Sick with anxiety. That's how I feel.
I share a particular trauma with my colleagues; on the night of the election in 2016 we were hosting student-led conferences, and they brought in big screens so we could watch everything unfold while we talked about kids' grades in English.
I cried all the way home that night, rage-cleaned my bathrooms in the middle of the night, and wrote and cried and wrote and cried through the next week, and I surrounded myself with folks who were not silent in the face of the horror.
The rage has not diminished.
I'm reading my posts from four years ago, and I find it difficult to breathe.
Please, spare me your religious platitudes about how "God is in control." It's not helpful. It's not comforting. It's patronizing. Tell that to someone who fears for the rights so many of us take for granted. If I felt whimsical enough to turn the fight for democracy into a BINGO game, or a drinking game, "God is in control" would be on there for sure.
I'm reading my posts from four years ago, and it really has turned out to be that awful. And people voted for him again, and I'm afraid of who those people are. If you voted for him again, please know I don't believe you value me, or my daughter, or my students, or any of our rights, no matter how much you might love me or tell me how much you love my stories. I parted ways with a long-time friend who spouted nothing but Christian platitudes, claimed to love my stories, and blithely supported the ones who would harm the students who made those stories possible. The ones who encourage literal violence against them. A vote for Trump is an act of violence.
If you voted for him, don't come near me for a good long while.
I just feel sick.
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Edited at 7:15 p.m: Okay, seriously, Trumpers. Stop telling us to be "nice" when you're voting for a person who literally incites, champions, and cheers his supporters on to violence.
Fascists can be perfectly pleasant in line at the grocery store, as I just commented to my friend who was admonished for her "hate" on her own Facebook page. I am so deeply uninterested in "nice." Nice keeps you comfortable, and comfortable is part of what got us into this mess, now isn't it?
It reminded me of a conversation on another friend's page after the debate in which Trump refused to condemn white supremacy. This is what I said, word for word, to a person (NOT my friend, by the way) who thought people weren't being "nice" to her for supporting Trump, and of course she wasn't racist:
There is no such thing as "not racist." As a daughter of a conservative family in a red state, I used to believe...we were all equal without engaging in anti-racist work. Because I wasn't racist.
But now I believe there are racists and there are anti-racists. I have a LOT of baggage to unpack and it's work I still have to do. I strive every day to do anti-racist work, and I have to confront my complicity in racist systems every day. That's uncomfortable, sure. But I have benefited every single day of my life from systemic racism, and I have to do better. It's not enough to say I love and respect black people...we have real work to do.
The person to whom I was responding told me my "speech was conducted angrily."
Go hug a Nazi, I guess? Because be nice.
*
Still feel like I'm going to throw up.
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8:26: Why is this even close? The second time? What is wrong with people?
(I'm asking that like I don't know the answer.)
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