Right before the new year, I had the pleasure of conducting The Opinionated’s first-ever interview with a PhD student- Sarah Pritchett. As we sat down and talked, her opinionated and well-thought-out comments on the second round of the Trump presidency, the presence of radicalization, and the state of democracy worldwide made me reflect on similar matters. Afterward, I compiled some of Sarah’s most thought-provoking statements and added some of my reflections: here they are…
Let’s start with some background information: can you tell me a bit about your perspective’s relevance in ongoing political events?
Sarah: Absolutely! For my bachelor’s and my first master’s, the focus was very much on radicalization and differences in pathways between people who we would consider to have very radical opinions, versus those who become radicalized and commit a (violent or not) crime in that interest.
My perspective tends to be that radicalization is everywhere. It’s in me. It’s in you. It’s in all of us, to varying degrees. And it’s not a foreign sort of mechanism, but a very normal human process, especially at this timestamp in the history of humanity. I come from Austin, Texas, and I grew up with this dream of Scandinavia as a place that would align with my ideals, where I’ve now lived for the past nine years. So I have the knowledge of what it was like to live in America, but I also have this safety and distance from it now.
Sounds interesting! Now, here's the most broad question we got: Trump won the election - good or bad?
Sarah: I think it’s been devastating for a lot of people in my circles and for me as well. I think this election has really made everyone, in their own way, feel a bit isolated and like they live in a world that they don't totally recognize. For me, my reaction was sort of that emotional anger, but not just at Trump - at everyone involved. I’ve really grown apart from the Democratic Party and come to a place where I feel like this election has so much to do with the Democrats and their choices, in addition to the climate we’ve built as a country.
My reflection: If there is one thing this election has shown us, it’s that the Democratic Party has lost its connection to the American people. I recognize Sarah’s sentiment, as it's an anger towards the Democrats that I’ve personally observed people from a wide array of backgrounds feel. Somewhere along the way, the issues that became the focal points of their campaigns didn’t align with the everyday concerns of working- and middle-class Americans. Instead of including their perspective on what issues mattered most, which in hindsight were obviously the economy and immigration, the Democrats assumed the same rhetoric they had been using to gain the minority, youth, and woman vote for decades would still do the trick. This was obviously faulty logic. Meanwhile, Trump updated the (in my opinion, short-sighted) messages he communicated to fit a more 2024-esque campaign, which evidently resonated better with your everyday voter - even if I’m convinced many didn’t know what they were, in practicality, voting for.
Sarah: I believe that, unfortunately, a lot of what goes into people’s political decisions is very bland and normal - mostly socioeconomic. Hannah Arendt wrote a lot about the banality of evil, specifically in relation to the Nazis and their concentration camps. She discovered how a lot of Nazi guards were essentially saying “I’m just doing my day-to-day job, what I was ordered to do”, and theorized that we get to these extreme places through very “normal” choices that, in and of themselves, don’t necessarily have ill intent.
And in my work with US border guards, their feelings differ from what most people would expect them to be. Often, their practical reality comes first. They need to make money, which means they need to do their job well regardless of how they ended up with it, with moral values sometimes taking second priority. Retroactively, that can justify their actions. Now, that doesn’t make it less scary for somebody who is vulnerable to their actions.
My reflection: I feel like we are experiencing a repeat of a very scary but recent part of our history. Sarah’s completely correct - when it comes down to it, people will look the other way, sometimes subconsciously, if it means they can put food on the table for their children. In neglecting that priority, the Democrats have placed the powers of the government right into Donald Trump’s greedy hands. Trump promised lowered egg prices, Harris promised to safeguard abortion rights. Now, I personally believe Trump couldn’t care less about how much a factory worker has to sacrifice in order to provide food for his family, but by acknowledging the economic struggles many Americans are facing, they decided a vote for him is worth it, even if that means they have to look away as immigrants are shipped off to no-law-land (Guantanamo Bay). I can’t be the only one who remembers learning about a similar case in history class, where a party won the German people’s vote in 1933 because he promised to deliver them economic success, and ended up slaughtering millions of people instead.
One thing I noticed as you were talking is that you mentioned the Democratic Party quite often - so would you attribute Trump’s win more to their wrongdoings than to successful campaigning on the Republican Party’s end?
Sarah: I think it’s hard to quantify, but I would say a lot of it is the role of the Democrats, although there are many different factors. Partly, it’s been this sort of neoliberalizing movement that renders us without a genuine left in the US, which we probably haven’t had for a while, to be honest. I think that’s extremely alienating, especially towards the core base who really wants to see social policies supporting the global perception of leftist beliefs. Now that there’s so much information about what else is out there in the world, a lot of people who have always voted Democrat feel alienated because, well, they see that other countries can do it.
They’ve also failed strategically. We saw a lot of opportunities for Kamala Harris to include people, but that didn’t really happen. And there were not a lot of countermeasures taken against the very skillful Trump campaign. However, if you look globally, there are also a lot of parties that were in power during COVID that no longer are, as people don’t like to vote for an administration that was with them during strife - it’s a bad association. So some factors are unavoidable.
Basically, I think it’s a massive combination of influences that caused the election to go this way. Hatred may be one of them, fear another.
Why do you think a true leftist movement has not been able to manifest itself in the US then?
Sarah: It’s a difficult question, but a good one. I see a lot of it having to do with the market system more than the actual system of governance. Or maybe not the market itself, but the solidified attachment to money that politics currently has.
Another major factor is the steady polarization that is probably linked to the two-party system and this narrative we have about ourselves as a country. I think the first day that I actually told myself America is not the best country in the world was the day that I left, at 21 years old - it really was like an overnight wake-up call. I didn’t know why I still believed that. From the leftist perspective, I think I took it in from a perspective of privilege, like a “yes, this country is troubled and wrong in many ways, but I am still very privileged to live in this country and to carry an American passport”.
Thank you! And finally, many experts claimed, heading into 2024, that this was going to be the year democracy died or survived due to the sheer amount of elections occurring - from your unique perspective, which one was it?
Sarah: I don’t think the fate of democracy was decided this year, but I do think we are seeing trends that both threaten it and illuminate the problems of the way we practice democracy today. I don’t have a perfectly targeted answer, but I do believe the moves we’ve taken on a global scale are neither completely new ideas nor laws, but rather a natural progression of policies already in place. Something that really stuck out to me when I was interviewing border agents was an answer I got when I asked them about militarization - “Well, what do you expect?”
If I’m being hopeful, I think this past year will have been good for democracy in the ultimate long term. It will allow us to see where and which laws were written by people who didn’t have the best interests of the public and democracy in mind.
When we look at history, the good that has come out of it - the rights, the conventions - weren't always the result of good-heartedness, but from a dynamic of power already in existence. Ultimately, they were built out of struggle, debate, and compromise. And now, years later, we see where the flaws of that compromise are manifesting.
We are getting scared and we are getting angry. People want a change to the core of things, and this may unfortunately take us to a scary place for a while. But will it destroy democracy in the long run? No, I don’t think so.
My final reflection: I don’t completely agree with Sarah, nor do I completely disagree with her on this point. For the near future, I do think 2024 was the decisive year in determining democracy’s eventual death. The election results in the US, the EU, France, Romania, Georgia, India, and so many more places suggest that, for now, people are somewhat okay with the deterioration of the elected government. However, as with everything else that comes and goes in waves, communities will eventually realize that the leaders who campaign for a one-man state actually intend for it to serve only that one man.
In that, I agree with Sarah - people will want a change to the core of the global structure. And once that time comes, who knows, maybe democracy will be reborn again?
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