There’s a new feeling in America as kindness drives out cruelty

For a decade, good-hearted citizens witnessed horrors and insisted: ‘This is not America.’ Finally, the conversation has shifted

For the past 10 years – such brutally discouraging years in the United States – we’ve been hearing good-hearted citizens put forth something they believed to their bones.

“This is not America,” they would insist as federal agents shot people on city streets, as immigrants were called rapists and animals, as Donald Trump and his cronies stuffed their own pockets while they shrugged at the price of gas and groceries, and humiliated the nation on the world stage, alienating allies and sucking up to autocrats.

And sometimes a disheartened reply would echo back: “But this is America.”

After all, millions of voters had gone to the polls twice, in 2016 and 2024, and gleefully elected a mean-spirited bigot, a sexual abuser who eventually would be held liable in court, a president whose administration inspired the observation: “The cruelty is the point.”

But on Tuesday, that discouraging conversation – changed. Not just a little, but radically.

American citizens rose up and showed the world their nation’s truer colors.

They showed it to be a place that values decency. A place capable of choosing diversity, not mocking it. A place strong enough to say “enough, already”.

The global caricature of the ugly American as an ignoramus in thrall to an immoral cult leader got pushed aside in this election that turned both houses of Congress, and many a governor’s office, away from Maga and toward potential reform.

“I think it was about kindness,” reflected my neighbor, a registered nurse and French immigrant, as I encountered her on her dog walk on Wednesday morning.

In a pre-election piece titled “America’s Clarifying Moment”, the writer and academic Stephen Beschloss summarized the stakes. This is “when we find out whether our fellow Americans really are committed to putting an end to the reckless destruction, the ceaseless corruption, the lawless abuse of our democracy and the utter indifference to the people’s struggle to survive”.

Turns out enough Americans were not merely committed. They were passionate, turning out in droves to elevate the kind of people that Maga had so blithely trashed.

Among the victors: a Black female governor in Georgia, a gay senator in New Hampshire, a Muslim senator in Ohio, and a Native American female governor of New Mexico.

“The sheer diversity of the winners tonight is staggering,” observed Jennifer Senior of the Atlantic.

For those millions of us who continued to nurse our battered idealism, the outcome was restorative, if shocking in its sweep.

“Stunned, stunned, stunned,” posted Evan Smith, co-founder of the Texas Tribune, as his state turned blue on Tuesday night. The ascension of Gina Hinojosa as the state’s first Latina governor was paired with the victory of James Talarico, soon to be the nation’s youngest senator, despite Elon Musk’s obscene and self-interested bankrolling of his Republican opponent.

“Love thy neighbor,” read a sign on Talarico’s victory-speech lectern in Austin.

What a concept. Not only did voters repudiate cruelty and greed. They turned their backs on organized stupidity as well.

“Everybody’s had enough … We’re not all a bunch of idiots. Even the idiots are not idiots,” a Texas voter, Sasa Rodriguez, entertainingly told the Guardian’s David Smith.

In many places, humanity shone through the lingering pain.

Minnesotans placed their “I voted” stickers at the memorial for Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old intensive care nurse killed by federal agents in January. The son of another victim of ICE put his “I voted” sticker on his father’s memorial, and the Houston Chronicle reported that soon there were “so many other stickers that he can’t say for certain which was his”.

Wounds were beginning to heal, even those between nations.

My friends in Buffalo were anticipating Wednesday’s home hockey game between the Buffalo Sabres and the Ottawa Senators, where fans’ voices were sure to ring out for both national anthems to announce good will on both sides of the nearby Peace Bridge. It’s happened before. Canada even shone brilliant blue lights on Niagara Falls, a shared wonder between neighbors.

Is this election the end of American cruelty and malfeasance? Of course not.

Trump remains in power, and his corrupted allies in the justice department and on the supreme court are unlikely to get with the program. Oligarchs still hold too many of the cards. And Democrats are very far from perfect.

But it’s a move in a most welcome direction. And a retreat from the distressing years where “this is not America” had to sustain us.

It’s a promise, too – of better days ahead, of reform and accountability, and of an era when we may once again think of America and feel proud.

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture