Today’s blog is in memory of my beloved Dad, Roger Ingram, who passed in January, making this the first time I’ve lived through a December 9th without celebrating his birthday with him.
I get it.
I really do.
It’s been a little over a month since a slim majority of Americans decided to put Donald Trump back in the White House, and the varied responses have been instructive.
First, I know people, or at least of people who are overjoyed. They feel that pandemic America was just fine and they want to go back to whatever it was about that which they enjoyed. They welcome a spirit of being unwelcoming to desperate asylum seekers, they think having someone unstable and unpredictable at the helm of America’s nuclear arsenal will scare America’s opponents out of any military action, some share his racist, bigoted, sexist attitudes, some just think he will magically roll back our corporate greed-fueled inflation.
Here’s hoping!
Second, I know people who are absolutely outraged. How could Americans be so stupid? Joe Biden dropped out to make way for a young, energetic, charismatic, woman with a plan to continue the policies that have seen America make the fastest pandemic recovery on the planet. Every time Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walsh spoke they wanted to stand and applaud. Meanwhile, every time Trump or his running mate J.D. Vance (if that’s still his name today) spoke they wanted to throw things at the TV or radio. The idea of gutting women’s rights, public education, Social Security, abandoning NATO, skyrocketing inflation with ridiculous tariffs – well, you know, everything detailed in Project 2025 – was like a dystopian vision from one of those old USA Up All Night horror B-movies. These are the folks talking about leaving America for the greener grass elsewhere. This includes the person who assassinated the CEO of UnitedHealthcare – the world’s leader in putting profits above sick people. I get that. It was my first reaction, as well. Well, not shooting “unredeemable” greedy bastard CEOs, but you know, I was outraged at first.
Third, there are those who don’t know and don’t care. Some of those actually voted (the top Google search on election day was “Did Joe Biden drop out of the race?”), but many did not or they threw their votes away on a third party candidate. They feel it doesn’t matter, at the end of the day. Republicans and Democrats have both sold the country out to the billionaire class made possible by the policies of Ronald Reagan before I was old enough to vote. I do recall my parents voting against that, and as usual, they were right to do so. If you missed it, I recently wrote about this and how Democrats can get back to fighting for the middle class. Many Americans feel we’re screwed either way, and I don’t blame them for feeling that way. As things stand right now, we absolutely are.
Finally, there’s my current category. I have cycled through all of the above emotions – some longer than others. I’ve allowed it all to process. For a week I turned off all news, just needing head space to reach “ok” again. Then, slowly I started to turn things back on. I started to listen to and process what other people with similar mindsets were saying. It helped me to process. I took a little from here, a little from there, and so far I have come to the following conclusion.
We, as individuals, only control a few things. We control our own thoughts (if we choose to), our own actions, our own attitudes. We control what we put out there. I have long believed that kindness is a superpower and that hasn’t changed. As a college professor I work with a lot of immigrants who are scared. I assure them that, while we don’t know what the political future holds, most Americans are immigrants and I represent a safe space for them. There are also many of us who understand the existential threat we face as a species, and will speak out and act in the ways that we can to help combat it. All of us make big and small choices daily that can either help or exacerbate this situation. There are also many of us who understand that organized religion as defined by a few does not represent who we are as a whole, especially those that claim to follow the teachings of a man who literally died in protest of the very things those people are doing in his name. A few don’t get to define us all.
It’s disappointing, to say the least, when we see our country represented by people who engender things we despise. That doesn’t mean we have to become those things. I believe that the best response is for each of us to do whatever is in our power to fight for change, keeping kindness and hope as our guiding lights, and that in so doing we will make our world a better place. That’s where I am in this thought process.
At least for now. 🙂
I welcome your thoughts and conversations that might come, as a result, in the comments section below.
-B
Ishmael's Legacy 