Time to dust off the keyboard.
Yes, it's me! I'm here to once again vomit words onto the digital page, screaming into the virtual void. Hooray!
I'm here for the same reason a lot of other people are here right now. I'm trying to make sense of a nation which I no longer feel part of.
Surprising nobody, I voted for Kamala Harris. Please don't get me wrong, I love my hometown hero, Joe, but he should have hung up his dancing shoes long before he actually did. You know it; I know it. I believe he knows it, too. But you guys, I was so fucking jazzed to be able to vote for a black woman to lead this country. At last, a black woman at the helm, and not just a token--she's absolutely brilliant. She believes in this country, and she wanted to help usher it to even greater success for as many people as possible. The fact that she even got the nomination had me over the moon with hope and optimism. I thought we were making amazing progress as a nation, really believed we were on our way to something looking like progress.
But out of the 161.42 million registered voters, 72.2 million people--slightly less than half--believed that electing a racist, misogynist, grifting convicted felon was a better alternative than electing a highly-qualified woman of color. 21.6 million voters didn’t vote at all, which boggles my mind.
It begs the question of whether we, as a species, are capable of overcoming our own intellectual laziness, our own insatiable greed and lust for power and dominance over one another. I’m not sure we are. We’re good at aping progress, but when it comes to putting it into actual practice, we seem to be unwilling to actually do it. We say we hate things like sexism and racism, but we’re adept at compartmentalizing it and overlooking it when it benefits the demographic we happen to exist in (see, e.g., white privilege).
I'm struggling. I can trace my family's roots on this soil back to the Revolution. I am a dyed-in-the-wool American. And I so badly want to stay and fight--not just for myself, but for others I love, and still others I don't even know but who are unable to fight for themselves. Sounds noble, right? It even sounds... American. But, like, OG American, the original American ideal that we should take care of each other.
But that ideal seems to be dead.
And if the nation is willing to re-elect someone like He Who Shall Not Be Named--the complete antithesis of what America used to stand for--and this second time, electing him by a significant majority... man, I'm ready to say, "You know what? Y'all can have it. You wanted this soooo badly that you were willing to put this shitclown on the throne, so here. Take it. Good luck." And watch helplessly as people around me struggle, starve, die. Shit, maybe I will, too. I don't know.
I'm obviously very angry, and I'm not sure how to deal with it right now.
I'm here for the same reason a lot of other people are here right now. I'm trying to make sense of a nation which I no longer feel part of.
Surprising nobody, I voted for Kamala Harris. Please don't get me wrong, I love my hometown hero, Joe, but he should have hung up his dancing shoes long before he actually did. You know it; I know it. I believe he knows it, too. But you guys, I was so fucking jazzed to be able to vote for a black woman to lead this country. At last, a black woman at the helm, and not just a token--she's absolutely brilliant. She believes in this country, and she wanted to help usher it to even greater success for as many people as possible. The fact that she even got the nomination had me over the moon with hope and optimism. I thought we were making amazing progress as a nation, really believed we were on our way to something looking like progress.
But out of the 161.42 million registered voters, 72.2 million people--slightly less than half--believed that electing a racist, misogynist, grifting convicted felon was a better alternative than electing a highly-qualified woman of color. 21.6 million voters didn’t vote at all, which boggles my mind.
It begs the question of whether we, as a species, are capable of overcoming our own intellectual laziness, our own insatiable greed and lust for power and dominance over one another. I’m not sure we are. We’re good at aping progress, but when it comes to putting it into actual practice, we seem to be unwilling to actually do it. We say we hate things like sexism and racism, but we’re adept at compartmentalizing it and overlooking it when it benefits the demographic we happen to exist in (see, e.g., white privilege).
I'm struggling. I can trace my family's roots on this soil back to the Revolution. I am a dyed-in-the-wool American. And I so badly want to stay and fight--not just for myself, but for others I love, and still others I don't even know but who are unable to fight for themselves. Sounds noble, right? It even sounds... American. But, like, OG American, the original American ideal that we should take care of each other.
But that ideal seems to be dead.
And if the nation is willing to re-elect someone like He Who Shall Not Be Named--the complete antithesis of what America used to stand for--and this second time, electing him by a significant majority... man, I'm ready to say, "You know what? Y'all can have it. You wanted this soooo badly that you were willing to put this shitclown on the throne, so here. Take it. Good luck." And watch helplessly as people around me struggle, starve, die. Shit, maybe I will, too. I don't know.
I'm obviously very angry, and I'm not sure how to deal with it right now.