The Election

I don't know if I will actually post this. I have a hard time writing anything too personal on this blog any more--which sounds dumb since this is supposedly my personal blog. But it is one thing to write about what we've been up to lately and another thing to write about the real things I am struggling with lately. But I have a feeling that writing it all out will help me in the end.

This election has left me feeling numb. I truly never believed it would come to this. A year ago, I was just waiting for Donald Trump to lose interest and remove himself from the race, or for people to become so disgusted with him and the uprising against his horrible rhetoric to make that decision for him. I watched as scandal after scandal about his opinions somehow failed to lower his ratings--scandals that would normally have been fatal to any normal political candidate. Remember when Mitt Romney got in serious trouble because he had his dog on the top of the car on a family road trip? Remember how that was actually something people cared about? And yet, not enough people cared about Trump's dangerous rhetoric about actual people in this country to stop him?

I studied rhetoric while in grad school. "Rhetoric" basically is a big fancy word which really just means meaningful language, or language being used to persuade or influence an audience to do something--which really is any kind of language at all. And really, I'm not an expert, but I can say--language does matter. The way you talk about something matters. The words that you choose to say affects the way people think about you and about the subject, and that changes the way everyone acts. And Trump's language--it makes me scared. It makes me feel ill. I have an actual visceral reaction to his words and how much hate his words hide. He talks in a way that is insensitive and belittling and mocking and outright, obviously, intentionally exclusive. It is intentionally inciting his audience to be actively exclusive of and antagonistic towards others; the way he has talked about Muslims, and immigrants, and his opponents, and oh my goodness, how he talked about women--these words do not show that he understands or values these people. I won't write out any specifics, because I have spent so much time in the last year actively trying to avoid him and to block out all of the news stories about him, and I don't want to think about all of the things. So, so, so many things. We all know what they are.

And yet so many people voted for him, and show that they don't care about his horrible words or his rhetoric, and that they essentially feel the same way as him.

I feel so sad. I feel so worried. I keep reminding myself that the President, in the end, doesn't actually affect my life all that much. But the thing that truly scares me is that this man, whom I associate with so much hatred and ill-will and stupidity and absolute bull-headed ignorance, has followers who truly don't see those qualities in him. I know that many people voted for him with a sick feeling in their mouths, but they voted for him still the same. And that legitimizes all of the horrible things he has said, all of the ridiculous scandals he has created, over the last year-plus, and makes it look like WE AGREE WITH HIM. It makes America look like we are like him. Like we too speak without thinking, without understanding what is appropriate to say in public, without caring about hurting huge swaths of the public by making harmful generalizations or using nasty nicknames for people. Like we hate those who aren't like us--people who are wearing hijabs or who are gay or who have dark skin--and cover it up with our own self-interest.

I don't have any feelings towards Hillary Clinton compared to my horror and disgust for his man. I really don't. I have no opinion on the email server issue. That seems so low on the totem pole of things I care about when compared with the collected sins of Donald Trump. I think she was a billion times more qualified for this job than he will be (because I don't see that he is at all qualified), but that doesn't matter now. And I do kind of wish our daughter could have been born after the first female President was elected. I don't want to think about this, but I can't help wondering--how many people who were so anti-Hillary were actually being influenced by inherent sexism? How much did her gender actually play a role in her being beaten so surprisingly? How much was the email server issue a scapegoat for this hidden sexism that people were unwilling to talk about openly? Regardless, this election for me wasn't hoping that Clinton would win--it was hoping that Donald Trump, and all of his "nasty" rhetoric, would be rejected by the reasonably thinking populace of America. And I watched in total shock last night as it was clear that he was winning all over the country and that too many people weren't as turned off by his words as I had been.

I like the quote that is floating around Facebook from Barbara Bush: "Your success as a family... Our success as a nation... depends not on what happens inside the White House, but on what happens inside your own house." I do believe that is true and I do intend to spend ever-more time strengthening my own family, particularly because of the venom and evil I have felt during this whole election. I can use my own rhetoric to counteract his evil-spreading rhetoric within my own family. I can teach my children to be respectful of people of all races and religions and genders and orientations, and teach them what is appropriate to say about and to any other human being. I tried to start that today. I tried to respond to an obnoxious Trump comment on Facebook respectfully but firmly (when I was tempted to be sarcastic and angry). And I talked to Dane today about how I was very sad that Donald Trump was elected, but that now we have to pray that he will make good choices, and maybe he will. Maybe he will make better choices than his rhetoric thus far gives us reason to believe. Maybe his exaggerated stance on everything will have to take a backseat once he is actually making decisions. That is very small consolation, but it is all we can do now that it is all over.

And thank goodness, it is all over.