Not Normal

Right, so here is the thing. Someday, soon, I will get back to writing about pop culture and the effervescent delights of entertainment. Someday, soon, I will smiles uncontrollably at the endless beauty of a woman in a tank top or a finely tailored suit. Someday, soon, I will laugh so hard again tears stream from my eyes from something other than panic, fear and unshakable sadness.

I have never felt this way after an election and hope to never, ever again. I suspect many of you feel the same way, too. This deep despair. This isn’t about just losing an election. This is about losing the image I’ve had of America. Plain and simple, I was wrong. We are not the country I thought we were. I was so wrong.

Granted, I wasn’t completely wrong. By the time every last ballot is counted (Jesus, California, get your shit together with mail-in votes), I suspect Hillary Clinton will have won by more than 2 or 3 million in the popular vote. Flat-out, more Americans voted for her. But that doesn’t matter because of our antiquated electoral college system (which was constructed by the Founding Fathers because they didn’t trust the common citizenry to be smart enough to vote for themselves and was reconstructed in the late 18th Century to perpetuate the institution of slavery).

I keep reading how we should understand Trump voters. How we should sympathize with Trump voters. How we have to give Trump voters their due. Sure, fine. OK.

But empathy goes both ways. Where are the stories then about the very real panic and very real fear Hillary supporters feel at this man’s win? This is not about being a sore loser. This is about being terrified at the rights this man will take away and the people this man has emboldened.

Because many people of color, immigrants, Muslims, LGBT people, disabled people, women – we feel our rights and even our lives are more at risk now. The rights to control our bodies, the rights to live peacefully in an adopted homeland, the right to marry who we love, the right to worship other or no gods, the right to affordable health care, the right to walk down the street to buy a bag of Skittles, the right peaceably assemble in protest as our First Amendment enshrines.

Make no mistake he ran on a platform of divisiveness and denigration. He was endorsed by the KKK – THE KKK. Those forces have been unleashed now feel legitimized. They feel safe to say the things once scorned as unspeakable out loud and proud and to our faces. And we haven’t even gotten into what his serial misogyny and history of sexual assault telegraphs to men in America. Go ahead and grab them by the pussy, fellas. Don’t worry, you can still be president.

On Wednesday I spent the whole day wondering if each person I passed voted against my very existence. And, just in case you were wondering, not voting or casting a protest vote ended up meaning the same thing. It meant you didn’t care enough or didn’t think enough about the people this man’s presidency would hurt to vote for the only person who could defeat him. If you loved Obama but didn’t vote for the successor he asked you to, it meant you essentially helped destroy his legacy. That is just a fact. But I’m not trying to shame you if you did that. I really am not. I just want you to never forget this feeling.

So here we are. This is our new reality. In eight years, President Obama never came for your guns, America. Not once. In fact you own more now than ever before in human history. But you can bet Trump will absolutely (try) to build that wall and ban Muslims and Pence will absolutely push to end same-sex marriage and keep trans people from peeing in the bathroom they choose and Ryan will absolutely come for your health care and a woman’s right to choose. They control all the levers of power now and will be the ones filling the Supreme Court. Elections have consequences. These are those consequences.

So where do we go from here? Well, we certainly can’t keep crying every day at random, unexpected moments. I mean we can, and I have. Like, the other day in the optometrist’s office while waiting for my pupils to dilate. Sorry, doc, just devastated that my civil liberties and those of other millions of other Americans will soon be stripped. You know how it goes.

How do we go on from here? Well, we pick ourselves up. We look unblinkingly at all the work to be done. We realize progress isn’t a straight line, it’s a seemingly endless winding road and we will end up in ditches and trenches and sometimes even turning backwards. But the only thing we can do is to keep trying. The only way we get better is if we keep fighting.

And we realize the privileges we have in our own lives as much as possible. And when we hear or see someone more vulnerable than us being hurt or harassed, we step up. We speak out. We speak out when it’s hard especially.

We realize that groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Immigration Law Center, Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, The Trevor Project, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Sierra Club, International Rescue Committee, Southern Poverty Law Center and others need your time and money more than ever now.

We realize that in 362 days there will be local elections. And in 727 days will be the midterm elections. And in 1,458 days we will vote again for president.

We realize that this is not normal. What this man espouses and how he acts is not normal. And we never let it become normal.