I moved here during the G.W. Bush administration. Maybe it's time to move back to the U.S. and face the monster head-on. Let me sleep on that.

Joey Hansom