Intertwined: The Trumpire Strikes Back.
We’ve been here before. Yet something about this day feels darker. I keep trying to convince myself that this is America’s Empire Strikes Back moment — that the rebel alliance will rise in four years, and the Force will balance again. But that’s a movie. This is real life, and in real life, the bad guys win more often than we’d like.
I found myself doom-scrolling this morning, feeling helpless and unsure what to do when I came across Chuck Wendig’s blog, Terribleminds. He wrote something that resonated with me — and, I imagine, with millions of Americans right now. He said:
What I know is that I don’t know. What I know is the things I thought I knew, or that I believed were true, really aren’t, and that once more I exist in need of a word, perhaps a German one, that expresses both the act of being shocked and a total lack of shock at the exact same time.
I think that sums it up. Today feels both impossible and inevitable. I’m shocked and utterly unsurprised by the election results.
After some internet scouring, I found a word that, while imperfect, captures this feeling: Ineinander. As Mr. Wendig had guessed, it’s German, meaning something like “intertwined” or “entangled.” The word fits the moment somehow. I feel horrified that 71 million Americans saw the turmoil of this–I’ll try and stay as respectful as I can–man’s first term in office, and thought, Yes, I want more of that. Yet, thanks to the traumatic shock of 2016, I somehow expected this outcome–and am wildly unsurprised.
Part of me wants to be angry at my neighbors, at my extended family members who still support — who seem to worship — this man. But I don’t know if I have the energy for anger right now. All I feel is despair.
And yet, down buried somewhere deep, I still have hope. Both emotions are entangled. My feelings are, like we Americans, intertwined.
Maybe tomorrow, I’ll feel the anger, bright and burning, but for now, I’m going to take a breath, check on my loved ones, and regroup.
Who knows — maybe this is our Empire Strikes Back moment, and Kamala isn’t the Jedi we needed. I’m hopeful that “there is another.” But also, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that deep down, entangled with that hope is an increasing sense of unease — a disturbance, if you will — about what the future has in store for U.S. — oops, I mean “us.”
