And they'll coach you in the classroom that it cannot happen here, but it has happened here

[sovay]

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.

Comments

[sovay]

I had hoped against hope for a better outcome for all of us.

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.

[gwynnega]

I thought there was a very good chance Clinton would win, but I was also terrified, so I guess on some level I knew this could happen. It is even more galling that she won the popular vote.

[sovay]

I thought there was a very good chance Clinton would win, but I was also terrified, so I guess on some level I knew this could happen.

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.