Voters Ghosted the American Family
Police in Wisconsin explained this week they now believe a husband and father of three who disappeared in August had fled to Europe, perhaps to be with a woman he’d met online. Months had been spent searching for the body of Ryan Borgwardt in the lake where his kayak and fishing equipment had been found.
CNN reports:
Investigators suspect Borgwardt did not drown but seemingly faked his own death before crossing into Canada…As investigators delved into Borgwardt’s life, they discovered he had transferred funds to a foreign bank account, changed his email and communicated with a woman in Uzbekistan. In January, Borgwardt took out a $375,000 life insurance policy.
Dude, why? Why cause such terrible pain to your wife and children? Such trouble and expense to the community? Why pursue such an elaborate, cruel, and wasteful plan to chase a fantasy?
The story reminded me of one told by private eye Sam Spade in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. Spade relates details of a case in which he was hired by a woman to find her husband, the father of their two young sons: “A man named Flitcraft had left his real-estate-office, in Tacoma, to go to luncheon one day and had never returned.”
Spade tracked down Flitcraft, who, it turned out, had abandoned his family and middle-class life after a near-death experience. Reminded of life’s brevity and fate’s randomness, Flitcraft had wandered some before marrying a woman not unlike his wife and re-settling in a home in Spokane not unlike his in Tacoma.
Imagining Excitement and Escape
These two tales, one real and one fictional, have been on my mind after an election in which more than half of voters chose to ghost America’s women and children in pursuit of a fantasy of change.
The overwhelming majority of Donald Trump’s supporters—86% in an October Pew survey—see him as a “change candidate.” While Trump appealed to more working and middle-class voters this election, many of his most ardent supporters are men and women who are not struggling financially but are simply dissatisfied.
Like Borgwardt and Flitcraft, some seem to want change for change’s sake. Commentator Tom Nichols has attributed this to boredom and a narcissistic desire for excitement. In a 2021 piece, he put it this way:
The January 6 rioters were the most extreme example…These insurrectionists were not disenfranchised or oppressed people trying to engage in a peaceful assembly. They could barely express a coherent political thought. Rather, the whole event was a day-camp outing for middle-aged, middle-class, gainfully employed Americans who wanted to be heroes storming Congress – and perhaps lynching the vice president in the process – and then go back home to sell real estate, attend work retreats in Mexico, and brag about it all on Instagram.
If boredom is part of the motivation, it is afflicting even those with the lifestyle MAGA seeks to impose on others. 60% of Trump supporters Pew polled think society is better off if people prioritize getting married and having kids. We don’t know how many of them are Ryan Borgwardts looking for escape from the “traditional” family life they valorize. We do know lots are married with children, financially secure, and think they’re living in a hellscape.
Hammett’s Flitcraft was a homeowner with a new car in his driveway “and the rest of the appurtenances of successful American living,” but it wasn’t enough to make him feel alive. Ryan Borgwardt was willing to trade his life for an online paramour compelling enough to make throwing away his business and ghosting his family seem like a good idea. Then he pursued a plot worthy of a noir thriller: taking our insurance, staging the scene, getting a new passport, wiping his laptop. His real life could not compete. Similarly, some 2024 voters were made dissatisfied enough to be eager for a chaos agent like Trump— maybe because they spend too much time consuming fiction.
Choosing Fantasy
Darrell West of Brookings explains that “false claims affected how people saw the candidates, their views about leading issues such as the economy, immigration, and crime, and the way the news media covered the campaign.” A recent Ipsos poll confirmed: misinformed voters are more likely to vote for Trump and consumers of right-wing media are misinformed about a wide variety of issues. Trump voters tend to disbelieve these plain facts: the economy is in recovery, violent crime is down, and immigrants are an economic boon.
What’s key is that regardless of their personal security, they believe they are experiencing the “American carnage” Trump has long depicted. Ipsos reports:
primary media sources affect Americans’ perceptions of their personal economic situation, including grocery costs, gasoline costs, and having to delay making purchases. For example, while one in four Americans overall say they have seen grocery or gasoline costs go down, nearly half of Americans who primarily consume cable news and national newspapers say they have seen these costs go down, compared to just one in ten Americans who primarily consume Fox News and other conservative media outlets.
Disinformation won Trump the presidency, The New Republic’s Michael Tomasky argues. This doesn’t give a pass to legacy media, however. West highlights how mainstream media coverage of campaign lies (e.g. about Haitians in Ohio and FEMA in North Carolina) played a role. While many lower income households are genuinely suffering in our system of extreme inequality and excessive corporate power is costly to most of us, economist Dean Baker’s analysis shows how legacy media “helped to advance a bad economy story that was at odds with reality.”
A subset of Trump supporters appears eager to punish fellow citizens for a variety of imagined sins and crimes. This hard-core base includes plenty of bigots (e.g. the third of Americans who agree with Trump that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country) who are ready to join in his cruelty. And there are those who have become convinced that their situations are more miserable than they are. Seeking escape, many deny that the change they want will harm others.
Flitcraft didn’t feel bad about abandoning his family, having chosen to believe he wouldn’t be missed. Borgwardt took out life insurance, perhaps thinking it would provide for his family in his absence. And many voters who elected a man of violent rhetoric willing to send people to deportation camps are in serious denial. They believe Trump will do all the good things and not follow through on the bad.
Leaving Behind Women and Children
There is much that these Trump voters must ignore, especially about the consequences for America’s women and children, who are among those who will suffer the most from their choice. An expansion of abortion bans would mean more women and girls forced to give birth and denied contraception and life-saving and health-preserving medical treatment. The repeal of no-fault divorce, a goal of the far-right, would trap women in abusive and unhealthy marriages. Additional Trump-appointed judges could strip further rights from women.
Misogynistic rhetoric during the campaign from both Trump and running mate JD Vance—and Trump’s election despite being an adjudicated sexual abuser—have led to celebrations of rape culture and threats of rape online and in schools since the election. His choice of Matt Gaetz—who has been under investigation for sex with a 17-year-old girl—as Attorney General, sends a chilling message to women and girls about their safety under the new administration. Plans to roll back civil rights gains and attack DEI initiatives will harm the ability of women, especially women of color, to achieve at school and at work. While democracy is good for women’s socioeconomic conditions, rights, and health, Trump is vigorously pursuing autocracy.
Trump’s mass deportation plan could rip a large number of children from their homes and schools and potentially separate millions from their parents, causing deep and lasting trauma. Shutting down the Department of Education or tying federal funding to his political whim would weaken public schools, threaten protections for disabled students, and harm America’s poorest children, especially in rural and urban areas.
Trump has vowed to repeal protections for transgender students; LGBTQ+ students have been flooding crisis hotlines since the election. His administration could weaken child labor laws and enforcement, leading to more children being exploited by employers. Anti-science leadership, industry deregulation, and cuts to green energy programs are likely to expose children to preventable communicable diseases, air and water pollution, gun violence, and climate disasters.
These are just some of the threats to women and children foreseeable from this second Trump Administration. All fall most heavily on the most vulnerable populations: those in low-income households and areas, immigrants and refugees, gender-nonconforming people, and people of color.
Voters could have chosen Kamala Harris, whose family-friendly policies around housing, public education, child and elder care, healthcare, and gun safety would have uplifted American women and children. Instead, a large swath of Americans—including, of course, those who chose not to vote—elected to leave them behind. Too many, out of boredom or fear or hate and consuming a media diet of lies and threat and excitement, were willing to abandon others for a fantasy.