James Carville, former President Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist, once famously distilled the nature of American elections down to four simple words: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Carville was right. All American elections are about the economy, but every election, especially every national election, is also about identity — specifically, what it means to be American. The choice between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump was a choice between two versions of that identity: a choice between aspirations and reality. When we enter a voting booth to elect a president, each of us confronts a choice that is as old as our republic — it’s a choice between who we aspire to be, and who we actually are.

Because we are a relatively young nation, composed mostly of immigrants, it’s hard to define what it is to be an American without referring to our founding documents. When you look at those documents — the Declaration of Independence, the first Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the Bill of Rights — what you see, (if you bypass the lofty idealisms, and read between the lines) is our Founding Fathers’ keen determination to establish the United States as a “business.” Not a collective, but a collection of individuals organized freely around the principle of making money. The freedom to be an individual, or to act and think like one, was baked into our national consciousness at conception.

Americans are not like the Russians, or the Chinese, or the Swedish. We don’t think about the welfare of the collective. To do so would be un-American. For too many of us, the wellbeing of our fellow citizens is, at best, a secondary consideration.

The history of the United States is a history of selfishness. When faced with a political choice, it’s the American way to weigh the options and choose the one that best serves our individual self-interests. It’s part of our national identity to think this way — it’s what makes us American. Compared to the rest of the world’s peoples, Americans lead the planet in selfishness.

Gert Jan Hofstede, a Dutch social psychologist and academic, has built a career on the study of culture. Based on 50 years of data gathered from societies around the world, he devised a famous theory about the effects of culture on a society’s members, and how culture impacts behavior. His “Six Dimension Model of National Culture” helps to explain why the United States leads the world in individualism. There are other cultures with strong streaks of individualism, like those in Scandinavia, but the American brand of individualism is unique.

What makes American individualism different is its strong competitive streak. Other individualistic cultures, like the British, are much more egalitarian in their individuality, according to Michele Gelfand, a Stanford cross-cultural psychologist, formerly of the University of Maryland, College Park. Americans are not just selfish, we’re also hyper-competitive — not just with foreigners, with other Americans too.

Our selfishness and competitiveness have manifested in numerous regrettable ways over the centuries. Whether it was the choice to violently dispossess the native peoples of this land, or to pursue slavery as a national industrial strategy, or to target a whole group of people, based on skin color, and deliberately preclude them from participating in programs that established the middle class in this country — historically, when Americans are faced with a choice, too often we choose the option that best serves us as individuals.

On its face, the presidential election was a choice between Donald Trump’s focus on immigration and the economy, and Kamala Harris’ focus on middle-class opportunity and abortion rights. But, beneath the surface, it was about much more than that.

America was being asked to choose which version of itself it wanted to carry forward into the next four years — one based on serving the self, or one based on appreciating the concerns and safety of others. Trump was victorious because voters decided that the cost of a gallon of milk was more important than all of the horrible things Trump was saying he planned to do to their neighbors.

It didn’t matter how tragically flawed Donald Trump was. The crimes and convictions were immaterial. As were his racist remarks, his disrespectful comments about veterans and the disabled, and his nastiness toward women. Voters ignored the warnings of those who had worked closely with Trump and turned away when he was accused of selfishness and described as being dangerous and untrustworthy. Despite all of the red flags, the same voters who had abandoned Trump in 2020 for being incompetent during the COVID-19 crisis, and for damaging the economy as a result, returned to him enthusiastically because they were reportedly unhappy about how the prices were at Walmart.

Americans are not always selfish. There are times, during national emergencies, for example, when the whole country seems to pull together as one — World War II springs to mind, as well as the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. But, it never lasts. Before long, the old patterns reemerge.

That was the true message of Trump’s victory.

K. Ward Cummings is an essayist and social critic. He lives in Baltimore.