On Divesting from the Concept of Donald Trump
A plea for remembering reality
I’m not sure how to feel about Trump. I don’t mean that I have trouble deciding on an emotion, more that I have trouble mustering any emotion at all. On election night, I felt. I cried, too, not certain what this meant for the world, not certain how much worse this outcome really was to the alternative, and the uncertainty provoked a sense of fear. Enough fear to make me cry.
But in the month since, I haven’t cried at all. Beyond some off-hand comments here and there, I’ve hardly even thought about the impending second Trump administration. I like to think I’m taking a wise, Taoist sort of approach. A Zen sort of approach. Like the Chinese farmer in that classic story: when apparent misfortune befalls him and everyone cries, “How horrible!”, the farmer simply replies, “Maybe.” And when the misfortune becomes fortune again and everyone cries “How wonderful!”, the farmer simply replies, “Maybe.”
That is what I like to think.
But the truth, as usual, is more nuanced than that. There’s an element of calm, derived from a conscious decision to choose faith over despair, to choose not to need to know yet and to find joy in each day instead. But there’s also an element of dissociation. It’s not that it hits me and I rise above anxiety to faith. The…
