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

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

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.

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.

[sovay]

It's just hard to deal with the fact that that's the narrative of the world so many people preferred.

Understood and agreed.