Tonight, I cannot fully describe my emotions. I am shocked, frightened, upset, and furious all at once. I feel like my future has been stolen from me.
I’m not an “Average Joe.” In a lot of ways, I’m an outlier. I’m white and solidly upper-middle class, but also queer, female, mentally ill, and disabled. For me, this election wasn’t about making sure my party won. Donald Trump represented something far more sinister than four years under a president whose policies I disagreed with. For me, and so many others like me, he was potentially the difference between life and death. The policies that Trump proposes and the opinions he espouses aren’t just theoretical abstracts that I can engage with objectively - they were real and direct threats on the lives of myself and my friends. Putting the power of presidency in the hands of such an incredibly bigoted man was so terrifying that it drove one of my friends to attempt suicide tonight.
Up to now, the idea of President Trump was almost inconceivable to me, and I never dared to even imagine what it would be like. Even as the election drew near, I was still absolutely convinced that Trump, of all people, would never be president.
In fact, for most of the season, I was certain he would drop out any second. He’s not charismatic, nice, successful, attractive, intelligent, or qualified - I really couldn’t conceptualize him getting very far. I guess I had more faith in my fellow Americans than I should have. I guess you don’t need to be charismatic, intelligent, or qualified for the job to “fool” people into accepting your bigotry. Turns out, they’ll welcome your bigotry with open arms. In fact, they’re eager to hear it.
The past eight years, we’ve made incredible strides in human rights. As cynical as I am about American patriotism, I actually allowed myself to believe that we were making progress. I thought we were finally turning into a nation that wanted to move forward. Sure, there were the voices of dissent, but I considered them to be small movements. Outliers, not indicative of the general population’s opinion.
Tonight has proven just how incredibly wrong I was. Turns out, this isn’t a nation of forward-minded people who want to make the world a better place, with a few rare nay-sayers sprinkled throughout. We are a country of people who are content to keep things exactly as they are, even - perhaps especially - if “the way things are” is fundamentally unequal, allotting some people special priveleges while denying others basic rights. This country didn’t move forward because the majority stamped their feet and yelled for change, drowning out the outliers. In fact, WE were the outliers - it was just that, for a very brief while, we were the loudest.
I guess our voices have grown hoarse, and our feet tired. That happens after a while. Tonight, the real America spoke up. Maybe they snuck past us while we rested our feet, but more likely, they would have surpassed us anyway.
After all, we’re only outliers.
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