A few minutes after Donald Trump’s ‘Wow look what just happened!’ speech, claiming the win on election night, I was messaged by an 18-year-old American-born student. We have been connected for some time on social media.
She wrote: ‘I am crying. I lost all my rights as a woman. I am trembling in fear for my future.’ I tried to reassure her: ‘It’s okay, democracy has many aspects, voting is just one of them.’
She explained her situation.
Her dad is a white American Trump supporter, and mom is an undocumented Mexican immigrant who arrived 25 years ago at age 15.
Since marriage, her controlling husband has blocked her from applying for citizenship. She has five children – one still at school, and this triggered my friend to catastrophise about a Trump presidency.
‘When my mom gets deported, I can no longer go to college.’
Me: ‘What?’
‘I would be responsible for my siblings. I have to be a mother to them while my mom is gone’.
‘I can’t have my sister help to raise my siblings, since she is going into the military.’
She voiced fears of racism and rampant Trump supporters who openly hate Mexicans.
A few hours earlier, this young woman had been excited to vote for the first time. Inexperience left her unprepared for a Trump victory.
I closed my eyes and pictured how many dramas like this one were unfolding in millions of homes across America.
In the awkward position of trying to point out some positives, I defaulted to ‘wait and see’.
Trump policies are not going to come into effect overnight – there are plenty of steps yet to take place. Nobody knows the details of what has not yet happened.
This did not really convince her, but we did start a more rational conversation about ‘turning back the clock’, and the fierce resistance particularly for women’s rights
We talked about the dignity and determination of the suffragettes (who she knew virtually nothing about) and the many opportunities to have a voice in democracy.
We can be inspired by the women whose shoulders we stand on. Many of these women never got to vote themselves, but fought in other ways so that we could have it.
Every time I go into a ballot box and feel glum about my choices, I think of, and thank, those women.
It puts my own grumbling into perspective. I feel their inspirational presence, and it should inspire all of us to stand up for ourselves and those we love.
We think we have it bad? I sent her an article on Susan B Anthony – and her 1872 arrest, when it was discovered she had voted in an American presidential election. Ms Anthony was fined $100 for her crime, but never paid a penny.
When she died in 1906, Australian women already had the vote. It took another 16 years before American women won the same rights. For a nation that claims to have been a proud democracy since 1789, the USA sure has a chequered history.
Democracy is a journey, not a destination, and Donald Trump’s election must, of course, be accepted as part of the journey.
The one positive is Trump seems well placed to end the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East earlier than a Harris presidency would have.
In fact, he promised to end them before he is even sworn into office – it is quite conceivable this could happen. These tragic wars have gone on too long, and even his harshest critics concede they are all for bringing them to an end.
But Americans who voted for him expect a lot more – and this is why the next two years, leading to the mid-terms, pose an enormous risk for Republicans.
Trump’s mass deportation of illegal immigrants, if carried out as promised, will be a disaster for American businesses, ranging from manufacturing to agriculture.
Many industries are dependent upon cheap undocumented labour. Ripping all of them out of the labour force is unthinkable, pulling millions of their children out of school and funding internment camps run by the military is going to have huge consequences.
If the policy faceplants owing to complexity, then the Republicans lose a lot. If the policy goes ahead and the economy faceplants, then Republicans lose even more.
Cake and eat it too
In this election, Americans voted to have their cake and eat it too. They voted for low inflation and also for high tariffs which cause inflation.
On women’s rights, voters split their ballots in the ten states where abortion referendums were held. Seven of the ten states passed the proposed measures guaranteeing women choice. In Arizona, for example, the measure passed with a 62 per cent majority – then the same voters cast their presidential ballot for Trump. Go figure.
As Kamala Harris so eloquently put it, conceding the election outcome does not mean conceding the political fight.
Indeed, the fight can only be energised, as a great gaping reality gap opens up between what Trump promised and what he actually does.
So strap in for four more years of the Donald. Dust off the history books, and be ready to again debate issues we wrongly believed were settled and buried years ago.
It’s going to be wild.
♦ Catherine Cusack is a former NSW Liberal MLC.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
