Tears for Trump’s America
Tears for Trump’s America
Just when we thought it couldn’t get worse, misinformation, misogyny, and autocracy have landed a gleeful, gloating hat trick, and my tired eyes cannot even cry. I was so prepared for this result, so numb to this defeat arriving, that I barely even blinked as it knocked on our door.
I have been preparing for Trump’s America since middle school in the South, where I was bullied as I voiced lonely opinions in hostile classrooms, young men sneering as they drew eugenicist graphs on whiteboards in expo markers. Their disdain, anger, and condescension are stamped on my psyche, echoing whenever I hear a Trumpian soundbite.
Yet, all my life, even against all evidence otherwise, I have clung to the hope that while people are drawn towards the glamour of division, blame, and hatred, they will ultimately choose love. Why wouldn’t they? It will make them happier and infinitely more free.
Core progressive values and ideas have always seemed obvious: Women and men are equally capable and deserving of success. Children should be educated, fed, and provided with structural support. Healthcare should be free. Restitution should be paid when crimes have been committed. Trickle-down economics doesn’t bloody work. Immigrants are the backbone of, not the detriment of, this country. Build an ecosystem that supports the flourishing of life, and life will flourish.
Today may feel like a nail in the coffin of our hopes for this ecosystem —a final shudder in the death rattle of democracy or societal progression. But as a reader of poetry and history, I am given a sliver of solace in the Sisyphean nature of our task. Hatred rears up like a perennial weed. We must hunch ourselves into the soil and plant the seeds for the future anyway.
Choosing love over despair seems impossible in such moments. How do we face the neighbors who chose this? Our fellow countrymen who poisoned our cups and laughed as we choked (unaware that they had poisoned their own cups, too)? Those who gloat their victory as Trump prepares to consolidate power, enact personal revenge, and further destabilize our unstable world?
James Baldwin said: “Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you.” The all-consuming hatred spouted by Trump and his followers sits inches before my face.
Like a breath floating above my lips, it would take barely a movement to suck the hatred into my own body. In a world intent on violence, destruction, and ignorance, choosing love feels like holding my breath. But then I inhale and am struck by the fact that while there is “Donald Trump’s America,” there is also a heartbroken, devastated, and despondent America—which is to say that millions of people are still capable of hoping for a better future.
Today is a time to seek out and hug these people, read a poem, walk through the woods, and calm down your nervous system. The road ahead is long and concerningly dark. Still, the hatred will be easier to resist if we are nourished, hold tightly to our humanity, and seek meaning in the perennial struggle.
When I interned at the Iziko museums in Cape Town, I remember a powerful exhibit about resistance to apartheid. On the wall, a quote in big letters asserted that liberation is not a one-time event but must be constantly fought for, generation over generation.
We stand on the shoulders of giants, many of whom are BIPOC and queer: civil rights and anti-apartheid activists, environmentalists, Indigenous activists, suffragettes – folks across the annals of history who have stared down stacked odds and still resisted, who have practiced non-violence in the face of bigotry, endured prison, torture, and indignity, and STILL chosen love.
May history give us tools, may poetry give us comfort, may music nourish our spirits, and may community lend us salvation.
May we find meaning in the struggle, may we never become the enemy we rail against, and may our methods match the world we hope to build.
With love, hope, sadness, fear, and a big comforting hug,
Halle