It’s difficult to accurately describe my feelings this morning, seeing the results of the election. If there’s such a thing as “stunned disbelief that is also the realization that this was almost inevitable, mixed with the crushing disappointment in your fellow citizens,” it’d be that. As I said on Monday, I had a pit-in-my-stomach feeling things were going to turn out this way, but I was… I don’t know: I think, despite that, I was hoping that I was wrong and that I was too cynical about everything, and without even knowing it that hope was actually where I actually was.
I actually woke up at 3:45 this morning, stressed about what had happened while I was asleep, even though I went to bed with the dull certainty of the outcome. The first thing I did after checking the news was have a brief moment of depressed introspection and I shouldn’t say anything, and the second thing was to write what ended up being an op-ed on Popverse which was a letter to myself to remember to be kind and fight for the right people in the next four years. It was one of those, “when in doubt, write,” things.
I’m scared of what’s going to happen in the next four years, and beyond. I’m angry about the fact that 15 million Biden voters disappeared on the way to this election, whether through vote suppression tactics on behalf of the other side, or apathy on the part of those who are ostensibly “anti-Trump.” (Trump won a landslide this time out with 3 million voters less than he had when he lost in 2020; some Republicans really did abandon him.) I’m exhausted by the certainty that things are going to get worse across the foreseeable future, and in ways that I can’t even imagine just yet.
In 2016, Trump’s victory felt like a bad thing that was this great unknown. This time, I feel like we know all too well how bad the baseline is. This feels so much worse.