Just because I won’t waste energy being pissed off at the people who voted for Trump doesn’t mean I want to lie around and eat bonbons pretending nothing has changed.
That is kind of my whole point. We have been doing that for 200 years. So here we are. Now, what are we going to DO about it???
How do we go forward from here? How do we combat this? How do we fight? See, Donald trump brings mad skills I can’t begin to understand. He’s not bogged down with a conscience. Or a feeling of personal responsibility for what he does or says or the harm he inflicts upon others when he says and does those things.
To Donald Trump we are no more important than mosquitos. He is supremely narcissistic. He is my dad, with unlimited resources and soon, unlimited power. Which, you may understand, makes him particularly terrifying to me. He has no problem dehumanizing is; he’s like a robot. He looks at us from up on that pedestal, way down here, and we just look like a giant blob of indistinguishable moving dots. He doesn’t care that you are you, or that I am me. He sees just haves and have nots, or blacks and whites, or Muslim And Christian. He sees “like him” and “ other”.
And I don’t know how to fight that. Arguing and pleading and trying to reason and rationalize will be lost efforts, because he cannot be convinced he is not right about EVERYTHING.
So you tell me, Deborah, if the answer is really to “other” classify those who voted for him into one, nameless, faceless blob. To assign them a single identity. To make another US and THEM.
Because to me, that sounds like just doing his work for him.
Tell me what you think the next step should be. Because I’m not claiming to know, and I honestly don’t understand why we are even in disagreement.
What do you think the people who voted Trump in should face as their consequence for choosing the way they did?
I’m angry, too. And I’m scared. More so for the world my children will be coming of age in. My daughter will be voting in the 2020 election. Her entire high school tenure is going to be during this next presidency. I have no idea what that will mean for her. If the world will even last that long. I have PLENTY to worry about. We all do. I just don’t see how I can waste energy on blame. We have been put in a terrible situation against our wills, and it may just be the first of many. So how do we fight THAT? What good does looking back do us now? Undoubtedly I’m not seeing something that you see. Tell me what it is.
Because America is very practiced at forgetting the past, and I think it is my job now to make sure that when Trump is sworn in and starts that charismatic groupspeak, my children have someone STRONGLY combatting the things he will try to say to restructure our reality.
I am the child of a malignant narcissist. I know from gaslighting. And it is powerful stuff. All my energy is being poured into preserving the truth for my kids. The truth about the value of each human life. The reality that we should all be equal and that people aren’t treated that way is a failure, not a goal.
People fuck up. Big time. And I think that with time, a whole lotta people are going to be exposed to the harsh reality that they done fucked up good this time. But right now, they aren’t going to hear me if I try to tell them that.
Time discovers truth. But not enough time has passed yet. People still think they did the right thing. Our ugliness is now out in the light for everyone to see.
Anyway I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore because I don’t know what I’m trying to convince you of. You are going to handle this however you handle it, and I don’t have a problem in the world with how you choose to do that.
I’m not blind. I just have my own ideas about where I can afford to focus my energy, because I’m 43 and its not limitless anymore. And I can’t focus it on big negative emotions about other people’s choices. It takes all I have just to keep up with what happens next.
