Back to Black
The dismay at Donald Trump’s presidential triumph doesn’t compare with the trauma of earthquakes back home.
Joanne Black
One of my worries when I left New Zealand a few months ago was that “something” would happen while I was too far away to help. I mean something more than, “Mum, I have no money and could you please …”, because it turns out you are never too far away to help with that one.
So, when I answered the phone just after 6am on Sunday morning and heard my son say, “Sorry, I don’t know what the time is there but there’s just been a really big earthquake here”, my heart skipped a beat. Later, I switched our internet radio over to RNZ National from the local station’s 24/7 analysis of why Donald Trump won the presidential race despite pollsters promising Hillary Clinton had it in the bag.
I tune into RNZ only rarely here because I’ve found I associate Morning Report so strongly with my old routines that I eat a second breakfast and shout to my daughter that it’s time to go to school even though it’s early afternoon when the news show comes on. Time zones do my head in.
Anyway, on Sunday I did turn on RNZ, and began reading the quake coverage on the Stuff and NZ Herald websites. The media is at its best when something major occurs and there is a return to simply reporting what has happened, where it happened, when it happened and what people saw and felt.
I sat in Washington following the news from New Zealand, interspersed with updates from friends and family and feeling a growing sense of absentfriend’s guilt. I wanted to be there to embrace people, commiserate and sweep up. But I’m also a wimp and admit to a great sense of relief at being half the world away.
After all, although I don’t have a war story, I do still have my china intact. I feel sorry for everyone caught up in such a terrifying experience and the physical and psychological aftermath. As feared, “something” did happen after I left. The problem is, that doesn’t stop something else happening.
I’m surprised to find that in the wake of Trump’s victory, I’m among those who feel as though they’ve glimpsed the end of the world and it has dyed hair. The US will never be “home” to me, but I had not appreciated until the election that, since arriving here in June, my attempt at full immersion in American life has made me care about this country, with all its faults, delights, strengths and foibles. It is said that people get the governments they deserve, but I have not seen behaviour here so bad that it warranted a Trump victory.
Still, here he is, and I do not blame the Electoral College system or anyone or anything. Nor did “Republicans” elect him. The public did, presumably because he said things that gelled with them. My guess is they do not expect him to build a wall or to ban Muslims, but the general anti-immigrant sentiment had strong appeal, just as it influenced the Brexit vote in the UK and could easily appeal in New Zealand.
But even if an anti-immigration stance had broad support, voters still had to overlook a lot of awfulness to vote for Trump. Here in the Democrat bubble of Washington DC, many people are so upset you could call it grief. They are fearful, downcast and hard to console. I am not in that camp. Seismic shifts worry me more than political ones.