Sad and Afraid

Written from the Edge of Darkness

I haven’t been able to listen to the radio for months.

I travel 2-plus hours most days getting to and from work, and over the years have spent lots of time listening to NPR. We don’t have tv hooked up to anything except a CD player and Netflix, so my news consumption comes strictly from radio and newspaper and magazines, and all the people I meet.

Newspapers are relatively easy to deal with - just scan the headlines, quickly, then skip rapidly to the important stuff: the comics page, where there’s more than enough politics for anyone; and then on to the Sudoku puzzle. A quick scan every so often of actual articles, or The New Yorker magazine, which looks at things in great (sometimes interminable) depth, and catching the radio news from the BBC or Canada on some of those late night rides down 4A, has been more than enough exposure to our on-going national horror show. Enough to make my blood briefly boil, cause me to shout at the radio, but not enough to fry my soul. Instead, I’ve been listening to recorded books, and looking forward to weekends, when there are programs on NHPR and VPR that are entertaining and relatively safe from crazy-making. 

I’ve been looking forward to the post-election world, when I assumed I could stop with the often really awful recorded books and safely go back to regular programming. But now I find that I may be wedded to those books for a long, long time.

Politics isn’t something I wanted to write about, ever; but I can’t help but write this once, because the shock and horror of this election and election process are just too big to step around. And I can’t stop crying.

I’m not crying about Donald – he can’t do most of what he promised to do, because it takes a Congress to do those things – that detail is really important, and we need to remember it. Unfortunately, some of his horrible plans will get done, because Those In Power In Congress will gleefully jump on this chance to break apart the slow changes the current administration has painfully managed to make - eked out over 8 years despite Congressional obstruction for obstruction’s sake - in its attempt to fix the damage done by the last Numbskull-in-Chief and his cohorts. I worry that the damage that will be done in Donald’s time will take even longer to fix – decades longer than the almost a decade already required, and the job of repairing what broke during those 8 bad Bush years is still not finished. I worry that we may actually be looking at the active beginning of the end of our national experiment – an end that was signaled, if not actually begun, during the Obama administration, when the unworthy opposition trotted out a public attitude of disrespect and every obstruction and lie they were able to concoct, and even performed arguably traitorous acts, in order to keep a good man from trying to unite us and move us back into a place from which we could have been proud of what we are as a nation and in which we might have been able to work together for the common good. 

What makes me cry is the numbers of people who voted for Donald, and the reasons they did. I know, he didn’t win the popular vote, but he didn’t lose it by much. And that’s terrifying.

No one voted for Donald because he has good ideas; no one can be sure exactly what ideas Donald actually has, because he’s never actually said, beyond making grandiose, general statements. They voted for him because he said outrageous things, and he was entertaining. They voted for him because he helped them feel that their baser natures – the parts that are afraid of those who are different from us, who we don’t understand, or who make us feel like we might not be in charge – are virtuous. They voted for him because they didn’t like the truth, and made a choice to accept easy lies, instead. They voted for him because they aren’t willing to do the hard work, and are too impatient to take the time it takes, to fix what went wrong a decade ago and longer. They voted for him because he helped them feel that small-mindedness, hard-heartedness, cheating, lying, lewdness, misogyny, racism, boorishness, violence, ignorance and bigotry are good, are the qualities of intelligent, knowledgeable, smart people. They voted for him because he lied about what went wrong, who made it wrong, and what needs to be done to fix it, and he encouraged them to not only believe those lies, but to create their own, more outrageous ones. He taught them that if you say something loud, crudely, and often, it will be believed.

Donald didn’t give people base tendencies, but he justified them, and made them feel energized, and powerful. And some voted for him because they just couldn’t – they said – bring themselves to vote for the opponent. Those people leaned on all the nastiness that Donald's followers called virtuous to delude themselves that their vote – or non-vote – didn’t support the evil embodied in the choices we made. 

Maybe most scary is that so many religious – people whose spiritual paths and jobs lead us to think of them as being a guide for helping others overcome their baser natures -  encouraged the folks who look to them for guidance to go to the dark side. 

I’m afraid, and greatly saddened. I don’t know how to not be afraid of the people around me who made that choice. I don’t know how to think kindly of people who eagerly discarded their finer selves and embraced nastiness.  I’m not a religious person, but this choosing, of what I can only call evil, by so many people – even, or maybe especially, by the ones who claim they did so reluctantly, given two bad choices - it’s going to be hard to find a path of hope through this. It’s going to be hard to find a way to have a meeting of the minds with people who don’t accept facts as a place to start from. It’s going to be very hard to really believe that the folks who say they made the choice as the lesser of two evils couldn’t actually see that one choice was imperfect and unfortunate, but the choice they made was for actual evil. It’s going to be hard to discuss this, and not just shout at each other and turn our backs on each other.

In the three days since the election I’ve heard stories from two people who have experienced threats and meanness from people who, before the election, never expressed this dark side, but who now feel not only justified, but apparently virtuous in doing so. It sounds like the people who are bullying and harassing others consider themselves to be part of a revolution, or crusade – which is a dangerous mind-set. This is just the tip of the damage that is almost certain to come. And in case you’re wondering? It was children who were attacked in both these people's stories.

I believe that people do the best they can, most the time. I understand that there is something – probably many things – that have caused people to turn their faces from their better, more generous, kindly sides and step into their darkness. What’s caused them to feel they need to embrace nastiness in order to prosper, and how many things have contributed, and how far back this goes, is too complicated for me to see, and I suspect many of them don’t know, themselves. Something very scary must push people to turn aside from their higher humanity. But it happens – we saw it in Germany, we saw it in China, we saw it in our own country in the South, and during Japanese internment, and during the McCarthy era...and we see it now, when we watch people doing terrible things to each other for reasons that don’t make sense.

What is clear is that we who still embrace kindness and generosity and open-mindedness need to become more vocal. That we need to insist that our statesmen are aware, and acknowledge, and act on the fact that there are still more of us who don’t choose the darkness than those who do. That we put some steel in our spines and not wait for things to right themselves, but loudly express justified anger when government acts against our common good. That we actively show ourselves to be better than this election makes us appear, and hope we drag some of our fallen fellows back into the light in the process.

The Sailor and I were talking about our horror and grief, and he said, “Compassion is our strength, and … we must take care of each other and the ones around us in our little place in the sun.” 

I agree. So let us walk forward and make a point of being kind to all people. Let us speak truth loudly, and clearly, but with kindness, and repeat it as often as necessary. Let us write letters, make calls, vote carefully. Unpack the bags - Canada doesn’t really want us. 

Instead, let’s get into people’s faces with kindness, love, compassion and welcome. Speak up when you hear evil being spoken – don’t let it stand. Make sure the ones doing evil know that we see them, and that we see what they’re doing.  Demonstrate true virtue - dramatically, publically, unequivocally. Counter darkness with light.

Don’t listen to too much news – it will poison your soul, upset your stomach, and keep you awake at night.

And keep changing the subject when politics comes up at the Thanksgiving table. Instead, tell stories of inclusion, forgiveness, kindness, and grace – real thanksgiving.

Written only for the blog.
I am one Witness.