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And they'll coach you in the classroom that it cannot happen here, but it has happened here
I didn't realize how much I had existentially relaxed in the last eight years—how much having Obama in office made me feel safer on some unnoticed level, because I knew the world was getting better in ways that mattered deeply, no matter the turmoil and backlash of working out the routes and means. I thought I could expect it to keep getting better. My low-bar, minimum-clearance definition of better was apparently so terrifying and repugnant to more than half the country I live in that they killed it. Now I don't feel safe and neither do most of the people I love and I know I will have to find ways to fight for them, because the alternative is not acceptable to me (nor would it make me safer: I am not in the demographic of America Trump promises to make great again), but it feels exhausting even to contemplate and any fight of this kind will take the most resources from the people who already have the least to spare. Right now I cannot imagine relaxing again and I spent most of my adulthood working to convince myself that this world was a good place to stay in; now I feel it would be irresponsible to leave it, but I don't expect to enjoy it. This is the tension of the Bush years. Worse, in fact, because then I thought we must have hit rock bottom, surely we must recover, if we just don't blow up the planet there cannot be farther to fall. This is not how I had hoped to feel by today. I don't believe in miracles, but an improbability would have really been nice.
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Now it just feels like the past eight years have been wiped away and we're heading towards....I don't even know. A dark nightmare.
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It is nightmarish. A lot of people made it happen and a lot of people let it happen and I don't believe it will give most of them what they want, because devils' bargains never do, but it will hurt a lot of people in the process of their finding out. And they will be different sets of people, which is not fair.
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sorry, I'm just babbling.
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No. It isn't. Electing a racist, misogynist, rich white man to a position of power in America is not anti-establishment in the least. It is an old and well-worn pattern. This was a vote against change, not for it. It is disappointing and dangerous.
They cannot wipe out the last eight years, though. They can turn the clock back on the laws, but not on memory, and it is always easier to deny people something they have no experience of. It is harder when they know what they have to lose.
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That is a really beautiful way to put it.
Man I need to go to bed. I think part of it is I don't want to wake up in a world with him as President.
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Thank you.
*hugs*
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I knew that many of them did; I just did not know they would be enough.
Thank you.
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Thank you.
*hugs*
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Nine
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I don't believe that there is an outer limit to human greed or fear or hatred or indifference: I have read too much atrocity to think that. I did think that the country I lived in could impose a limit on itself. I am very upset to find that it decided not to.
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Nine
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Of course. 9/11 was other people. This is us.
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I'm proud of everyone I know, people who work to make room for others, who are welcoming, who offer food and warmth to the hungry and cold. Going to just keep pressing in that direction, trying to live up to, and for, and like these friends of mine.
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I don't see any other way. I just want it to be enough for change, not simply for survival.
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Thank you. Right now I can't see what they should be other than community and hard work and knowing that half the country didn't agree with Trump's vision of a tiny white Christian America, standing its ground and shooting whatever looks different. What I want to see is people finding ways to fight for the change we should have been moving toward, not running backwards from, and then I will feel like there's somewhere to go. I don't want to see people deciding it's all over now and there's nothing to do but wait for last call at the apocalypse.
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Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
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I -am- scared, but I also want to stay and fight. To put this right. If we all do it, maybe we can make a difference. I've already lived the life of an exile once, I'd rather not have to do it again.
*sending you strength*
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I am not under any circumstances saying that I will not fight or that it is not worth the effort. It has always been necessary to fight. This year, last year, before Donald Trump came on the political scene. (Black lives matter.) But I am very upset that it is now required at this magnitude and I am upset at the time and resources it is going to consume that could have gone into science or art or education or improving the world instead of trying to hold a line against it and I am upset that the country I live in wanted to set itself back instead of supporting the future. Doing nothing, resigning myself, saying that I did what I could when I voted and now there's nothing more to be done, is not possible: it is Hellman's standing around and watching (or, as I said to
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May we all be equal to what's coming.
Strength to your arm.
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I just wanted to be very clear. I think this is a situation where apathy or paralysis, whether from fear or resignation, will be more fatal than ever.
May we all be equal to what's coming.
You can tell how I'm feeling from the fact that I read your icon as a form of Atlas, shouldering the world.
Strength to your arm.
To yours, too.
*hugs*
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*hugs*
I haven't been crying. I have had a half-blinding headache for the last thirteen hours, but it is demonstrably environmental. At the moment I am doing all the usual things I do with a day on which I feel terrible, like working from home and feeding the cats; I don't know anything more useful to do right now, but I know that failing to do them will not make me feel that I am responding to the situation better. Do whatever you need to do for yourself.
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This. For myself, I don't know what to say except that I agree with every idea you've expressed here.
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*hugs*
If you find words and/or decide to write them down, I look forward to reading them. And if you don't, whatever works best for you.
I'm glad you sent your letter to Obama.
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Thank you. It remains counterintuitive to me that anyone could have looked at Brexit and thought, "That's just what we need!"
*hugs*
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I think what upsets me most is that it wasn't hope against hope for me, at least until the election maps started to run red—it seemed not just desirable that Clinton should win, but possible. I expected the margin of victory to be narrow, I expected Trump to file lawsuits against her and for the number of death threats leveled against an incoming President to rise unprecedentedly, I expected her to have to fight Congress on the most insignificant details of governance from her first day in office, but I really did think it would be a victory. So I get to feel cheated as well as stunned, especially since I just heard that she carried the popular vote. I wanted the world to go the other way. It would have done less damage.
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I think everyone knew it could happen; there were just reasons to believe it wouldn't. The idea of a Clinton victory wasn't a mass delusion or ostrich-complacency. That is perhaps the worst thing right now. People had reasons to hope.
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And I didn't think that the world was just getting better on its own without input or attention—I thought that people were working toward it because the majority had agreed it was better to have a future that took care of its planet and its people and did not structure itself according to inequality and indifference and hatred of the stranger. I didn't take it for granted. I thought they—we—had decided the tough decisions and the rocky stretches on the way of progress were worth it. It was the way I prefer to live. I do not like finding out that the work people were willing to do instead was retrograde: closing possibilities rather than opening them. I don't actually see that the closed world does any good in the long run, no matter what fantasies it feeds.
Does anyone know what happened with the polls? Were there really so many who changed their minds at the last minute? Was it simply that people who planned to vote for Trump all along just decided not to disclose that fact to the press?
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Yes. It's partly, I suppose that I live in a bubble (NYC does not have a lot of Trump supporters) but it's so hard for me to understand how so many people could vote in support of such nationalistic, xenophobic nonsense.
Does anyone know what happened with the polls?
The biggest problem with the polls seems to be large numbers of rural, uneducated voters. They were quite open about the fact that they preferred Trump, but because in the past they have tended not to actually turn out to vote, they were discounted in the statistical weights. Instead they showed up in unexpected numbers. Trump also did better than expected with both women and people of color, though I haven't really seen any explanations yet of why that hadn't been captured in the lead-up polls to election day. In addition, Democratic turnout was lower than expected – this may at least in part be due to restrictive laws passed since the end of the Voting Rights Act.
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Trump told a story about America that didn't offer anything attractive to you, just as it didn't offer anything attractive to me or any of the people I know closely—his fantasy of America was inimical and repulsive to us, partly because we were variously forms of the Other which his story excluded or cast strictly as the enemy. For people who saw themselves as the last embattled fragment of the true America, however, I think it was irresistible. It wasn't nonsense to them. He was telling them a story which matched and strengthened what they believed and feared to be true. People believe most easily those things which accord with their beliefs, which sounds tautological but explains why logical argument hits a wall so much of the time; people are susceptible to stories. They're brain hacks. The right narrative can override any number of facts. Trump gave the right narrative to the parts of the country which needed to hear it and it didn't matter that every other word out of his mouth was an inaccuracy at best and a lie more of the time, it felt to them as though it described the reality of the world and they liked it. They were the heroes in it, the happy few, the last bastions. It hit all the right buttons. I like this phenomenon better when it produces really powerful art, not political disasters.
They were quite open about the fact that they preferred Trump, but because in the past they have tended not to actually turn out to vote, they were discounted in the statistical weights. Instead they showed up in unexpected numbers.
Thank you; that makes sense to me.
Trump also did better than expected with both women and people of color, though I haven't really seen any explanations yet of why that hadn't been captured in the lead-up polls to election day.
My mother was very upset by the willingness of women of whatever ethnicity, age, or religion to vote for Trump. She didn't necessarily expect them to feel solidarity with Clinton, but she did think they would recognize Trump as a danger. To her, it felt like a writ-large version of the phenomenon where women demonize and marginalize other women in order to increase their standing with men.
In addition, Democratic turnout was lower than expected – this may at least in part be due to restrictive laws passed since the end of the Voting Rights Act.
I had been afraid of that.
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Yes, I think you're right. It's just hard to deal with the fact that that's the narrative of the world so many people preferred.
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Understood and agreed.