The Limits of FAFO
It’s hard to separate the suffering of Trump voters from the suffering of everyone else.
As you’ve probably heard, Trump is harming a lot of the people who voted for him. Soybean farmers who voted for Trump can’t sell to China because tariffs have devastated international trade. Households in Alabama, where Trump won 65% of the vote, are seeing their energy bills balloon because Trump froze a grant to the utility companies. Trump voters are seeing immigrant family members detained, abused, and deported by ICE. People in need of disaster relief in North Carolina, a state which voted for Trump, have seen aid denied.
Trump is a blight on the country; he is incompetent and cruel and loves to see people suffer—even his own voters. He is, in fact, committed to creating an authoritarian system where he doesn’t have to consider voter’s needs, safety, or lives at all. It is not surprising that many of his policies are harming people who voted for him. He loves hurting the country, and the people who voted for him are in the country.
It’s also natural that those who didn’t vote for him will feel a certain level of schadenfreude. Currently, Trump’s masked, violent goons are wandering around my city, kidnapping and tear-gassing my neighbors while his supporters cheer. So it’s difficult not to feel a little lighter of heart when some shithead who helped inflict this on us looks at his soybeans rotting in the field and says, “oh nos maybe I did an oopsie.” Yes, you did, you fascist motherfucker. Fuck you.
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The problem is that it’s difficult to revel in the suffering of Trump supporters without also reveling in the suffering of a bunch of people who aren’t Trump supporters. Sure, the wealthy Trump supporting soybean farmers maybe deserve what they get in some sense…but the people who work on their land and are also losing their jobs are often immigrants who can’t vote and whose suffering is likely to be even more devastating.
Trump voters tend to be affluent compared to their neighbors—which means that the people most likely to be poorer and need electricity assistance in Alabama are disproportionately likely to have voted D, or just not to have voted. If you celebrate when someone’s family member gets deported, you’re also celebrating when that family member suffers—and the family member didn’t vote for Trump (since they couldn’t vote at all.) Similarly, when adults are harmed, their children are also going to be harmed—and children can’t vote for anyone.
Our lives are intertwined with those of our neighbors, which is only one reason that a policy of fascist violence against immigrants, LGBT people, Black people, brown people, and Democrats is likely to result in misery for a lot of people who think they’re immune and on the side of the bullies. That’s how cause and effect works. But it’s hard to be enthusiastic about seeing cause and effect grind people up when you know that the grinding is not especially discriminating.
Even if the grinding could just pick out the guilty though—in more reflective moments, at least, I’m not sure cheering for suffering of people is great for anyone, even if they maybe in some sense deserve it. I am wary of crafting a politics that centers Trump voters, and I do not think that people need to put themselves at risk in order to stay in contact with their Trump voting asshole relatives. But I think when people are harmed by Trump, there is an opportunity to say something like, “I voted against that asshole because I didn’t want him to hurt anyone, including you. Maybe we can work together to make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone else?”
I think that any path out of fascism is going to mean holding fascists accountable. Trump and his cronies and everyone in ICE needs to be investigated and ideally prosecuted. People who voted for Trump also committed an evil act—but in many cases, for those voters the crime is going to lead to its own punishment. That’s not something to celebrate, in part because punishment in these cases tends to ripple out to harm a lot of other people. But I think standing against all suffering, and pointing out that we can all build a better world together, seems like a better politics than laughing and pointing at the leopards eating faces, even if a few of those faces are attached to people who were laughing and pointing themselves not that long ago.
As much as schadenfreude is enjoyable (and rightfully so in cases), it is also the kind of dopamine hit that animates fascist tendencies. Too much enjoyment of the suffering of others doesn't lead to good places.
I thought schadenfreude could be a balm against the malignancy of this regime, but no. Although it's hard to care about those who were indifferent (or gleeful) to the suffering of others, I've found that empathy isn't something that can be switched off at will. I'm not actually sorry that callous, selfish voters are facing the same consequences they assigned to "them", but I'm not gleeful either. That said, I wouldn't mind if someone punched Steven Miller in the face.