I went to bed on Tuesday night around 1.30 here, which was 19.30 eastern standard time. H and I had watched the first few results come in, and then fallen asleep watching TV, exhausted from the Mura Masa concert earlier than night. The concert was really amazing, and had been a great distraction from my anxiety over the election, but in truth I wasn't too worried.
I was looking forward to waking up to the news that America had elected it’s first female president.
Instead, I awoke to the sound of my roommate sobbing. I checked the news, and joined her. We sat on her bed in disbelief, in disappointment, and in shame. And as reality set in, the disappointment turned to sadness, and then anger.
I will echo here what I wrote on Facebook yesterday:
“I’m beyond disappointed or ashamed. I am incredibly angry, at every single person who contributed to this travesty. Every person who voted for Trump, didn’t vote, or voted third party. It was well within your right to do so, but it’s well within my right to be furious about it.
This entire political season, I have been thankful to have been abroad. To be one step removed from the constant and overwhelming barrage of information and misinformation. At a certain point, I decided to focus on my life here in Denmark. I did my part and voted for Hillary Clinton– not because she was the democratic nominee, the only person with a real chance of preventing this outcome. Because I believe in her resilience, her hard work, and her experience. She would have made a great president, regardless of who she ran against.
But especially in this case. Our elected president intends to oppress the rights of women, the lgbtq+ community, and other minorities. There are marginalized groups living in genuine fear that the civil rights they have gained will soon be stripped away. America is a country that stands for liberty and freedom, and we have failed so many of its citizens. Anyone who thinks this election will not effect them is not only privileged, but they are ignorant. This goes beyond America, and will have an impact on a global scale.
My heart hurts. I am sad. I am disappointed. I feel helpless. But I am still also angry, and will do my best to fight in whatever way I can against what has happened today.
I don’t care if it is unpatriotic to say #NotMyPresident. I am not proud of my country today, and I will not respect a man who has disrespected the existence of so many individuals and groups in the United States.”
(The rest of this post is retrospective, written a couple weeks later). I still stand by what I wrote, and in the following days, and now, I am horrified by the increase of hate crimes committed against minorities by individuals whose racism and xenophobia have been validated and normalized by Trump. Now over two weeks later, I have fallen back into my regular routine. I don’t cry, and am back to attending all my classes and completing daily tasks. But I still worry and still hurt.
More than anything, I have realized that above all else, this is the time for people to be kind to one another. I don’t want to sound like the naive individuals calling for everyone to unite under their new president, claiming in their ignorance that “it won’t be that bad” (which of course, actually means “this won’t be bad for me because I am privileged and largely unconcerned with and unsympathetic to the fears of others”). I don’t believe that and that’s not what I’m saying. But in recent days I’ve noticed a lot of people just being shitty to each other, their emotional capacity used up on grief with nothing left over for kindness.
I really believe that now more than ever, we need to be decent and tolerant towards one another. People need to do what they can to support one another, not blame and tear down. It's easy to fall into the excuse that “everyone is stressed from the election,” but I hope that people can find the strength in these coming weeks and months to take care of themselves, and others. So I’m taking it day by day, person by person, and clinging onto hope that people are still good.