Looking Ahead (As Everyone Else Looks Behind)

So, about last night…

I wish this was a post talking about a new pathway forward for the United States. Ironically, I suppose it still is. Time and again I have started to bring pen-to-metaphorical-paper to write out how I feel about it all. Yet, with each letter entered I fail to find the right words. Maybe there aren’t any to speak of.

Eight years ago I was nigh-on having a panic attack on election night. Today, I feel nothing. There is naught but a numb sensation of sorrow that permeates my entire being.

Thanks, depression.

As I reflect, it occurs to me that all those years ago I was catastrophizing – imagining the worst possible scenario in a truly unknown realm of politics. This time around, everything is already on the table.

• It’s the discarding of women in society, and their right to dictate their own bodily autonomy.
• It’s the disruption of the LGBTQIA+ community’s right to love and express themselves as who they feel themselves to be in their heart.
• It’s the continued and growing racism against the non-white communities of this nation.

• It’s outlined in the pages of Project 2025.
• It’s what Musk has told us he’s going to do with the economy.
• It’s what RFK will do with control the healthcare system.

• It’s the clear mental decline of the President-elect over the past months (lest we even compare to clips of eight years ago).
• It’s the removal of people who held up the guardrails in the Cabinet and general policy recommendation.
• It’s the (likely, as the House has yet to be called) unified Congress to vote in any legislation.

• It’s Justices Thomas and Alito (likely) retiring sometime in the next four years and their replacement – the cementation of a right-wing SCOTUS for a generation.
• It’s the right to disagree, and the loss thereof, against a red, nationalist wave.
• It’s being part of “the Enemy Within” to a regime that declares itself as admirable of dictators.

• It’s the survival of freedom and sovereignty for Ukraine.
• It’s the rights and right to live of the Palestinian people.
• It’s the firm check now relaxed against foreign aggressors with an eye for expansion including Russia, China, and North Korea.

• It’s the annihilation of the remnant vestige of the American Dream.
• It’s the vilification and demonization of migrants here both illegally and legally.
• It’s the suppression of the self-determinism of faith as a bastardized Christianity is codified into our legislature.

• It’s the redefining of what education means.
• It’s the apparent lack of understanding of how taxes work.
• It’s the maddening belief that the only thing that should matter is what gas prices are.

• It’s deregulation and gutting of environmental agencies as our planet continues to waste away.
• It’s corporate greed continuing to widen the gap between the rich and poor.
• It’s the furthering lack of affordability for homes, goods, and services.

It’s… everything.

“Oh fuck off you liberal goon, things won’t be that bad.”

Fine, let’s take all of the things above and consider the range of outcomes over the next four years. Really, consider the full spectrum of extremes, and then identify what happens in the middle: that is the most likely outcome.

Frankly, if you still aren’t seeing the picture here, then I can’t help you. By all stretches of what I (I say again, I) picture in my mind’s eye, the image of the future is bleak.

Oh to be singularly concerned with my own wellbeing and self-interest, what a life that would be. /s

Which, at the end of the day, is what disappoints me to no end. This election will come to be known as a referendum of how we treat one another. If the vote was concern for others versus perceived personal gain – the latter won in spades. How we’ve come to a place where our care for the providence and prosperity of our fellow man has fallen to the wayside… well, that’s a dissertation for some other time. Alas, we are here, now, today, and must suffer the consequences.

I would have loved to believe that the blatant racism and bigotry of the right-wing campaign, [Note: If you’re supported by the Klan; if Nazi flags are being flown at your rallies; you’re on the wrong side of history.] while a systemic rot, was a greater illusion masked by “the party of the economy.” Clearly that is not the case, as it is now on full display of the world stage and has a briefcase full of nukes.

And yet, we still go to work. The Earth still spins, and the sun also rises. Now we must ask ourselves: what do we do?

I am afraid that I don’t know.

Unless the Dems keep the House (still unknown at the time of this writing, but unlikely) there are no checks on the whims of those soon to be in power. The supporters thereof now emboldened in their brazen bigotry, virtue signaling that they are victims of leftists and liberals who are now decrying them for the inevitable onslaught of future atrocities that have yet to pass.

I can already see the laugh emojis of those very people on this post.

This isn’t a #NotMyPresident thing. It’s not a “gear up for the civil war” thing. For indeed, the world keeps on turning.

What it is, I think, is the time for all of us who value the innate capacity of humans to live a life unmolested by pressures both social and civil, to understand that now it takes all of us to steer towards a future that is sustainable for everyone.

Today we are charged to remember objective truth and continue to educate, ne’er capitulating towards a standard bequeathed onto us by those who seek total control. It is our duty to continue to dialogue and practice in the belief of one another to do the right thing. Moreover, it is to understand that the great experiment of America continues to evolve, and that that is all it is: an experiment.

The future, then, is what we choose to make of it. Sure enough, I am scared, for now I am part of a faction now actively demonized as “the Enemy,” from the mouth itself of the President-elect. I don’t know what that means. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. To say that there is a clear path forward is ludicrous, and to believe that we will escape the next four years without – at minimum – significant strain towards social and political values that we hold dear, is a fallacy.

Today we enter a great tunnel and are charged to make it to the other side. At the moment, there is no light guiding us to the exit on the other side. Chances are it won’t begin to show until generations have come and gone. All the same, we can choose to put one foot in front of the other and continue to walk the path, trusting that it is the one to bring the dawn to a long, long night.

In the absence of hope then let us replace it with action – guided by truth in our conviction to bring about the day absent from wannabe dictators, bigotry, and zealotry. Yes, it will be a hard road. No, there may not be a happy ending.

Dammit, though, we owe it to ourselves, our community, and all others who come after us, that we will work towards a day where we might disagree with one another without such existential threats that might bring to a close the end of this: the greatest experiment of a nation in the history of this little blue marble.

And so, my friends, let us raise a glass, nay, plan to raise one when the work we put in pays off and we finally emerge from the darkness. For all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

Let’s get to work.