The final US election results were available in Israel early on Wednesday morning. When I woke up, I expected and hoped for a landslide in favor of Hilary Clinton, and the end of Donald Trump's political existence. Maybe that's what took place in an alternative universe.
The pundits are already busy with predictions and analyses, but they are irrelevant to the way I take the result personally: Hilary Clinton's defeat was the defeat of some of my deepest values.
I grew up in a liberal democratic environment, and the Eisenhower years, as well as McCarthyism, were good training for a future of discontent.
After a brief flareup of hope, when Kennedy was elected -- hope that was tragically extinguished when he was assassinated -- my alienation grew. My decision to move to Israel in 1973 was motivated half by positive Jewish identification and half by that negative political alienation. Nixon was president, the end of the Vietnam War didn't appear to be in sight, and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King had been murdered.
I don't want to be alienated. I want to be proud of my government and to believe that it has the best interests of all the citizens in mind. I'd even be pleased if I believed that the government and I agreed on what was in our collective best interest -- which I don't.
My only ray of hope regarding America is the thought that the winner-take-all system in the US makes the half of the people who voted against Trump invisible. But they are not going to go away.
I'm not sure I see a similar ray of hope here in Israel.
Here, too, many of my most deeply held values are brutally rejected by the people who govern the country.
The pundits are already busy with predictions and analyses, but they are irrelevant to the way I take the result personally: Hilary Clinton's defeat was the defeat of some of my deepest values.
***
I am no stranger to political alienation.I grew up in a liberal democratic environment, and the Eisenhower years, as well as McCarthyism, were good training for a future of discontent.
After a brief flareup of hope, when Kennedy was elected -- hope that was tragically extinguished when he was assassinated -- my alienation grew. My decision to move to Israel in 1973 was motivated half by positive Jewish identification and half by that negative political alienation. Nixon was president, the end of the Vietnam War didn't appear to be in sight, and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King had been murdered.
***
Here in Israel, my political alienation might be even more extreme that it was back in the US, because I care so much about what happens. We are approaching the anniversary of the Rabin assassination, and the parties that fomented the hatred leading to that assassination have been ruling the country.I don't want to be alienated. I want to be proud of my government and to believe that it has the best interests of all the citizens in mind. I'd even be pleased if I believed that the government and I agreed on what was in our collective best interest -- which I don't.
My only ray of hope regarding America is the thought that the winner-take-all system in the US makes the half of the people who voted against Trump invisible. But they are not going to go away.
I'm not sure I see a similar ray of hope here in Israel.
Here, too, many of my most deeply held values are brutally rejected by the people who govern the country.
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