Four years ago, three classmates and I set out to attend a Trump rally in Manchester, New Hampshire. It was eerily cold but you wouldn’t have been able to tell from the energy and vivacity near the Southern New Hampshire University Hockey Stadium.
Never before had so many people been so curious as to where I, the Mexican reporter and then undergrad student, was from! It’s probably the closest I’ll get to feeling like Borat except this was no attempt at satire whatsoever.
I lied and said I was from Spain one moment and Portugal the other. I didn’t want nor feel like explaining myself to anyone, I was still very… accommodating then. Nick Anastasio, a war veteran and someone who actually spoke decent Portuguese, found me out. He was friendly, smart and voting for Trump.
I remember José and Martina García, the janitors at the stadium who hail from Mexico City, the ones who had to clean up all of the shit, posters, regalia and stickers people carelessly left behind.
I never forget Martina’s words bordering on misplaced hope (“The woman will win… I hope”) and José’s realistic and yet dangerously, ironically wrong foreboding (“Fear? Why should I have fear? Nothing will happen to us. At the end of the day we will still be working here, day and night.”)
How wrong, how fucking wrong we were.
Of the many things that stand out, it was probably the outright excitement that stared me most in the face.
It was right there and I, in my naïve (because I admit, I can still be very, very naive) and arrogant self, thought there was just no way they thought the orange man was going to win. Four years later Trump rallies are still an experience because, above all, people want to 1. be entertained and 2. be part of the entertainment.
When the “build the wall” chants started that night, Anastasio told me it was a metaphor. That it didn’t mean that a zero tolerance policy would be enacted at the border, that over 400 families would be separated, that a virtual Muslim ban would be enacted days into the administration.
Now, that I didn’t believe was only a metaphor - just ask anyone who has been through immigration and customs.
I don’t know what metaphor best represents the last four years. I just think of “covfefe”: nonsensical, embarrassing, somehow inconspicuously harmful and, frankly, funny until it just isn’t.
During 2020, the months have zoomed by, the weeks have chugged along but the days just feel fucking eternal sometimes.
News cycles designed to keep you on edge and somehow still abiding by a “it can’t happen here” mentality when it very much is happening here have proved that the best PR move during the last four years is honestly to just not comment and wait out your news maelstrom (remember when the top 3 Virginia state leaders either had blackface or sexual scandals?).
To say things have happened since 2016 would be the most laughable understatement but, personally, I became a citizen because 1. my green card was expiring in 2021 and 2. no less than five customs agents told me every time I flew into the U.S. “apply for citizenship because it’s going to get fucking tough.”
I voted! Which was cool and cost me a combined 57 GBP to send not one but two ballots from England (thank you, USPS and Harris County Clerk for guiding me through this). I did my part; the last time I “voted” in a US presidential election was in the 4th grade in my social studies class in ‘04. I think Bush won in our class? Fuck’s sake we were kids, we didn’t know much.
I still think Trump will take Texas by one percentage point but when Texas is in play, well, honey, you’re just not doing great. Granted, I’m not a betting man for a reason because 90 percent of my predictions turn out to be flat out wrong.
I also covered the campaign trail for a glorious two weeks in person with a Japanese newspaper, with a stay in the Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas (coincidentally the last time I went clubbing) and a roadtrip to the Democratic Primary Turning Point that was South Carolina, where I also first saw people wearing masks at the airport. That was a fun time and I got to see more of my beloved America.
I don’t have any WiSdoM nor anything of that sort, you can read your preferred outlet for that. I just wanted to revisit this night from four years ago to somehow prove to myself that time does pass and that the only thing that is different this time that truly matters is that we test tried a taste of chaos last time but this time we’re at the crossroads of willingly choosing that again.
As Bush 43 would say: “There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again.”