Surprised by voters making dangerous, venomous choices? They’ve done it before.

Clay Wirestone, Kansas Reflector
13 November 2024
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I am an old gay. This is an important part of the story that I am about to tell.

If you are an old gay like me, you well remember living in a world in which the vast majority of people disapprove of you. This was the United States up to about 20 years ago. It didn’t matter if you were promiscuous or flaming or even out — its simply mattered that you were gay and therefore a deviant who would go to hell.

I didn’t believe this. My friends and family didn’t believe this. Nonetheless, quite a few Americans believed it. An awful lot of Kansans believed it. To live in the world of 20 years ago as a gay man required the willingness to accept that most of the people you lived around and worked with didn’t just dislike you but disputed your basic personhood. Three years after I left the state to work in Florida, Kansans overwhelmingly voted to ban same-sex marriage in the state constitution.

People like to believe that this former world didn’t exist. But it very much did. I have not forgotten it. And I know that others my age have not forgotten it either.

I write this because of the 2024 general election results, which I know for many progressives and moderates and even a handful of conservatives has come as a dispiriting shock. Unfortunately, being right has nothing to do with majority support. Slavery had majority support in the South. Women had no separate legal identity from men for hundreds of years.

None of that was right. The people who supported such vile policies were wrong.

Likewise, the embrace by a majority of Americans of a would-be autocrat in the presidential election is simply wrong. They picked a man who encouraged an insurrection against the United States government. They picked someone who emboldens America’s enemies and alienates our allies. They picked someone who catastrophically mismanaged the COVID-19 crisis. They picked someone whose reelection bid was opposed by his own cabinet members.

On Jan. 20, 2025, Donald Trump will be sworn in as our 47th president. He was elected, and that’s that. Perhaps this time things will be different. But our nation will likely suffer because millions of Americans took the path they did.

Kansas will likely suffer because our state’s voters took the path they did. More will die from a lack of health insurance. More will face absurd criminal penalties for possessing and using cannabis.

I don’t believe that voting one way or another or belonging a certain political party makes people good or bad. But those who participate in the civic life of our country should take responsibility for their actions. That goes for politicians and voters alike.

New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie encapsulated my feelings perfectly, while explaining the perils of overanalysis.

“As long as journalists and pundits act as if they are amateur political strategists and not people trying to understand and tell the truth about the world, they are going to take the implicit view that voters can never be wrong, which then demands endless explanation of their morally blameless choice,” Bouie wrote in a thread on Bluesky. “Not me. It is not my job to say what a political party should or should not be doing. It is my job to tell the truth, and the truth is that a lot of people willingly abandoned their faculties to make a bad, destructive choice.

“This is not a popular opinion these days but people have agency. People are in control of the choices they make. No one is forced to do anything.”

Not everyone voted with these majorities. Some chose a different direction. They decided to live with empathy and caring and concern and made political decisions accordingly. They put the welfare of their fellow human beings ahead of the price of eggs or their own resentment of a changing world (spoiler alert: It’s going to change no matter which candidate you select).

As an old gay, though, I understand how this works. We do not come naturally to empathy for others. Humans look out for themselves primarily, and perhaps a handful around them. Prioritizing the nation or the needs of the disadvantaged? It’s a heavy lift. And it’s not just voters. Leaders from parties have seized the opportunity to demonize those who were different when needed.

President Ronald Reagan looked the other way while hundreds of thousands of gay men died of AIDS.

President Bill Clinton signed “don’t ask, don’t tell” into law and “reformed” welfare by ending the benefit as we know it.

President Barack Obama said he opposed sex-same marriage.

Reagan was wrong. Clinton was wrong. Obama was wrong. Kamala Harris was wrong when she rebuffed progressive dissent about widespread death and destruction in Gaza. Unfortunately, I have seen too much to expect genuine caring from politicians. I wish they would do better. I hope they would do better. I support a world in which stout-hearted activists pressure them to do better. But I don’t expect them to suddenly develop a conscience — voters alone hold that power.

So if you’re a straight, white person afraid of what another Trump term portends, welcome to the club. Some of us have been members for an awfully long time.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and X.

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