Post-election thoughts

Some may chide me for being so invasively personal in this entry, in a potentially public setting, but I don't think now is the time for censorship, but rather that honesty is the best policy under the threat of an attack on freedom of speech. So here goes. 

It’s been two weeks since the election, and a month since leaving Twitter. In the deluge of alarming articles I’ve consumed over the past 2 weeks, a few have stood out, and one in particular holds the most urgent personal call to action I can do right now, while parts of me are still paralyzed by fear, and any activism I harbor is just starting to wake up from hibernation. As we head into a most assured autocracy/kleptocracy/borderline tyranny, a Dutch journalist who has covered these regimes recommends writing down personal values and things you’d conceivably never do, as things stand right now, since you will surely do them in the future for survival. This collection of thoughts, emotions, and values may therefore serve as a reminder of my morality in the scary times to come. I’m already feeling myself be slow to act, perhaps leaning on my white privilege even when I need to actively denounce white supremacy along with my white comrades, but at least this record can serve to show me what I was like at the beginning of the Trump era, lest things change for the absolute worst, which I am terrified will happen.

Tuesday night and Wednesday after the election were the most unstable I have ever felt in my entire life. I had already felt the stirrings of fear wrapped up in the multiplication of anxieties over the past 6 months, and a few days before the election I even told my mom, ‘this is the first time in my life that it feels like everything is not going to be ok.’ I was sobbing all day Wednesday, an absolutely inconsolable mess, as K had to pool together the puddles of me that had dripped with tears into her couch. I felt completely hopeless in a way I never had before, as if the election had rocked my moral center and life philosophy in a way that was irreparable. Optimism gone with nothing to replace it. The blows kept on coming as I realized further aspects of a Trump presidency that would probably come to fruition: the racism, xenophobia, and homophobia in a first wave (already started, even to me with that homophobic dude yelling out his car at me on Friday), the threat of nuclear war in a second wave (predictable given Trump’s short fuse), and then climate destruction (almost certain). Each realization left me sobbing again, and as news of Trump’s cabinet picks have unfolded these last two weeks, my anxiety feels justified again, just as it had pre- and post-Brexit.

Yet in these two weeks I have also felt myself actually grow up. It was almost a physical, tangible shift, as my pre-election priorities left my body, to be replaced with a resilient assertion of adulthood. Gone were my wistful notions of a return to Europe; I have to stay and fight. I waved a (temporary?) goodbye to the idea of working in TV in favor of a career shift towards sustainability (if only I can hold on to that motivation). The sense of duty as an American to be on the right side of history has become my priority; I don’t want to become one of the “nice neighbors who made the best Nazis.” Yet my belief in our political system is so weak right now, I haven’t been able to will myself to call Senators or go to rallies – all I’ve done is report that harassment and donate to charities. Next is hopefully using this career opportunity to enter the climate change arena, and continuing the work of dismantling the pervasiveness of white supremacy, first by acknowledging that it has afforded me much of my position in life, but that I must not coast on it.

So, to complete that assignment from the Dutch journalist, here are some things I must keep in mind about values and action over the next 4 years, as we see our freedoms start to erode away:

• Recognize that much of my success can be attributed to my relative privilege in life and therefore work to give back in a way that attempts to combat white supremacy (whether through time, money, words, civil disobedience, or other forms of resistance)
• Remember that being the most hysterical person in the room can be good sometimes; it reminds me that I have not normalized the situation and that anxiety can serve as a warning. But I must not let anxiety get the best of me and prevent action or clear thinking, as it has been doing for several months. I should, however, continue listening to my intuition, as I did when I worried that Twitter’s passive support of the alt-right would help Trump get elected.
• Remind myself that climate change is the thing that scares me the most, but that other things do too, in particular xenophobia and homophobia. I will not be prevented from living my life as an openly queer person nor will I condone xenophobia.
• Refuse to stop living my own life or recognizing the joy in things, while demanding the most out of life as I always have. I have high expectations for myself, and I don’t want that to stop, but sometimes, civic duty is a higher calling, and obligation can be both more rewarding and matter more than hedonistic personal pleasure.
• Commit. Commitment means a lot, especially now. I must not flake out on this commitment to a greener planet, even when my hope wavers. I may have lost my optimistic worldview, but if it is to be replaced with a pragmatism or even pessimism, I want to be able to honor my own character with a sense of commitment to the cause.
• Create a new set of goals. This is in the works, but I think it’s part of why I’ve been off balance even before the election—I had either achieved goals or they were no longer applicable, so I was grasping around, trying to clench onto anything that resembled an appropriate goal, but my fists kept coming up empty.  While the youth-entrapped Kate valued externally motivated goals such as global travel, language learning, media consumption, and adventurous self-expansion, the new, more adult Kate is starting to formulate more internally motivated goals such as physical and mental health, a career dedicated to more than myself, and self-expansion through writing/reading/knowledge.
• Finally, practice radical love and patience to the best of my ability. These times may test our patience and dedication, but I will try to invoke patience, love, and compassion more often than not, especially when encountering differences of opinion.

Who knows where the next few years will take us, and I am scared to see how this last, gasping whitelash will shape generations to come for the worse, but at least, two weeks out, I am not quite as continuously despairing as I was on November 9th. I’d like to think of it more as a workable anxiety, not a hopeless one.