Becoming unhinged
I'm not a democrat. I swear I am not. I'm not a republican, either. I'm somewhere in the middle, economically conservative but socially liberal. I get along well with Libertarians, but not White Supremacists. I'm a feminist, and also in favor of a well-regulated militia (which we do NOT currently have.) I don't have a party, but that's okay, I'm Unenrolled and just swing either way. (That's a model that works well for me in general.)
But Trump has me coming unhinged. He is doing serious and possibly irreparable harm to our economy. The farmers can't get labor, and now, I guess they don't need it, because they can't sell their goods overseas anymore. The factories shutting down won't come back. The bid to make America dependent on what Americans can build is a sweet notion, but the whole "imbalance of trade" thing is a really upsettingly wrong way to look at it. He's preventing Americans from buying the things they wish to buy, and that has consequences.
I'm sort of used to Republican Misogyny, so that isn't the thing that takes my breath away, although it still makes me gasp sometimes. I'm grateful for the times when people AREN'T racist or anti-semites, so the racism everywhere in the country (and it's by no means just in the Republicans) isn't the thing that makes me gasp in horror.
What makes me gasp in horror is the way people are being incited towards violence. The left talks about punching Nazis, and the innkeepers break the millenia-old tradition of hospitality, and thugs come out to throw feces. The President tweets about the press being enemies, and unhinged Incels feel permission to move to action. Oh, says Milo, I was only joking. But crazy people hear your voice saying to shoot up the newsroom and they think it's NORMAL. Look, other people say they're the enemy! The PRESIDENT says the press is the enemy. So five dead in Anne Arundal today by a very disturbed man, who after 7 years of fighting these people on twitter was finally moved to action by the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES giving him permission.
We need run-off voting, and we need it NOW. We can't keep electing the fringiest fringe candidate. We need to be able to rank them. Jill Stein, or if she's not the majority, Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump, or if he's not the majority, Kasich. Oh, oh oh, how I wish Trump were not elected. I tried to see it as "stress testing Democracy", where he put the absolute worst person in every spot. Shake it all up, and see how we did. We'd get a prescription for change out of it, I thought. It's only four years, I thought. How awful could it be, I thought?
I don't want to feel this unhinged. I don't want to be partisan. I don't want to be over-the-top dramatic. But I watch the people emerge from the depths of Twitter and the back alleys of Facebook, emboldened to be their Worst Possible Selves by the President, who is joyous in his cretinism. No political correctness here, blatant racism is cool again! They can wonder in hurtness why people call them racists and feel comforted that the President gets labelled that, too, so it must be okay, it's good company, they can all console each other over being called mean names by people with unattainable educations.
I don't want to use the triggering term "deplorable", but when I see them chortling about caging children, when I see them asking for the Parkland kids to be shot in the face, when I see the anti-semitism on the rise, I just can't even. I'm bereft of words. I'm scared and horrified and it's oh so much worse than I thought the night he was elected (and I thought it was bad then, too. Just not THIS bad.)
Can we survive two and a half more years of this? Will we get our prescription for change? Will he get re-elected? Will he cross a Rubicon and destroy the Republic in favor of a monarchy? How bad is this? I can't plumb these depths. Should I be preparing for the Trump Depression that is sure to follow the Trade War? (What' a snappy term for this? The Trumpression? You heard it here first, folks.)
I just finished reading "White Like Me" by Debby Irving, by the way. What a lovely book, written in the lovely bygone days when working on racism was a goal. Now the first lady wears "Handmaid's Tale" red and we are creating concentration camps for children and picking up green card holders for deportation and keeping mothers and fathers separated when they're Yemeni and American in the same family.
Oh my God, it's so much worse than I can deal with. I can't deal. Help me deal?