I am quite apolitical. I hate arguments, I hate feeling anger and angst towards others. It makes me miserable and unhappy. I think it started as a kid in a very argumentative family. I always was the peace-maker. I wanted people to be happy. I have found this quality as it followed me into adulthood to be both a positive and negative one. I don't engage in fights, I am pleasant, I avoid conflict unless it is morally offensive or dangerous. But the converse side of it, is I don't always take a stand when perhaps I should because of fear of causing dissent. Now, as we look towards the next several years with a Trump president I wonder, will I be forced to take a stance and be courageous in my views as we fall of the cliff of insanity? Or will I be a sheep? Like the thousands of kind, well-meaning Germans who went along with Hitler. Not because they supported him or thought what he was doing was right but because they were gentle kind people who didn't want to cause conflict, dissent, or risk their own lives. I wonder which I will be.
Today I sobbed over an election result. Never before have I cared so deeply. Always before the politicians were a horse a piece. Who won was not going to change the course of our history all that much (except maybe the exceptional way our country elected our first black president 8years ago!). But today felt like a million steps backwards. Instead of shattering a glass ceiling and electing our first woman president. Instead of electing our only sane choice we let our caveman emotions let us pick not only the most unqualified person perhaps in the history of our country but also a fool and worse a dangerous one. By appealing to people's biases, Trump won the presidential election. He made it ok for people to not just be subtly racist and sexist and discriminatory, he allowed them to be proud of it. I always feared living in a rural area and raising my children there because when you surround yourself with lots of white people it is easy to fear what you do not know. Instead of appreciating the richness of the cultures of others and perhaps even being envious of their rich traditions compared to the blandness that the melting pot has left many of us with we fear what we do not know. Instead of learning to share, to take a turn at the table, to appreciate the differences of others and how wide that makes our world view, we instead because close-minded and shallow and insensitive. Today I learned that being rural is not just the problem, our entire country is the problem. I will be making sure that my residency applications are all to large states that voted blue because if anyone is going to be able to maintain a tiny sense of what I had hoped for our country it will be these large states that can (hopefully) stand firm.
Be ashamed America. Be so very ashamed. We were not electing a contestant for a reality show. We were electing the leader of what was the greatest country in the world. We can only pray and hope that somehow these next few years will go quickly and nothing catastrophic will happen but when you let a man with no respect for others or institutions or laws into the White House, the chances we'll get off that easy are dismally slim. And that is why I cry. Because not only will I be ashamed that my daughter will have to learn of this man in history classes and know that our country, her parent's generation was unable to make the country a better place for them. That we let loose the monster that has the potential to collapse our nation. That perhaps this is truly the end of what was a great nation and the history books will document the folly and the fall. But I will be ashamed that sexism and racism are so much more alive and well in our country than I thought. I thought each generation pushed us forward but found that perhaps the desire to go backward was deep in the hearts of so many people.
As a white American I apologize to all the rich diverse people of our nation who must feel so alone and so threatened today. Courage to all of us as we face the next 4 years.
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