Why 2016 Feels Like the End of the Before-Times
Yesterday I had to search “What is the 2016 Trend?” because I’m so untrendy (and not a TikTok or Twitter user). What I learned is that using or resharing memes, photos, or styles from 2016 has become popular as a nostalgic look back to simpler times when people in the US had not turned against each other to the current extent and were not where we are today. Why 2016? I can only guess the date has something to do with the year our president first won the presidency. 2016 was still the before-times.
When the Before-Times Were Already Breaking for Me
For me, 2016 is anything but nostalgic. That was the year after my undocumented spouse essentially went into crisis, left our marriage, and proceeded to live very differently than he had before—somewhat in hiding. He was scared by leaders like DJT and their anti-immigrant rhetoric even before the reality-TV host strolled down the golden escalator calling Mexicans rapists and murderers, announcing his bid for president and his promise of mass deportations. When the campaign announcement happened, just a few months after he had moved out of our house, I tried to reassure him that there was just no way. Americans would not elect the man. For one, evangelical Republican Christians would not abide him. Boy, was I wrong.
A Future One Person Could See Coming
My ex-spouse had lived in the US for over 20 years and had created a successful business and a reputation as an enthusiastic volunteer and helper. He loved the United States and his community as much as anyone. But he saw up ahead what I did not see. A bitter tide was turning against immigrants and refugees. For him, the realization that he was not welcome in the place he’d built a life helped precipitate a mid-life crisis—the blooming of deep insecurities, imbalances, and addictions that undid our marriage first, then his life in the US. The years 2015-2016 were perhaps the hardest of my life because I loved him ardently and saw him slipping away into something I could not recognize. In 2017, we officially divorced. Our friendship survived.
Trying to Warn People Before the Tide Turned
In the years leading up to 2015, I had learned a lot about immigration law, the predicaments facing the undocumented, and other struggles of immigrants. I would talk about these issues with everyone, trying to educate those around me because most Americans—it turns out—knew very little. I wrote about the issues. I cannot estimate how often people asked: Why is he undocumented if you are married? (If you want to know, search “US immigration permanent bar.”1)
Complacency Then, Shock Now
But I could not get many people to care deeply about the predicament of immigrants in the United States. Most Americans seemed complacent at best, even as immigration became a centerpiece of public discourse in the first DJT presidency and then a cudgel against Democrats during the Biden years as Biden’s administration failed in key ways to protect immigrants already in the US. Americans were so complacent that a slim majority re-elected a man who promised to deport a million immigrants early in his second term. When I awoke to these results the day after the 2024 election, I called a couple close friends in panic and tears. Don’t these voters know what this will look like? I wailed on the phone. People I love had voted for DJT and at that moment, I felt livid. On the phone with my friends, I wailed: Don’t they realize this will require concentration camps, family separation, mass roundups? How can they support such cruelty? But so many Americans lacked the imagination to envision what we are seeing today. They could not see it, and now it is too late.
How Myopia and Scapegoating Took Hold
I have tried to parse out why so many people failed to take DJT at his word or to see what his promises would amount to. Because I am somewhat optimistic about people, I believe that for most 2024-Trump voters, it is basic myopia—an inability to see very far down the road. We live in a culture that is generally myopic (good gawd, as cases-in-point, take the intertwined problems of climate change and AI, which together seriously threaten the livability of our planet). For Trump-voting true believers, I contend it comes down to scapegoating. Scapegoating is as old as human communities, it seems, as the term itself stretches back to the ancient times and involved actual goats.
The Expanding Targets of Scapegoating
Scapegoating may have been endemic to ancient human societies, but if we are going to protect immigrants, and to protect other vulnerable populations from what is happening today to immigrants, we’ll have to cast a bright light on scapegoating. All of us have the tendency within us. And scapegoating increases during times of upheaval and rapid change. With the advance of AI, we are certainly entering such a time. Being aware of our tendency to scapegoat is, in part, the beginning of helping avoid the sure devastation if certain groups are blamed for ills we see rising around us. I worry about the growing scapegoating that already targets transgender people, disabled people, Somali Americans, Jewish people, gay couples, overweight people, the religious, and so on. Who will be the group scapegoated next on a massive scale?
Who This Is For — and the Question We Must Ask Ourselves
I’m not writing this for the die-hard Trump voter presently scapegoating immigrants. I doubt very much that they read me. I write this for the rest of us. For regretful Trump voters who didn’t take the threat to immigrants seriously; for those who don’t envision up ahead what might happen to vulnerable groups we are ignoring; for those who don’t see the scapegoating impulse within ourselves (who do you scapegoat?). Once a campaign of hate begins, it is hard to stop. How can we prevent other such campaigns before they begin?
1 In brief, the permanent bar is the rule put in place in the 1990s that makes individuals inadmissible to the U.S. if they have been unlawfully present for more than one year and then attempt to reenter without permission. This bar can last indefinitely, but individuals may apply for permission to reenter after ten years from their last departure. For more, see: https://www.fwd.us/news/immigration-bars/ .
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Wren, winner of a 2022 Independent Publishers Award Bronze Medal
Winner of the 2022 Independent Publisher Awards Bronze Medal for Regional Fiction; Finalist for the 2022 National Indie Excellence Awards. (2021) Paperback publication of Wren , a novel. “Insightful novel tackles questions of parenthood, marriage, and friendship with finesse and empathy … with striking descriptions of Oregon topography.” —Kirkus Reviews (2018) Audiobook publication of Wren.
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