This is just another political topic, but not really I guess. Just more of a way to get some frustration down somewhere, and honestly work through some serious fears I have for my future. I'm in NJ which was blue during this election, so for the most part I'm safe. I just got back from dinner with some friends and most of them were pretty demoralized about a lot of things not just as minorities. There was some vandalism in a neighboring town involving some signage that was supporting a local candidate (who happened to be Muslim). There were some minor disturbances throughout my town and surrounding areas involving slurs, anger, and stuff like that. Some women harassed, nothing vicious. None of this is very serious, but my parents are both a bit worried. My parents are both Puerto Rican and struggle emotionally with regards to discrimination they faced as children. My mom is probably going to try to convince my family in Puerto Rico to leave the island. Poverty is rapidly expanding into their neighborhoods, along with severe crime. With no real relief in sight their prospects seem bleak.
I keep hearing people say, "It won't be as bad as you think it is going to be." I definitely hear that, but there is this feeling that I do not belong that appears again. It is an overblown feeling from the election results for sure. There is this anger that I have spent good portions of my life trying to prove that I have a place in my own world. Every aspect of my life, my personality, my demeanor, my mentality has been shaped by the color of my skin. This discomfort I'm sharing is merely a moment of weakness in a lifetime of fighting. I'm just tired and want a moment of respite from tomorrow where I will have to continue challenging the marginalizing of my culture and its perspectives.
I see the people protesting, and my heart goes out to some of them because I understand their anger in some way, I understand that fear, and I can't judge them for it. That feeling of alienation creeps into your everyday life. Are people staring more? Am I being too loud? Is my hairstyle weird? I understand when that feeling rises to the surface once again, in a place you consider home, there can be this immediate reaction of anger. I hope they can find peace, and can direct that anger into meaningful change.
If you've read this far thanks for sticking around. I will be alright in the end, I have to. Tomorrow I will wake up, go to work, and strive to make change.
My wife and her friend dragged my grumpy ass outta the house last night, and forced me to go to a birthday party at The Old Spaghetti Factory for a good friend who just turned 50. Marginal food. Terrible service. (Apparently they have gotten slammed every night since they announced they are closing, and are short-staffed and don't have a lot of menu items any more.) We had some laughs with 40 good friends crowded around the table. But it was very subdued. Most of us are Burners/hippies/progressives. We have worked for more than 30 years to get the meager social gains our society has been enjoying recently, and watched decades of our good work get completely dismantled in three short days. We're tired. We just don't have the fight in us that we had when we were 18, or 28, or even 38. We've lost. Our friends have lost. We are lost. I keep thinking of the survivors of the Titanic, after the ship has disappeared below the waves, and the water has calmed, and a quiet pall falls over the surface... here we are floating on the cold ocean in a flimsy raft... nothing but ocean in every direction around us... Well, fuck. now what? Get real face time with people. ... Go get lost in a group of people.
We fight, or we die. Same as it ever was. I was hoping to fight for climate policy, alternative energy, infrastructure. Now we gotta fight for Obamacare, the Supreme Court, Republican tax cuts that loot the treasury and the paving over of the environment. To help you feel a bit better, I work and live around evangelicals. They are all down because Trump won't talk about God, he's a liberal Hollywood degenerate who has been divorced twice and he is married to a slut who took naked photos. (And for the quote-miners, those are their words, not mine.) The middle sane conservatives and those of us fighting for better justice and the middle class might have something in common over the next four years as Trump turns into a clown show. Remember, Trump is a liberal-ish New York Republican. On the social stuff I doubt he is going to do anything that is not a simple virtue signal pander. He wants to loot the treasury and help is Wall Street buddies make a few more billions, middle class be damned. The economic stuff he wants to push is going to do a ton more damage than anything else he is going to do, and that needs to be fought. The thing you should all be freaking out about? Chief Justice Roberts just got his Conservative majority on the court. I've been telling anyone who will listen that if you treat these people in Rural Redneckistan as an other, you will lose. I hate being right.Well, fuck. now what?
This is what I keep hammering into people, over and over and over. Everybody wants to be all liberal touchy-feely woo-woo and hug it out... but the fucking reality is that the Supreme Court's decisions have far more effect on our daily lives, because they dictate the rules. They draw the lines. Roe v. Wade will be overturned by this time next year. Planned Parenthood is history. The Republicans have said that these are the reasons they won't meet with Garland Merrick. They want to flip the Supreme Court conservative so they can kill these specific rulings. They already have the test cases lined up and ready to go as soon as they get their conservative judge appointed. That shit right there? The public can do NOTHING about. There's no senator you can call. There's no protest on the Mall. These 12 people sit in a room together and discuss the minute details of law and precedent and constitutional interpretation. There is NOTHING the populace can do to sway that opinion. The Justices are shielded from that. So the court goes conservative, they overturn Roe v. Wade, out goes Planned Parenthood, and uninsured women (which is everyone that is not upper-middle class, because - oh right! - Obamacare is gone) now have 1900's-quality health care. This is a court that will rule for the rest of my lifetime. THAT's what these feel-good liberals need to understand. The thing you should all be freaking out about? Chief Justice Roberts just got his Conservative majority on the court.
I think you underestimate the lasting impact you and your generation has had. I work in an electric utility, an industry known for being conservative. I see women and gay coworkers treated equitably. Maybe that's easy to say as a straight white man, but I really think it's true. I think one of the more lasting social changes is people are more aware that differences like gender and sexuality aren't relevant to their lives. Thirty years ago someone might have spent their entire life never personally knowing an out gay person. So when confronted by someone gay, they felt uncomfortable. Today it's much more common, and I have out, gay coworkers. They aren't out because Obama told everyone to be nice, they're out because the decent but uninformed, sheltered people are now decent informed people. I think that's how we move forward under Trump. Don't look at the worst of our neighbors and think all is lost. Look to the ones who are good and just don't understand, and help them understand.
Agreed. More often than not, our worst fears lie in anticipation of events that never materialize. Also another cognitive bias, part of being human, we remember our slights over our succcesses. How many times have you celebrated being in the short grocery line as long as you lamented being in the long line with full of senior citizens burning your time as they fiddle with handfuls of coupons?
Can you elaborate how today is any different than 3 days ago? In my little corner of reality nothing has changed. How have we regressed 30 years in the scope of a day? I would argue that if we did any regression it would have occurred much earlier when the Hillary cheated her way to the democratic nomination. I feel like some of the conversations we had leading up the the elections were subdued mostly because we didn't want to offend one another or get into another pointless augment about who was at fault or who is more wrong.But it was very subdued. Most of us are Burners/hippies/progressives. We have worked for more than 30 years to get the meager social gains our society has been enjoying recently, and watched decades of our good work get completely dismantled in three short days.
Short version: 1. Supreme Court flips conservative. The conservatives already have test cases lined up and ready for the court to challenge Roe v. Wade, and numerous other women's rights issues. All of those decisions are reversed because we now have an activist, conservative, literalist, Supreme Court. 2. Trump's pick for the head of the EPA is someone who has said publicly that global warming will actually be beneficial because it will warm up the climate in places like Michigan and Wisconsin, so those people don't have to move to Florida when they get older. He also believes there is "clean coal", fracking is an excellent plan for energy independence, solar and wind are a "waste of time", and that the National Parks should be opened up for oil and mining. 3. Trump has often said that NASA is a boondoggle and a waste of money, and one of the things he wants to do is cut that budget item entirely. 4. Trump is anti-science, and has called it a "flawed belief system". 5. Trump is anti net-neutrality. 6. Trump is anti-immigration, despite the fact that many of the industries the US is known for, were developed by people who emigrated to America, because it was the land of opportunity. Do I really need to go on? The President is really just a figurehead, because we have checks and balances in our tri-cameral system. Unfortunately, those checks and balances have all been lost. The Senate is Republican. The House is Republican. The President is Republican. And the Supreme Court shall soon be aggressively Conservative. THAT is how things have changed. Trump? I couldn't honestly give two shits about. He's the best con man the US has ever produced. So what? Big deal. The problem is that all of the people whose beliefs are antithetical to mine - science, equality, and decisions based on good data - are now in power, with a blank check, and there is no balancing weight on the other side of the scales. The reason the US works so well, is because radical changes are hard, because you need to make a solid case for your plan, and convince people who are not necessarily on your "side" to agree with you. This takes the rough edges off of things. It makes change a gradual and measured thing, and prevents wild swings in policy and programs that cause instability and uncertainty. That's gone. The effects won't get really dramatic until after his first 100 days in office, but - like Brexit - even before then, the network-effect of unintended consequences will begin to ripple out and unsettle even the most die-hard conservative apologists.
I mostly agree with you in your sentiment. I too dont feel welcome among liberals even though I feel that I mostly identify with liberal values. It feels like in order to be liberal in Seattle you have to hit all these mandatory check boxes and if you miss even one you automatically get thought of as a dirty conservative and have values you dont believe in assigned to you. Like guns? Well too bad you cant be a liberal, you must hate women, gays, be against abortion and want everyone to convert to Christianity. Its like shit really? Cant I just like guns?
This is why virtue signaling pisses me off. All these judgemental pricks are out there with their hashtags and facebook filters, yet when it comes time to get off your ass and actually DO SOMETHING they are too busy drowning in Netflix and twitter drama. I have a shit-ton of anger right now, and there is a real part of me that wants to sit back and say "I told you mother fuckers, I fucking told you!" while I watch it all burn. But like that quote in the movie with the talking tree and squirrel, I care about the country because I'm one of the assholes who has to live in it. Life will go on. The fights will materialize. And those of us left that still give a shit will have to step up a bit more than expected if we want to leave the place better than we found it.It feels like in order to be liberal in Seattle you have to hit all these mandatory check boxes and if you miss even one you automatically get thought of as a dirty conservative and have values you dont believe in assigned to you.
Being brown or black or Jewish or Muslim or gay or trans has always been othering. We feel visible in ways that other people don't. We also feel invisible in ways that others don't. Being a white male is also difficult, in different ways. Being human is difficult. We'd like to walk in other people's shoes, but those shoes are so damn uncomfortable we often don't get very far. Compassion and empathy is difficult and dangerous. Ultimately, I think, we learn (or try to learn, or have to learn) to be comfortable in our own skins and hope that our confidence and comfortableness helps others feel unthreatened and comfortable in theirs. I have to say, War, even though the content and feelings that you express are troubled, your writing in that journal entry is clear, readable, and thought-provoking.That feeling of alienation creeps into your everyday life.
War - it's profound that you are monitoring this and have the confidence and sensitivity to observe and report.
I'm a white, upper-middle class, American, man, with a good job. And I don't feel like I belong any more. I can't imagine the fear that women, minorities, gay, trans, hippies, punks, goths, and others must feel. Life was hard enough already for these people. Now it is going to get seriously shitty. there is this feeling that I do not belong
This summer I taught an astronomy program at a library in rural Kentucky. These people out here are being ignored, and they are watching the world move away from them. I was thanked, multiple times, for caring about the community down there, and all I was really doing was trying to create more young nerds. The thing that hurts? Every kid I reach that goes on to go to College, or trade school, or gets smart? THEY LEAVE. And a part of me is worried that by doing science outreach in rural areas like these, I'm making the problem worse by setting a course of that brain drain in places that need smart people to stay put and fight for their communities. The world may not belong to guys like us anymore, sure. But we do have a ton of experience, drive, courage, fight and knowledge. My thought is that if I die and don't share my passions and knowledge I am worse than scum. We fight, or we die. I choose to fight.I'm a white, upper-middle class, American, man, with a good job.
Even if they leave, they remember what was left behind. A smart kid from rural Kentucky now working in the Bay Area and living in a condo still knows there are people back there in Kentucky the rest of the world has forgotten about. That can be an asset.brain drain in places that need smart people to stay put
Or maybe thats just what you get as you approach equality. Instead of everyone accepting each-other everyone joins the "Out Crowd". The averaging effect leads to everyone feeling isolated somewhat instead of some people feeling in charge and others feeling totally left out.
I am trying to wrap up the immobilized part of my grieving and turn that into useful mobilization energy. Although I'm out of the states, I'm still feeling the effects. I'm worried about a federal hiring freeze. I'm very worried about my rights and the rights of my friends. But mostly I am worried that people will not stay motivated. I don't want this energy to have the lifespan of a single news cycle. I want to share the Pyramid of Hate to everyone who will listen because this is how hate escalates and people are already mid-high on the pyramid and being emboldened by the hour. I've culled my social media pretty well so I haven't seen a lot of bad behavior out of people I know IRL and interact with regularly, but I do have one guy who somehow made it through my last couple of purges who I haven't spoken to since before I went to college. We worked together at my Jewish summer camp, which teaches and espouses all those feel good values like tolerance and acceptance (we march in SF pride, we do Holocaust related lessons, we talk about climate change, we march on SF for immigration rights, etc). And he's refusing to listen to many people explain why they are scared. It scares me to see other Jews not recognizing the very real threats we are facing. We are not exempt from this. Jews who identified as German first were NEVER seen as German and paid that price. We are the generation who lived and I refuse to be the generation that goes down without a fight.