I guess the beginning was really back in 2016. I went to bed the night of the US presidential election certain Hillary Clinton would win, and slept soundly. I even told my friend, who’d called me concerned, that there would be nothing to worry about.
I woke up to the horrifying realization that Donald Trump had won the election. This was a person we all witnessed mocking a disabled reporter, someone who is so casually sexist and racist that it rolls off his tongue with ease. We all witnessed him lying, and then lying about lying within the same sentence. He can’t seem to form a coherent sentence and just throws words together and says them with conviction. And people loved him for it.
I realized I didn’t know my country as well as I had thought. I felt like I went to sleep thinking of my country one way, and woke up to a completely different reality. But in all of that reflection in the days that followed, I realized this is always what the US has been. We’ve always built ourselves on the backs of others.
Fast forward 4 years, and the 3 days of anxiety that inevitably concluded with Biden winning was hard to get through.
Now I’m very much a leftist, and the US doesn’t have a left leaning party. We have 2 right leaning parties, but Republicans are so much further right than Democrats. So I wasn’t exactly thrilled with Biden, but anyone is better than Trump. And with a Biden win, I felt like we could finally start undoing the damage Trump had done.
I’m LGBTQIA+, specifically nonbinary and lesbian. I’ve experienced a lot of hatred and discrimination because of it, from being insulted, to being physically assaulted. I’ve been told I should be shot, I’ve been told I’m not worth the ground holding me up, I’ve been called a groomer, and unnatural. So having Trump voted out felt like a relief.
But Biden only restored the status quo, and the status quo hasn’t been good for a long time, if ever. Which inevitably led us to November of 2024, and a second Trump win.
This time the betrayal was much deeper. It truly felt like a stab in the back. How can anyone still support him, after everything we’ve seen him do?
Fearmongering is a tried-and-true method that has worked since the dawn of time. If you don’t have any empathy, and don’t mind throwing someone else under the bus, then it works like a charm. We’ve seen it time and again. People are struggling, someone comes along and says the reason you’re struggling is <insert a group of people here>, and people eat it up.
The hatred that causes runs deep. People genuinely believe the rhetoric, and think that whatever targeted group of people is responsible for all their pain deserves to suffer, which allows that hate to fester and build.
We saw it with Hitler, blaming people who were Jewish. And now we see it with Trump, blaming immigrants.
There’s always a vulnerable group that’s easy to target--Jewish folks, black folks, Native Americans, the LGBTQIA+ community, Irish folks, Japanese folks. The list could go on and on, and at one time in history, each of those groups has been blamed for all the horrible things people are going through.
I don’t have an answer as to how to stop politicians from using it, especially because it works so well. The politicians don’t have to do any heavy lifting to actually figure out how to solve problems for people when they can just point their fingers at a group and blame them instead.
In the months following the 2024 election, things carried on as usual. There were a lot of folks who were scared, myself included. There were a lot of people who were happy, who were mocking and taunting everyone who was frightened. I have a wonderful friend in Canada who offered me a place to stay if I needed it.
I was very vocal in my displeasure at the election results. I immediately began expressing said displeasure through the time-honored tradition of sharing memes on Facebook. I lost a few friends in the first few weeks. I don’t regret it.
There’s no way to argue this time around that they didn’t know what Trump stood for. There’s no way to argue that anyone who voted for him isn’t racist. If racism isn’t a deal breaker for them, then they are racist. 1/3rd of this country would be content to kill 1/3rd of this country, while 1/3rd of this country watches and tells everyone we should come together and get along. They are bigots who would watch the country burn so they can make others’ lives harder.
And that made me angrier. And I’m still angry, and I’m still hurt. Maybe I’m naïve, but I don’t understand that complete lack of empathy.
I didn’t know what this election would look like this time around. We all knew about Project 2025 and were bracing ourselves for what it would all mean. Despite the fear and worry, I don’t think any of us predicted it would be as bad as it was.
Once Trump took office, he wasted no time signing a whole slew of executive orders to kick things off. It left my head spinning with how fast things changed. I watched as our rights started disappearing in almost an instant. The comparisons with Hitler are terrifyingly similar.
The depression and anxiety was hard to deal with. I’m not a negative person. In fact, I’m quite a fun loving, happy go lucky kind of person, who tries to find humor wherever I can. But I was so angry and scared, and watching as people celebrated the government hurting innocent people, that it felt like I was losing myself in the grief of it all.
So I did what I always do, and created art to express my frustrations. And, with some help from friends, and another offer from my friend in Canada to stay with them, I was able to climb out of the emotional spiral I’d found myself trapped in. I found hope in the possibility that I could flee if I needed to, and comfort in the friendships around me.
If my existence is an act of rebellion, then I need to keep rebelling. If my art is an act of rebellion, then I need to keep creating. If my speaking out helps anyone feel less alone, or more brave, then I need to keep speaking out.
I keep thinking of the conversation between Frodo and Gandalf in Lord of the Rings:
“I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”