With any luck my last political post will come sometime on Wednesday and will be about sweeping glass shards from the floor.
My moods during the last six months have see-sawed, as has my conviction that in January The United States of America will inaugurate its first female President. I’ve gone through heartbreak, confusion, anger, rage, grief. I’ve been horrified, delighted, uplifted. I’ve cried, both in joy and frustration.
If life is like a box of chocolates, during this election I’ve eaten everything from the caramel to the nasty candied cherry. I feel sticky, nauseated, and like I need to brush my teeth and eat nothing but salad for a week.
But…instead of watching the polls fluctuate and my anxiety escalate in this, the final stretch, I”ll be carousing around a foreign city with some fabulous females. I’m not bringing my laptop. I’m not checking the news. (Ok, I won’t be checking the new obsessively.)
I’m still worried, but this morning as I was packing, I had a sudden moment of calm. Perhaps I’ve entered the eye of Hurricane Election because suddenly I realized it was all going to be ok.
Because even if Donald Trump wins the election, the people who voted for him aren’t going to win.
I don’t mean their candidate isn’t going to win. I mean the reasons why they chose to fill in the ballot circle next to his name aren’t going to win.
You can’t make people disappear. You can’t choose simply declare you don’t ‘believe’ in homosexuality or marriage equality like you choose to ‘believe’ in the Tooth Fairy. LGBTQ human beings exist. They take up space and other dimensions. Marriage equality is a thing. Transgender citizens and same-sex spouses are not going to suddenly disappear just because a bunch of people chose to elect a vice-president who wants to shift federal money to ‘gay conversion’ programs.
You think millions of women are going to lay down and allow themselves to be groped and degraded and discriminated against because a bunch of people chose to elect a party which, for all intents and purposes, want women to just go away and bleed quietly from their wherevers? You can spout all you want about the ‘myths’ of systematic oppression or the wage gap. But they exist and they’re not going to disappear in a cloud of magical smoke. Women aren’t just going to suddenly go away and stop demanding equality.
Those who are voting for Trump on the basis of religion can pray on pious knees until they are bloody for God to smote their enemy. It’s not going to happen. They can prayer circle around women who seek out birth control and abortion. It’s not going to stop them.
They can deny climate change. It’s not going to stop it. They can deny evolution. It doesn’t make it go away.
The reasons so many Trump voters are voting for Trump? Those reasons are NEVER GOING TO WIN.
The people who’ve been checking off the ‘other’ the box next to their identity don’t need to have their existence legitimized or FDA approved. Do you think they’re going to let you take their rights and stuff them back into some fundamentalist homophobic misogynistic cupboard and lock the door?
Women aren’t going to suddenly develop the urge to dig out their grandmother’s aprons and start mixing martinis for their husbands. Life is not going to magically revert back to some black and white television version of bucolic happiness which was only pleasant and happy if you closed your eyes and ignored the lynchings and the back alley abortions and the men and women being imprisoned for being gay.
You can build a thousand walls and they will still be breached.
You can build a thousand prisons and they will still be dismantled.
You can think of a thousand ways to hate and people will still love.
The United States has been moving forward for decades. Sometimes quickly, sometimes tortuously slow. It will continue to do so, even if it takes a backward step next Tuesday.
Even if they win this battle, they will never win the war. Because that kind of exclusion, that belief that there is only one, true way? It never wins. It is always defeated. It is always squashed.
Once I figured all that out, I felt better. I finished packing and dug out my passport and tomorrow, I’ll be off.
Oh, and Donald? CU next Tuesday.
Wine and Cheese (Doodles) 
Lots of wonderful points in there. Oh please let Tuesday come and go. Hopefully there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
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As a friend of mine said, limping toward the finish line.
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Fantastic. Love the finish — CU next Tuesday Donald, from one feminist to another!
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Like a secret handshake 😉
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Words of wisdom. Have a wonderful trip. Bet you guys will have a blast. Make sure the rowdy Scot doesn’t get you in trouble😉Looking forward to post election writings! Thanks for getting us thru these wretched times.
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I am looking forward to writing some regular stuff!
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Dina, this is literally the most helpful thing I’ve read in several days. Enjoy your hiatus. Cheers!
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Glad I could be of service. I will!
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Wow. Being one “on the other side” I read your words and while I wish I had an hour or two to respond, point by point, I do not. I know lots of Trump supporters and none identify with what you claim we do. Is Trump perfect?, far from it. The biggest thing that confuses me about your position is that you seem less concerned about a woman who pays women on her staff (s) less than men and who enabled her predator husband to actually abuse and maybe even rape women and then help in discrediting them when they came forward than you are about a guy who likes to hear himself talk but seems to be a reasonably nice guy, as evidenced by lots of reports and the personalities of his children. I don’t see the same Donald you do and I hope that my version is the one we see if he gets elected. Either way, the sun will rise on Wednesday morning.
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I’m not sure I could disagree with you more on this. But I will say this, Hillary Clinton is not perfect. She is not the Messiah. She has done things in her 30 years in the public eye which make me uncomfortable and with which I disagree. But the things she has done that make me proud outweigh them tenfold.
She is running her campaign on continuing the social progress that I want for the United States, not regressing it. The Trump/Pence ticket is on record as wanting to overturn Roe v. Wade. The platform is against marriage equality and climate change. They have not a single policy in place that will actually help women or families. To vote FOR all that is a vote AGAINST everything that I hold dear, which is a place for ALL Americans, not just the ones who fit a certain mold. The irony is, my vision has plenty of room for those who do fit that mold, while many of the other side’s have no room for anything outside that box.
Her ‘treatment’ of her husband’s mistresses? I refuse to hold a woman responsible for the actions of her husband. If you are asking if I believe the accusations against him? Yes, I do. I believe he sexually harassed those women. Insofar as Juanita Broderick? She is on the public court record as stating that he did not touch her. Did she lie then? Possible. Is she lying now? Possible. But I only have the actual facts in front of me, not simply beliefs.
If Bill Clinton were running for president today, I would hold that against him in the same manner I hold the accusers of Donald Trump against him, for they are exactly the same, with the caveat that Donald Trump is on tape bragging about doing what his accusers allege he did. The fact that some believe Hillary’s actions, ‘enabled’ him is, imo, grasping at straws, holding a wife responsible for her husband’s actions. Why, because she didn’t leave him? Because she didn’t throw him under a bus? Perhaps because she believed him when he said he didn’t do it?
Why is that difficult to believe, that a wife believed her husband? It happens every single day a thousand times a day. And, even, if she stayed married to a man she suspected of assault, how is that even marginally comparable to someone who actually committed those assaults? And let’s be clear, the allegations against Clinton and Trump are one and the same. Allegations. To believe one over the other is the height of hypocrisy.
As to the evidence of Trump’s character, I don’t doubt it. But the reverse is true as well. There are 30 years of documented testimony of Hillary Clinton working with and for women and children, across the aisle, with the GOP, with the Dems. She is admired around the world. She has staff that’s been with her for decades, friends since college. So, why don’t you see the same Hillary that I see?
The fact that she pays her staff less? Let’s give her a chance to address her own gaps before we use that as fodder. The fact that she acknowledges a wage gap exists and wants to address it is miles beyond pretending it’s a myth.
At the end of the day, many–not all–but many of the folks who are voting for Trump are doing it as a vote against Clinton-whatever their reasons. Some are doing it because they won’t stray from party lines. But there are many who are on record as wanting to get back to a time when the US was ‘great’. The problem, for ME, with that is that it wasn’t great for women, or people of color, or minorities, or LGBTQ. So I don’t want to make American ‘great’ again. I want America to keep moving forward.
Let’s remember that the vast majority of us want what is best for the US. Which direction that ‘best’ takes will be determined in the coming days, weeks, months, years. The sun will continue to rise, regardless.
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“CU Next Tuesday.” Heh, nice one, Goose.
Yeah, don’t let the door hit you in the ass, ass.
Bill
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Sometimes what’s good for the gander is also good for the goose. 😉
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Excellent post! I’m bookmarking it to re-read just in case.
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Fabulous Dina. Love it. Love will always trump hate. Just brilliant x
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In the end, yes. It would be nice to skip the middle bits sometimes though, right?
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I agree with every word and you have actually tempered my anxiety a little. So, thank you. Although, to be fair, the idea of a lovely lady mixing a martini for me holds appeal. 🙂
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I’m glad I could help ease your anxiety. Hopefully the worst is almost over. Hopefully. I bet if you find a lovely lady and offer to scrub the toilet for her she’ll be more than happy to mix you a nice martini 😉
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The last few days have been completely nuts, schedule-wise around here. Which, I find, is another way of keeping election anxiety/nausea at bay. But…I’d read this post a few days ago and found it comforting. When my daughter and I were singing at a fundraiser concert for the Conservatory at her alma mater on Friday evening, I sat in the choir section watching a variety of beautiful dance, opera, instrumental, and vocal performances…and thought, “This. This beauty and the struggle for justice will not end. We will keep fighting.” Thank you for that.
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Yup. Just got back from Prague, where we spent part of a morning touring the Spanish Synagogue there. There was an exhibit of Jewish history, including WWII. What struck me the most were the photographs of people going about their lives–labeled. And the evidence of original music composed at Terezin. Pictures drawn by kids in the Jewish ghetto. All of that beauty and struggle, even in the fact of the most Godawful things imaginable. I almost wept with the weight of it all.
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Oh my goodness, yes.
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