In a cramped single on the campus of a small liberal arts college, I sat with four other friends as the election results poured in. As the hours crept by, unbridled optimism for the future turned to a despondent, or even dystopian, outlook. I was the first person in the room to say it:
"He's going to win."
At a certain point, I started repeating this. Over and over I'd state that his victory was inevitable. Why? Because I was waiting for someone to tell me otherwise. I wanted so desperately for a smarter person in the room to turn around and explain in complicated statistical data how it was impossible for him to win. But that moment never came. State after state went red as the impossible turned to probable turned to reality.
The next morning, in a lecture hall of weeping students, I watched as Hillary Clinton apologized to the nation. She had failed. Not to bring us real change, or to shatter the glass ceiling, or anything else that she centered her campaign around. Hillary Clinton had failed to do what the country needed her to do most of all: protect us from the alternative. I left that classroom and proceeded to hug two friends of mine who waited outside. We gripped each other and sobbed, big sobs, the kind I haven't heard since childhood. It's going to be okay, we wept between breaths. That was all we could do in that moment, all any of us could do. Hug and cry and lie to each other.
I still feel as if this is all a dream. My emotions are muted and distant. I scroll through headlines on my Facebook feed and the discourse just passes through me. Thoughts and feelings bounce around freely inside my head, disconnected and empty and meaningless. I feel broken. I feel dead.
The next four years, or at least the next two, are going to fucking suck. Republicans have not held simultaneous control of the House, Senate, and Presidency since the early 20th century, and the last time they did it led to the Great Depression. We could surely see history repeat itself in that regard. Trump's election has already thrown financial markets into a spin, and we don't know exactly how bad things could get before the GOP inevitably rings in their new era of deregulation. Without enough Democrats in power to stop them, the Republican Party, elected on their most radical, far-right platform to date, has the ability to rollback progress on women's rights, gay rights, civil rights, voting rights; basically any rights they can touch that don't belong to white, straight men. Like I said, it's going to fucking suck.
But is it over? Is this how it all ends?
Of course not.
I see people on Facebook talking about leaving the country, saying fuck it and just peacing out to someplace where they've got their shit together. We see the same mentality within the government, as officials, many of them in the Pentagon, refuse to serve beneath a Donald Trump presidency and threaten resignation. And it's a nice thought. I sure would love to kick up my feet in a country with single-payer health care and hate crime protections for queer citizens. It'd be great to sip a mojito and chuckle to myself as Donald Trump vows to kill all the goats in Pakistan during his first State of the Union address. Thank God I got out of there!
But honestly, this reaction to political defeat is dangerous, problematic, and downright traitorous. If this were the mentality of every suffragette, every abolitionist, every gay rights activist, I'd be writing this article from a cage marked SODOMITE and you'd still carry gold coins in your wallet. American history is not one of running away, from anything, and that includes our own country. American history is one of struggle. It's one of pain and hurt, the same kind we felt on November 8th, but it's also a history of overcoming that pain. Now is not the time to give up and abandon our country. Now is the time to fight for it.
America is going down an ugly path, a scary path, and one that I believe ultimately leads to fascism. But in a democracy, everything is resistible, and everything is subject to change. Now, in the darkness of its own defeat, the Democrats must rebuild and become what they once were: the party of the unheard and disenfranchised. From the ashes, we must build a movement up from the grassroots, one that is powered by hope, and love, and faith that together we can achieve our vision of a better country. Protest, organize, VOTE. No matter how many elections we lose, we will never stop having a voice.
Like many people, when Donald Trump won, I could feel that page of history being written. I sensed despair in the hearts of future generations when they come to this chapter of our history. But there will be chapters after this one. The history of Donald Trump's rise is already written. Now we get to write how America fought back.
Like it or not, and however cliche it may be, the future is in our hands. Every moment is critical now. We have no idea how far back Republicans could bring us in our progress. The 90s? The 60s? The 20s? Only time will tell, and only we can stop it.
When your country needs you, don't hide from its call. Stand with each other. Fight for what you know is right. Fight for the future.
That's the American way, isn't it?
