Snowflakes

Maybe I’m just not tough enough. Too soft, too easily shocked. A snowflake that melts at the slightest heat.
I cry at the ASPCA ads that have Sarah McLachlan singing “Angel.” I still grieve every dog I’ve lost to old age, cars and rocks too big for small intestines. For years. The TV series This Is Us had me in tears and I’m in despair over the too-close-to-home misogyny in The Handmaids Tale
So, when Trump continuously flings invectives, makes fun of the disabled, picks fights with the Mayor of London, and, well, behaves like Trump, it doesn’t ever get easier. Just like I can’t anesthetize myself against Sarah McLachlan and the sorrowful eyes of an abused puppy, every Tweet, every speech and every incredible inane statement Trump makes, terrifies and saddens me. I know I’m not alone and that you are suffering, too.
What’s worse is that Trump’s supporters and most of the Republican party is going along with the sham when they know that it’s tearing our country apart and destroying America’s good will with those with whom we share this earth.
I weep for our country and for those who don’t understand what they’ve done. Yes, I weep for the white supremacists, the racists, the religious fanatics, and the ultra-wealthy who support the right-wing agenda. For those who have been fooled and those who hate because they’re afraid that they’re no longer relevant. For those who think we don’t need to help each other, and believe that Americans on welfare and Medicaid just need to pull up their bootstraps. For those who admire the wealthy because they accept as truth that they too will become rich and clamor for less taxes. For those who call us snowflakes because they think we whine and pout over an election.
My unhappiness doesn’t come from a stolen election but the realization that some of my fellow Americans hate me…and you. As naïve as that is, we who are not members of a minority, are new to this. We can hide in our white skins and not protest when someone speaks in favor of Trump, wishing not to start a heated discussion and risk alienation from our friends. Minorities signal their differences by just being alive. We will never have that experience.
We’re just white liberal feminist women and men with the bleeding hearts and earnest pleas to help the homeless and the single mothers on welfare. We organize fundraisers for those in trouble and make signs for our protests. We call our legislators and demand they change their votes which they never will. Good stuff, though, and sometimes it even makes us feel better, if for a moment or an afternoon.
But still, we are all heart-broken, the fractures unfixable. Leonard Cohen once wrote, ‘there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.’ I hope so. Maybe we should all go watch another ad for ASPCA and let our hearts shatter so all that’s left is the light.
