Hostility

People are speaking out strongly, on all sides now

Things have changed in the last couple of weeks.  

Before the election, depending on where you get your news, there was either no way in hell Trump could win, or there was a cautious optimism that he could. The result, as we now know, is that he exceeded expectations, won a decisive Electoral College victory, and secured the popular vote as well. 

And the reactions we’ve seen as a result have been illuminating. Yes, we have the various TikTok meltdowns, and the Mainstream Media concern of “What it all means”, but more interesting to me is how these takes are less likely to be unchallenged. 

Think about it: six months ago, if someone made a video claiming that Trump and everyone who supported him were racist misogynists, there would be some pushback from various people, but not in a way that made much of a dent. The anti-Trump content would be amplified and pushed in tons of places, and the counter would be ignored by influencers and media outlets. 

This began to shift after the assassination attempt in Butler. Even discounting all the conspiracy theories, the wounding of a presidential candidate could not be downplayed and could not be brushed aside as a minor incident. Not that the media mavens didn’t try: reporting from major news sources dried up after a week, and the iconic image of Trump raising his fist disappeared even faster. 

Except that it didn’t, not really. It just moved into realms that were invisible to the people who thought they set the agenda. This happens a lot in modern media, where a story that the media doesn’t want to cover is buried, and in the past, this strategy has successfully shifted the national conversation. 

This time, however, it didn’t cause people to forget. It caused them to seek out new sources of information. This shift solidified when the second assassination attempt got just a few mentions in the major news outlets. 

The trend continued with the Joe Rogan interviews of Trump and Vance, and the refusal of the Democrats to do the same. 

But perhaps the most significant story was the murder of P’nut the squirrel. By the time the legacy media decided to mention it, the story had already spread across the internet, and the essentials had been verified, and even the nitty gritty details had been analyzed, discussed, and put into context. 

The media tried to step in at that point and put its own spin on the story, and nobody cared. They had nothing significant to add to the conversation, and most people already had more information—and from sources they trusted more. 

Then came election night, and an even ruder surprise for the mainstream media. They did not have a connection to the mood of the average citizen. The major urban centers went about the way they expected, but the rest of the country shocked them. And when they started analyzing the details about how voting shifted, they discovered more bad news: many of the reliable liberal constituencies had shifted towards Trump. 

But more than that, everyone could see that the mood of the country had changed. Everyone was holding their breath the morning of November 5^th, unsure of what we might see, uneasy about the potential outcomes, and then by the morning of the 6^th, everyone knew: the country as a whole had rejected the Democrats, and in a significant and undeniable way. 

The fallout for the Mainstream Media has come quickly. Comcast announced it wanted to sell off both MSNBC as well as Oprah Winfrey’s Oxygen Network. Rumors that ABC wants to add some pro Trump hosts to The View have been met by counter-rumors, with nothing official in either direction. Fox News viewership is up, while the other news networks are losing viewers. And the whole of Hollywood seems genuinely surprised to find that celebrities do not have much influence on most Americans. 

But even more interesting to me is that ordinary people are speaking freely in ways that they didn’t a year ago. Even six months ago, walking through New York City wearing a MAGA hat could invite verbal or even physical harassment. Now people notice, and might frown but, depending on where in the city you are, it could also get you a smile or a high five. Trump supporters know they have the majority on their side, and are not only being more open about it, but even becoming rather hostile. 

Some people on the left side of the political spectrum seem worried about this, and as much as I hate it, they might have a good reason, but not because the political right is planning on rounding up their enemies. Instead, what I see is a pent-up reaction to four years of being afraid to express the “wrong” opinion. 

I know that the progressive liberals will downplay that people had a reason to fear, and the exchange between Zachary Levi and Whoopi Goldberg is a good example. Levi announced that he was supporting Trump, even though it would probably cost him his career in Hollywood. Goldberg responded, saying that no one was blacklisted for being conservative in Hollywood, and was even able to provide two examples: Dennis Quaid and Jon Voight. 

This was disingenuous for two reasons, the first is that the two actors she mentioned are older, with most of their careers behind them, not young and trying to get established in the industry. The other reason is that she said no one cares if you are conservative, which is different than being a Trump supporter, and everyone knows which is worse. 

Everyone also knew that Levi would absolutely be blacklisted. 

But that was before the election. Now, two weeks later, it wouldn’t surprise me if Levi were offered some choice roles in upcoming projects. Hollywood understands that it has developed a reputation, and will probably spend the next couple of years trying to prove that it can change, has changed, no look, they’re making stuff people want to see, all the advertising says so... 

But people have already stopped spending money on Hollywood produced entertainment, and in significant enough numbers that major studios already knew they had to make some changes. YouTubers criticizing the offerings of movie, television, and video game studios have larger audiences than some of the things they talk about. 

And now this has spread to other areas. Plenty of people had a very real fear that if they spoke out against the progressive (or woke, or liberal) agenda, they could lose their jobs at the very least. Some were doxxed, some were attacked. Some were investigated by the FBI. The stories of those people scared others into keeping quiet, because they thought they were in the minority. 

The election results revealed that not only are they not alone, but they have a majority on their side. They are speaking up, they are venting their frustrations, and some of them are angry. It won't surprise me if there is some retaliation, though I hope not, and certainly not on a large scale. 

Going forward, though, anything could happen. Hopefully the next few weeks will see all sides calm down somewhat, maybe focus on coming together as we get deeper into holiday season. People have become so emotionally invested in politics, however, that these months between the election and the inauguration are still a powder keg, and everyone is running around with sparklers.