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So, I’ve been
missing from the blogosphere for a long time. Sometime, I may try to pull my
thoughts together to explain why. But not today, one week after Hillary Clinton gave her concession
speech. A week and a day after Donald Trump became the official president
elect. Today, I have to talk about that event, because it pretty
much dominates what I’m thinking and feeling as I go through these days. I
don’t presume that I have anything novel and newsworthy to say here. Lots of
people who are lots smarter and more informed than I have already written
volumes. But I’m hoping that writing about this experience will clarify it for
me … and maybe speak to someone else as well. Maybe I’ll throw in some pictures, just to break up the ocean of text. Visual notes from a sunnier summer.
OK, how to begin
describing the plunge in hope and mood that started last Tuesday evening – an
experience I know I shared with many – and my efforts to crawl back to the surface? Background: I worked a lot on the Dem
campaign because I knew I had to do something. Otherwise, if Hillary lost, I’d
feel awful, knowing I hadn’t done whatever I could. So I started in early
September, registering voters. Then in
November, I moved on to canvassing, going door to door and encouraging people
to vote … preferably to vote Democratic. Let me just mention that this activity
is my second-least-favorite pastime in the world, surpassed in its awfulness
only by phone banking. I’ve done lots of both over the years, and I hate it.
But out I went, into local neighborhoods, clipboard in hand, knocking on doors
and checking folks off my list. Each time I got out of my car, I’d take a deep
breath and tell myself, “Just do this, Janis. Just do it.” Then
I’d put on my friendly face and start knocking on strangers’ doors. I was glad
I was doing it.
Then election day,
at last. I worked all day, coming and going from the campaign office with a new
list every few hours. The mood there was so up-beat, so casually confident, I
caught the easy optimism, and left there late in the day, looking forward to
going home and cheering as the results came in. You all know what happened
next.
I went to bed late,
slept poorly, and awoke feeling like I had a sandbag on my chest. I recognized
the raw feeling that comes when you realize that a terrible thing happened
yesterday, and it’s still there. It wasn’t a dream. I spent hours buried in news stories, hoping for a glimmer of hope, disbelieving what I read. Some
moments, I felt angry – at Trump’s very existence, at the people who voted for
him, at the media, at the Democratic party, at Hillary … looking for someone to
blame. Sometimes, I felt deeply fearful, a bit for myself, but mostly for the very
vulnerable people that Trump so actively, egregiously targeted during the
campaign. Mostly, I felt depressed. Heavy of heart, unable to move from my
computer chair, not interested in … anything. I was hugely relieved when my
partner quietly said to me, “It’s not depression. It’s grief.”
Grief, I thought. I might be
able to manage grief. Struggle through it rather than sink beneath it. I know some
ways to keep grief from becoming full-fledged depression. Like getting active, physically and in other constructive ways. The first
thing I did was go for a long walk. And on that walk, I began to sketch some thoughts
for surviving the coming days of this to-my-core sadness and for getting active
as it lifted.
My first thoughts focused, not surprisingly, on this question of grief. I asked myself what I was grieving for, what had I lost? Well, for starters, the possibility of a
continuation of relatively progressive politics in this country. The possibility
of shifting the Supreme Court toward a more positive stance over the next
several decades. The chance to see a woman as president, which would be a
remarkable experience, given that I personally remember being unable to get a
credit card or a bank account in my own name. But more: I had lost my country.
Or, more accurately, my fantasy / beliefs / assumptions about my country. I
knew that there were lots of folks who disagree with me on many levels.
But I did not know that there were so
many of us who could endorse this man, whose unself-conscious bigotry, ignorance, and
meanness you all know too well. And now, I realized that I had just lost that
imagined country.
(By the way, none
of this was as rational and linear as my description. I cried as I walked, felt
simultaneously too alone and very glad for time alone, simultaneously strong
and off balance, generally disoriented. And I noticed that I wasn’t noticing my
walk – which is unusual for me.)
The walk helped,
but that heavy, hopeless feeling was still there. I had to figure out
what I could actually do about this
state of affairs – my own internal state, and the state of the nation (heck,
the world!) I’m really lucky here, because I know there's a ton of psychological thought and research on how to survive these miserable moments, much of it done by my partner. Years
of osmosis have paid off, so I had lots of these ideas at my mental fingertips.
For those who aren’t quite that lucky, she just wrote a column for Out Boulder, so you too can have access to this wisdom. If you read it, you’ll spot
the influence of these ideas in virtually every step of my own process.
So, following my Wednesday morning walk, I knew that my first step had to be learning to understand the people who had voted for Trump – not just as bigots, but as people with real needs that they imagined Trump’s presidency
could meet. I knew this would be a stretch for me. I was feeling far too
fragile to start reading hateful diatribes against Hillary or “big government,”
too angry to hear how inspiring Trump is or how he’s the perfect person to save
his “fans” from The Machine. But I really did
want to understand his supporters, what their lives are like. I needed to do
this to interrupt my tendency to demonize and stereotype them. That
path gave him too much power over my well-being, and me too little.
My partner and I began a concerted effort to locate and read information
about Trump voters. This turned out not to be too hard, once I got outside the
“echo chamber” of people as demoralized and outraged as I. I soon located a series of articles that addressed just this
aim (you can find some of them here, here, here, and here).
Gradually, I/we
began to see and talk about these people in a new light. Not just as white men (mostly) who resented the progress of women and people of color over recent decades, who
were suffering from “privilege deprivation.” But as people who have been … are
being … genuinely ignored, dismissed, trivialized, discounted, and taken for
granted by governmental systems that purport to support them. People who feel
isolated from urban centers of power and privilege, and who want their governments,
local and national, to “see” them and reflect them. Some folks have described
the loss of dignity that people in this situation might well feel. In this vein, I was so struck by
a comment made by Arthur Brooks in an exchange with Gail Collins (both
of the NY Times): “A few years ago,” Brooks
reflected, “I was having lunch with [the president of a progressive think
tank]. I asked her to given me a simplest explanation for why some people who
never prospered over the past few years nonetheless loved President Obama so
much. She said, ‘He gives them dignity.’ I thought that was very profound, and
I think that’s a big part of what’s going on today as well with Trump,” he
finished. Maybe that was what Trump's supporters heard beneath his hyperbole: a
promise of simple dignity.
I
could say much more, but I’ll let this
sketch suffice for now. If you’re interested, you’ll find more discussion at
the bottom of this blog entry, or you can read more about it in the articles
linked above.
So, with a tenuous handle
on my fear, rage, and disbelief, the next step was to manage my sadness and
sense of powerlessness. I needed to get myself active. The physical part was
pretty simple I happily slid into my now-regular pattern of daily activity. Beyond
that, I needed to be politically and socially active. Buoyed by the hope of
coming out of this a better human being, I imagined great leaps into activism, sailing
forth on a wave of indignation and inspiration. But I knew I’d have to start
slowly. Really slowly, as it turned out. Those first days, I managed to write checks
to some orgs that I really respect. I considered where I might volunteer down
the road. I pondered a lot and read some. I talked to myself and with
friends. But actually acting, as opposed to considering acting, was harder.
My first tiny step
came while I was walking home from the gym on Friday, three days after the election, I
encountered a pile of dog poop left by a pooch whose human hadn’t bothered to
pick it up. I added a detour to my walk to fetch a plastic bag, returned to the
scene of the drop, picked up the offending pile, and carried it to the nearest trash
can. A small act, but it seemed important. I felt like I had made a gesture
toward the universe, saying I can make a difference, a change for the better in
my world.
The next day, I
passed a woman on the bike path whose dog was keeping a careful eye on me as I
approached from the rear. I greeted them both and then said, “It’s nice to have
someone watching your back right now. The world is more dangerous for a lot of
people since the election.” I realized I had just made a mini-ally statement,
calling to her attention the reality that for some people, the potential for
real danger is greater this week than last. Another tiny step toward showing
up.
Then on Monday, my partner
and I met with some other folks to help plan an upcoming event related to the
election’s outcome, and I agreed to help organize an event in January –
although the last time I organized an event, I swore I’d never do it again. More
steps. Today, I went to Denver for a rally in support of immigrant families. Small
steps. But slowly, I feel more present to life as I go through my days,
This is not to say that it's been a steady path forward. During the past week, I've had moments of progress and enthusiasm, and moments of descent back into deep sorrow. I’ve felt empowered (picking up poop), and I’ve had tears come to my
eyes for no apparent reason (stretching in an aerobics class). In the low
times, I’ve tried to call up the advice offered in the aforementioned Out Boulder article: to pause and think of
what I value, what’s important in my life. It helps me get away from the
obsessive focus on what’s wrong and back to what I want to create from this. In
those moments of reflection, I’ve realized that writing this blog has been
something I’ve valued, for a whole host of reasons. As of today, I’m planning
to resume blogging, as time permits. I’ll be good for me, I know. It always
was. I’ll try to catch up with some blog-worthy stories from the past year – or at minimum, some pictures. I’ve passed up on so many opportunities. Anyway, here I am, writing a blog. Whether or not anyone reads it, writing this
particular post has helped me pull together a week’s worth of struggling to dig
out from the sticky post-election morass I sank into Tuesday night. It’s
another step.
…
Now it’s Thursday
morning, and Nicholas Kristof, a NYT
op-ed writer whom I love, has weighed in with a column that summarizes beautifully
much of what I hope to take from this week (I told my partner he’s channeling
her work). For an added boost in your own process, read it here.
...
Now it's Friday morning, a week after the dog poop incident. There's snow on the ground, and a sunny day ahead. I'll be taking a long walk with a friend's dog, a fun companion for me. And I'll be telling her all about it, sorting it out some more. And waiting to see what happens next, where I need to show up.
-----------------------
Post Script:
If you’re
interested, here’s more about what I’ve come to understand about the people who
voted for Trump.
Many of the people
who voted for Trump – especially those in rural areas and the Midwestern “rust
belt” (who have historically been reliable supporters of Dem candidates) – are people
who work dawn to dusk at back-breaking labor, playing by the supposed rules, who
are still unable to make ends meet. Their parents did the same work and were
able to get ahead, leaving more to their kids than they had – but now those
kids find themselves stuck, with no hope for getting ahead.
They see
highly educated people who live in big cities with tons of resources and
opportunities – schools, museums, culture, support services, government offices
– who are far wealthier than they are, although those urbanites don’t appear to
work anywhere near as hard. They see the seats of power located, always, in
these cities, readily accessible to city dwellers as sources of information,
services, and high-paying jobs. They read about people of color and other
minority populations, mostly clustered in cities – unfamiliar to folks living
in rural areas, and therefore easily stereotyped and misunderstood, even vilified. They hear
about government programs like affirmative action, that (in their understanding
– but how would they know otherwise?) – assure jobs for these folks who look
nothing like the people they know, whether or not they’re deserving. They see
officials of all stripes who never ask them
about their lives. Who never visit their homes, never work beside them, never
talk to them. Politicians who drop by during the campaign, visit the state fair
and eat a corndog, maybe have coffee with locals at the diner, and call that
“connecting” with their rural constituencies.
Add to this the
implicit biases we all learn just by growing up in this culture and absorbing its
mores: racism, sexism, and abelism; xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and
Islamophobia; homo-, bi-, and transphobia. We all learned them. But some of us
have had opportunities to unlearn them, or at least to temper them. Those opportunities
are available almost entirely in cities; anti-racism intensives would be hard
to find in rural mid-America. So those of us who have had those learning
opportunities condemn those who have not, labeling them bigots – when what
really separates us from them is our (often unrecognized) privilege.
Why wouldn’t these
people believe that the deck is stacked against them? Why wouldn’t they think that
city dwellers – even “foreigners” in the cities – have a better shot at the
American dream than they have? Why wouldn’t they believe that they system has
left them behind and left them out?
All it takes, then,
is for someone to tell them just that: the system is rigged against you. Of
course, they shout, Yes! Finally, someone has seen us! Has recognized our
distress!
To fire up the
enthusiasm even more, that person need only violate all the norms of “polite”
(or “politically correct”) conversation – ill-defined norms that are foreign to their lives – by saying the things that they dare not
say, have been condemned for saying. We’ve created, in the words of political scientist Katherine Cramer, a politics of resentment. And
resentment is a mighty motivator.
In a sense, this
isn’t even about Trump himself. It could have been anyone who poked the right
tender spots, who saw the distress and resentment of these people and named it,
pulled for it, capitalized on it. Who made them feel visible, important,
central – and named the system that had previously left them feeling the
opposite: their own government. The added energy evoked by allowing them – in
fact, encouraging them – to think, to say, and to do the things that are
forbidden by “polite” society energized a movement that made them feel
powerful, like they could change the system.
It just required
someone who seemed not beholden to the system (at least in the usual ways),
someone who was willing to thumb his nose, flip the bird at the system. Someone
to tell these abandoned Americans that they, like he, are the real Americans.
Deal sealed. No need
for millions of demons. Just ordinary people, rendered invisible by the powers
that be, plus a rank narcissist willing to use their distress for his own
aggrandizement.
Oops. I guess I’m
not totally done villianizing yet. Like I said, it’s a slow process …
©
Janis Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a
link to the post.
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