I am grieving the results of the election. I should not have been surprised.
During the pandemic, I spent WAY too much time on the internet arguing with people, several of them friends of mine or former friends of mine, who refused to wear masks to protect others while a million of our most vulnerable Americans were dying. Out of all of the arguments I heard at the time, the one most common was “I’m healthy. I don’t need a mask.” My arguments about the health and safety of other people were not persuasive. Many of these same people also thought the pandemic would magically end as soon as the Democrats took office, as they thought it was all some elaborate trick.
Today, we find ourselves with a majority of voters who responded in a strongly positive way to policies and ads targeted at vulnerable populations – immigrants and transgender people. These same voters weren’t moved by the fact of women helplessly bleeding to death following their miscarriages because the doctors didn’t want to go to jail. These people were healthy, they didn’t need reproductive health care. They didn’t know any transgender people. One person argued, “They’re just wearing dresses to get into the girls locker room.”
Yes, I argued with these people on the internet again. I explained that their preferred candidate is a felon, a rapist who was recorded bragging about committing sexual assault. That violent crime is lower now than when he was in office. They didn’t care. Instead, they told me that I must just hate their candidate – that my hate for him had deranged me and that I had taken leave of my senses when it came to him.
I tried to engage further – did they find me to be that type of person? Was I someone who hated so easily and without cause? Was I someone who chose sides without giving it careful thought?
Not previously, I was told, just for this candidate. In this case, for some reason, I was worrying about the wrong things. I shouldn’t hate him or believe the negative things about him. None of these people ever attempted to actually defend any of the things he has done. He will make everything better, they told me.
But, I argued, he had tried to overthrow our government. There is proof. His own staff told us. He called January 6th a “Day of Love” and promised to pardon the people who carried swastikas and smeared feces on the walls of our Capitol while they tried to kill his Vice President. His current VP-elect had previously called him “America’s Hitler.” The television network that supports him, and refuses to report negative things about him, had to pay almost $800 million for lying about the last election being stolen. They were unmoved – it wasn’t productive to discuss such things. It was old news. My candidate has an annoying laugh, after all.
It’s the economy, I was told. The same economy that recovered more quickly than any other in the world from the pandemic? It could be better – prices were too high. I brought up the record-breaking rise of the Dow Jones, and statements from people at corporations who admitted raising their prices for profit reasons and blaming inflation. I talked about how quickly the bridge in Baltimore was rebuilt and the infrastructure bill that their candidate promised but couldn’t get done that had been passed. Don’t worry, they said, our candidate will make it all better.
The night of the election, I tried to sleep for many hours, but every time I would start to nod off, I would think about something else – the strong chance the president-elect will withdraw from NATO and bend the knee to Russia. I would then have another panic attack.
But, despite what I want, and what I think, here we are. I admit that the results show that my candidate should have done a better job talking about the things that white men and women care about. Maybe more ads and discussion about people who had been forced to choose between rent and insulin. Maybe the Justice Department should have moved more quickly to prosecute when there was strong evidence that the president-elect tried to lead a coup. Maybe our compromised SCOTUS wouldn’t have allowed it.
I don’t know. I believed my candidate would win. Clearly I was in a bubble of my own – a bubble where I thought the people who refused to wear masks to protect other people would do what I consider to be the right thing. I didn’t believe they would want the deficit to explode while billionaires got more tax cuts from a convicted felon. I was wrong. I became convinced that there was nothing he could do or say that would convince his followers that he was unfit.
Now I can only hope that these people are right. That it won’t be so bad. That the Supreme Court won’t take away marriage rights, and that we won’t become a country of people informing the government so that immigrant families can be rounded up. That he didn’t mean it when he said this would be the last time people needed to vote, or when he said he wanted to use the military against his political opponents. That he won’t use the immunity the Supreme Court gave him in ways that hurt our country and citizens.
If he was going to break it, he would have done it last time, I was told.
We’ll see.