What is the point of Americans if they don’t set us a good example?

What happened to all the bracing liberal wits and loveable smart-arses? Did a whole generation retire when Jon Stewart did? Sally Ann Lasson takes the temperature of New York in the Trump era, and asks whether the Big Apple has lost its shine

The language barrier has widened to an unbridgeable gap (Getty)

I spent last Monday afternoon lying on the floor with Toby, a black Labrador. She is provided by my university – the New School – to calm my nerves “in the light of recent developments”. Toby politely wags her tail at every newcomer to the group and will lick your face if you like. Apparently, 30 to 40 students usually drop by at Student Health Services during the hour of dog therapy. Yes, we’ve come to this, just three months after the inauguration of the man we never refer to by name.

My School – the oldest liberal arts college in New York – reaches out to me a lot these days. We now have safe places to go on campus, lessons in how to respectfully conduct political argument, mindfulness, meditation, psychiatry and extra counselling services. Security has been increased since some charmer, drunk on election victory, daubed a dorm with swastikas. It made the news.

When I arrived in New York at the end of August, for the first semester of my MFA, I could sense something was wrong with the city. That nice Barack Obama was still in charge and people were worrying endlessly about the minutiae of the gender neutral loo. But when you move countries, as I did, you meet a lot of odd people and they are quick to tell you what’s on their mind.

On a particularly humid night in September, I was sitting in the back of a removal truck with a Cherokee Indian, moving my stuff to my new apartment. He’d done all the heavy lifting, while the over-weight white man driving, did all the talking. We were in Lower Manhattan, safe, I thought, from the bigots. But no, the white man felt liberated with the coming election to tell me how much he hated foreigners, and how brilliant Britain had been to get shot of them. I looked haltingly at the Cherokee next me. “Don’t you mind what he’s saying?” I asked him. “I don’t listen,” he said.

When I asked the driver if he was going to vote for Trump, he pled the 5th Amendment. They were ashamed to say it, but not to do it, a pattern that was to be repeated over the next several weeks by other, random, people I encountered including a Jewish doctor in the West Village. A Jewish doctor!

In October, at the writer Michael Wolff’s house, I met a man who said he was a senior editor at Bloomberg News. He explained how, in every scientifically measurable way, Hillary Clinton was going to win the forthcoming election. “Go and tell Michael your little anecdotal stories” he said. “He loves that kind of detail.” I suppose it is easier to contemplate one, hugely undesirable election result, when you have already lived through your own.

We used to call New York the most beautiful city in Europe but now it feels like it’s joined the US (Getty)

For six weeks before the election, I kept saying “don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be right” but after the hammer fell, my best friend Karen avoided me for two weeks. It was as if I were in some way to blame. And I don’t think the New Yorkers I meet have processed it properly yet, either. The fatal blow has been struck, but the punch-drunk boxer still stands. They mistake Facebook for political activism and demonstrations for democracy.

By the end of January, the atmosphere became so menacing that when I heard loud explosions coming from the West, I thought the war had already started. I googled it to discover it was the Chinese New Year. Phew. But, you know what, hundreds of people took to twitter with the same thought.

The Executive Orders started coming thick and fast after that, each one seemingly madder than the one before. The new president revoked Affordable Health Care, Environmental Protection, Equal Pay, and Women’s Reproductive Rights. By the time he made it legal to club baby bears to death – “while they are sleeping” as my friend Karen pointed out – it felt like we’d slipped through the time warp continuum.

My university president, David E Van Zandt, a man I’m never likely to meet in person, struggled to keep up with them. I am among many international students here, and he kept writing to us to tell us not to panic. “Our country is experiencing a level of division and discord not seen in generations,” he wrote. Immigration seminars were scheduled and the school passed a resolution not to disclose any person’s citizenship or immigration status. We were warned not to go on any demonstrations because if we were arrested, we would likely to be deported. I wanted to slap anyone who said so blithely “oh, you’ll be alright, you’re English”. How do they know?

I went to see the novelist Siri Hustved read at my school. She’s spent the past 10 years studying psychiatry and neurobiology (understanding the brain) and talked about the science of perception and the crucial role that fusing science and the humanities should play in making our world. She said that Hillary Clinton lost quite simply because of the rampant misogyny that exists among men and women. She ended on the subject of race. “I want to hand in the White Card,” she said. I spoke with her afterwards. “I actually want to be black now,” I told her. It’s all about Identity, you see. That’s where this ill-fated experiment in democracy has led us….

At my local English tea shop, Tea & Sympathy, where I go for emergency sardines on toast, a Norwegian man at the next table told me about a film he’d made 10 years ago called Hacking Democracy. It’s about how easy it is to commit voting fraud. “It shows it can be done,” he said, with great certainty. “The only question is “would you?” A few weeks later, a US congressional investigation, a Senate Intelligence Committee probe, and an FBI investigation into voting irregularities were announced.

We used to call New York the most beautiful city in Europe but now it feels like it’s joined the US. The people have become sluggish to the point of torpor, each retail experience more desultory and demoralising than the one before. The employee in the supermarket/hardware store/coffee shop knows less about the inventory or the layout of the store than you do, entering for the very first time. The language barrier has widened to an unbridgeable gap: I am forced to act out charades or point at things to be understood. It’s like being…well, it’s like being a foreigner. What happened to all the smart arses? Did a whole generation retire when Jon Stewart did?

Honestly, what is the point of Americans if they don’t set us a good example?