smagik

What the actual f***?

What have you, and by you I mean we because now we are all in this rapidly sinking boat together, done?

I know lecturing doesn’t work, it is definitely the quickest way to get me to tune out, but I am too angry to come up with another idea at the moment. I find myself wanting you to lose your bodily autonomy, and for your daughter to lose hers, along with your clean water and air, social security, health insurance, public education, and any sense of safety you might still have that doesn’t come directly from your proximity to white men. But, then I wonder what will that actually accomplish? Just so I can say I told you so, we all told you so? Because when it happens to you, it happens to us.

Yesterday, at the New Mexico high school long distance running state championships, I watched 8th through 12th graders run as fast as they could and as I watched the girl’s 5K, I started crying. I did not anticipate this cry, not the way I anticipated the tears that ran down my face on Wednesday as I tried to get through a busy work day in the middle of what felt like the apocalypse. These “watching a cross country meet tears” took me by surprise. I was standing by the finish line and girls I had never met pushed themselves to their limit as they passed, lungs pumping in cold 38 degree weather, legs about to give out. I thought about the world they were inheriting and, though I know many of their parents and probably some of them, voted against what I consider to be their best interests, I felt nothing but compassion and fear for them as they head into adulthood.

Tuesday was a really busy day at work and I didn’t have time to think about the election very much until around 6 o’clock. I and most people I knew had voted early and I anticipated a night in which nothing would be known by the time I went to bed. But then my boyfriend texted saying that he had a bad feeling. Then another friend texted. Then a coworker who was listening to the news said it didn’t sound good. What was happening? I told them all it was too early to worry. After work I had to run into the mall on the way home to pick up something needed for work the next day. I hadn’t actually been in a physical indoor mall in months, if not years, and as I speed walked to the store I needed to go to, I weaved through what appeared to be a parade of American consumer zombies laden with shopping bags. By the time I got home things were looking worse and we went to bed early, hoping for a miracle.When I looked at my phone in the middle of the night (Pennsylvania… Georgia… the Senate) and even though Kamala is nowhere near being a socialist, all I could think about was John Steinbeck’s quote

“socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

Do you actually think policies designed to help billionaires are going to help you? Or, worse, you don’t but would rather vote for them anyway over a black woman?

When I worked in Europe a few years ago on the movie Glass Onion, I was struck by how barbaric my European co-workers thought we Americans were. We thought 12-14 hour long work days were not only acceptable but normal, we tied health insurance and pensions to employment and considered ourselves lucky to have any of them. We Americans didn’t recognize how hard and merciless the competitive the waters of runaway late stage capitalism in which we swam actually were.

And now here we are. An election in which an exploited proletariat voted for a dictator-admiring fascist who promised tax cuts for the 1%, to put tariffs on all imports from China, implement the horrors of Project 2025, gut the EPA, FDA, and Department of Education and to seek vengeance on his enemies. And I am struggling to find any empathy for you. So much debt from keeping up with the Joneses, obsession with the Apprentice and the Kardashians, a nation of immigrants voting to keep immigrants out, climate change not being mentioned throughout the campaign, women voting to keep abortion legal and then voting for Trump, it is enough to make one give up and quit.

But, I know that is not an option. We are here, there is no one coming to save us and we are actually the ones we have been waiting for. It is so much easier to put that hope on an outside source but by now we should know how that goes. I will be here making art, supporting artists, keeping an eye on my neighbors, working locally, donating to www.faithrootsrepro.org, www.rrfb.org, www.splcenter.org among others, and keeping close to those I love. We are truly all in this boat together, as a nation and a planet, and though I wish we could learn this lesson in a less painful way, that’s just not the way it seems to work.

Sending light and love for the long road ahead.