Who Are the People?

“The only important thing is the unification of the people,” Donald Trump said about his 2016 presidential campaign, “because the other people don’t mean anything.” In this vision, politics is a battle to the finish, and the sides are morally unequal. One side—his side, “the people”—belongs here. The other side, “the other people,” doesn’t belong. Liberal sentiment during the Trump administration was one long repudiation of this idea. Assertions of human equality crystallized in a series of slogans, ubiquitous on lawn signs, T-shirts, and social media posts: “Black lives matter” was a counterpoint to Trump’s “the other people don’t mean anything” and an insistence on fundamental equality. “No human being is illegal” was a denial of moral difference between authorized and unauthorized presence in the United States. In the South, where I wrote most of this book, “y’all means all” was a drawling statement of solidarity with trans people. © 2022. Dissent. All rights reserved.