Please, prove me wrong in November

Well, here we are. THIS election season. I had been out of the game for a while. Before my daughter was born, listening to NPR used to be part of my daily routine. But, for the entirety of 2015, I intentionally avoided reading about or listening to the news. It simply made me too fearful for the world I had brought my new little girl into. During that time, sleep deprivation had me in an anxious fog. It was a solipsistic struggle just to make it through each day, and I couldn’t handle the frustrations that came with all the bad news going on outside my small world.

When I emerged from the fog, I began to pay attention again, little by little. But, it was hard not to notice that something terrible had happened. As I read about the aggressiveness taking place at so many political rallies, I couldn’t believe that there were this many people living in this country — some of them young people — unapologetically assigning blame and calling for violence against people whose only mistake was that they were somehow different. The “other.” The people who didn’t fit into a certain image of what America should be. And the people at these rallies had a leader. This person (as I will continue to refer to him) had been given a platform by the info-tainment industry and was actually making his way to the GOP nomination. I thought we had progressed past this as a nation. But it seems this particular brand of aggression was simply dormant, waiting for someone to make this mob mentality acceptable again.

I’ve been trying to understand how we got here and how SO MANY people have come to support him. Media kept covering him because that’s what they do now; we all know WAY too much about the Kardashians, even if we’ve never seen one minute of their show. How could someone so irresponsible and unqualified, who’s lacking in so many ways be an actual candidate for the most powerful position in the world?

He seems to represent the part of the collective “we” that wants our impulses and least popular opinions to be valid. We want to believe that all it takes to gain power and influence is to say what we think and feel without being corrected, and suddenly everyone will realize just how right we are. We can achieve approval and success without sacrifice or research or education or compromise or empathy. We just have to be us. Deeply flawed, un-self-conscious, brazen, bullying, fearful, hot-headed, irresponsible, self-serving. We can be as materialistic as we want. We can look out for ourselves and no one else. That dark part of ourselves that we’re not supposed to talk about — much less display in front of the world — that we’ve always been told doesn’t deserve adoration or accolade… maybe it isn’t so bad? Maybe that’s just what this country needs: a little disrespectful discourse. Besides, isn’t all the grandstanding that politicians do to get elected nothing more than polished dishonesty?

When I look at it this way, I can understand this mentality. But that doesn’t make me fear it any less.

We SHOULD be angry. We SHOULD be demanding changes. An eroding middle class, poisoned drinking water, crumbling infrastructure, corporate tax evasion, predatory lending — somehow, amazingly, these are not the things this person’s supporters are angry about. Well, they are, but they are blaming people who have nothing to do with our biggest problems, and who are just as defeated — if not worse off. And this person is using the exact strategy that has always worked for the politicians he insists he is nothing like: Turn them on each other and they’ll forget all about the fact that my friends and I are the ones who are really screwing them over.

Anyone who thinks that this person is honest has a lot of reading to do. Those who believe he wants to serve and protect anyone but himself is being misled in a dangerous game. That is another matter altogether. What worries me is that we are basically saying that words don’t matter by willingly electing such a person. We send a message to the world that we accept and embrace that dark part of ourselves that isn’t interested in making peace.

The progress we’ve made as a society — despite what the sensationalist media try to sell us — is real. I want it to continue. I don’t want to go backwards.

I hope people vote, but I also hope they know what the hell they’re voting for. People who don’t see Hillary Clinton as a viable choice to lead the country are not going to listen to me about why I support her. They’re not going to research her record or look twice at her accomplishments because they’ve already made up their minds. They won’t see that our current president has brought us back from the brink of 2007/2008 and made improvements and that Clinton will most likely continue many of those policies. People who want to vote for a third-party candidate are probably angry and sick of the two-party system. We live in an oligarchy. I get it. I agree with them on so much. But we’re dealing with a unique moment here. Remember the 2000 election? We are doomed to repeat that history to a much worse outcome.

Through all this debate — civil and otherwise — we seem to be forgetting about what’s really at stake. This person will be able to nominate a Supreme Court Justice. This person’s administration will not hesitate to deregulate, defund and pollute with abandon. We are at a tipping point — actually, we may have passed it — when it comes to climate change. It is unacceptable to have a president, and a Congress that aligns with him, denying that climate change even exists. The prospect is terrifying.

And when this person’s supporters “get their country back,” who will tell them that it’s wrong to unabashedly continue to point fingers at anyone who isn’t like them? They will have been validated. Game over. That kind of damage takes decades to repair. I’m starting to think maybe that damage has already been done, regardless of the outcome in November.

We all think we’re the good guy — that even when we’re being hurtful, it’s for a good reason. Nothing and no one can change the inherent conflict that will always exist between people of opposing ideologies. I don’t expect everyone to get along based on whom we elect. But when the elected leader of the free world wears a lack of knowledge and experience, unwillingness to compromise, inconsistency, dishonesty, childish temperament, poor decision-making and hateful rhetoric like a badge of pride, it’s naive to think these qualities will not be branded into the national consciousness. I’d hoped we could at least agree on common decency. I didn’t think I could possibly be wrong about that.

I don’t want my daughter growing up surrounded by people who believe it’s ok to think this way. I don’t want to have to explain to her how this person ended up the leader of our country — that there were this many people who agreed with the things he had to say. Maybe I’m reading too much into the meaning of a system that’s fundamentally broken, but this is our national character that’s at stake and I’m not sorry that these things matter to me. Some days, I wish I could return to that sleepless fog so I wouldn’t have to pay attention to any of it. I wish I could block it out or chalk it up to politics as usual. But this isn’t usual.

I can only hope that I’m proven wrong once again when it’s time to decide who — and what — will win out in November.

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