You Can't Hide in the Crowd and Vote for Donald Trump

You Can’t Hide in the Crowd and Vote for Donald Trump

I have thought about the women in that picture—girls at the time the photo was taken—hundreds of times in my life, ever since I first saw them in a history textbook. I have often wondered if I would have had the steel that Elizabeth Eckford had, facing all that hatred at the age of 15 just to go to school. But more often, I think about the girl behind her, Hazel Bryan, the one with her face pulled into a snarl as she screams at Eckford.

In the moment of shouting an epithet at Eckford, Bryan didn’t think her picture would end up in the newspaper, or that it would spread across the country from there. And she certainly didn’t think that photo would end up in history textbooks for decades and on the Internet after that.

But it did. She wanted to stand in a crowd and use the relative anonymity to give into her worst impulses, but instead she became an iconic face of hatred. Just like this guy from the Unite the Right Rally.

He too will be in history lessons for the rest of his natural life, and his photo too is immortalized on the Internet—so it will be everywhere, always, sometimes when he least expects it. People will be unable to place him and then realize that he’s that guy, the one screaming at the antisemitic tiki torch rally over and over and over. Romantic partners. Potential employers. His children and grandchildren. All of them will realize what a monster he was, hateful and pathetic. And most of them will be unable to see him as anything like a good person again. 

That’s one of the things you’re risking when you support Donald Trump. Your vote may be private in theory, but you know word gets out. And your support will be out there forever. No matter how much you try to paper it over, no matter how much you try to rewrite your personal history 20 years from now—assuming that 20 years from now we still have a republic in which you can choose how you present yourself—word will get out. The people who you love the most will know.

It does not matter what excuse you’re using to explain that you don’t really like the Trumpy parts of Trump. When you make plain what you’re saying, you can see that the excuses are pathetic bullshit.

I really liked corporate tax cuts, so I decided I was OK with the open, virulent racism.

I didn’t want anyone to regulate crypto, so I voted for the guy who openly took tactics from Hitler’s playbook.

I felt like Kamala Harris was too prepared in her debates, so I threw my support to the guy who wants to denaturalize American citizens who have brown skin.

And when we talk about how much hate Trump happily sows, we’re still only hitting the racism. That conversation—the one about his vicious racism, both as a personal conviction and as a flamethrower of political opportunity—misses so many things that will absolutely appall your descendants.

I wanted to own the libs, so I picked the rapist who bragged about assaulting dozens of other women.

I felt more comfortable pretending that Republicans are better for business, so I voted for the man who tried to overthrow the United States government to stay in power.

I didn’t think Democrats really understood the faith and patriotism of rural America, so I voted for the man who incited a violent mob to storm the United States Capitol, physically assault police officers, and try to murder elected officials.

There is no excuse that works. Especially after that Madison Square Garden rally, which was specifically designed to evoke a 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. If you support Trump in any way, you are carrying water for racism and fascism. And it will come out. It always comes out.

No one you love will ever look at you the same way again. When your family tells stories about you after you’re gone, there will always be a little hitch as they hesitate, wondering how much to talk about your support of fascism. When your children and grandchildren find out, they will feel the shame that people do now when they find out they’re related to Klan members and slave owners. It will always, always be a part of your legacy.

There is some hope there. The shouting girl in the picture, Hazel Bryan, realized the same thing that you will: That her picture, already in newspapers across the country, would end up in the history books. She knew that her children and grandchildren would recognize her and see her hatred. So she worked to change. She wasn’t perfect. But she became a peace activist and worked to learn and understand Black history. She contacted Elizabeth Eckford and apologized. She knew she would always have that stain on her, but she did her best to evolve and try to make up for it.

Look at that picture again. That snarling girl? If you vote for Trump, that’s how your family will see you, with the added shame of knowing that you rooted for people who wanted to end our democracy.

You can, if you choose, support fascism and hate and stay frozen in time like that forever. 

Or you can turn your back on Trump right now and start to move forward.

(The featured photo is by Will Counts - Distributed by the Associated Press and published in numerous newspapers in 1957. Republished in"Marching on: Elizabeth Eckford of the Little Rock Nine shares her traumatic experiences attending Central High School", Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, September 5, 2021Cropped from source image to reflect the portion of the image that was published in 1957., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=120561759)