I cried from Canada when Hillary Clinton lost the election to Donald Trump in 2016. My boyfriend at the time seemed unable to relate to my visceral reaction, which only made my snotty-nosed despair worse. Oh, the misogyny of it all.

Despite having dual citizenship, I had never lived in America, nor voted in an American election. That year was no exception, but Clinton was a shoo-in, I’d figured. “Who would vote for such a vile buffoon as Trump?” I thought.

Apparently, many millions.

Trump’s win that year shocked legions of progressives and feminists like myself, who trusted the media, their algorithm and their friendship circles, which had painted Trump in near-universal reports as a detestable racist, sexist and bully, whereas Clinton was the deserving, respectable heir.

We were so wrong.

Once I recovered from my anger at the unfairness of democracy in action (and my regret at having not registered to vote in the US), I began to dig deeper in an attempt to understand what I had not prior to the vote. This is, one would think, what any critical or curious thinker would do. There must be a reason so many people voted for Trump.

Living overseas myself, now in Mexico, I realise the easy answer for many Left-wingers looking on from abroad is to write off half the population as racists and misogynists – people who had “lost their moral compass” – resorting to emotionally-driven political choices like a hatred of women, and faced with Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate this year, people of colour too.