Deactivations and Delusions

"The failure of people to draw the clear line between the fascism of 1944 and the fascism of today is exhausting, debilitating, and I cannot for my own mental health, continue this charade," is what I wrote this morning in the required form when you mark "Other" on Facebook's deactivation screen.

It's not just Facebook, it's all of it, everything.

When my heart broke into unidentifiable pieces, after November 2016, I didn't realize it would be a permanent state.

The months after the election were probably the worst, but in many ways, the worst still happens every morning, all day, into the exhaustion of night.

I didn't know I could be so angry, so furious, all the time. This morning, on a drive down a bucolic road, I thought about the tragedy of the 2004 election, when I was despondent about the reelection of President Bush. I couldn't see how so many Americans accepted his lies, sending us into a war of whim, resulting in the deaths of a million people, destabilizing the region, the creation of ISIS. But to be honest, I should have known in 2004 that a 2016 would come. Truth isn't truth, it's whatever you decide to consume. Truthiness is reality, not satire.

Last week I burst into tears just thinking about the election.

I try not to think about that night, or Secretary Clinton specifically, because it hurts so bad. My fellow Americans picked, on purpose, a man who assaults women, who thinks nothing of women, who is a racist, who wants to turn away refugees, who wants to break up families, a willfully ignorant person who considers no one, not even his family, more than himself, especially not the sacred work of leading America.

I asked Siri how long it had been since the election, "It has been 500 days." The roundness of the number felt like a weight.

The election breakdowns showed 53% of white women voted for him, and it broke me.

Last Saturday, after a morning spent encouraging a reluctant young participant to try a new sport at the rec center, I took my kids to a local place for lunch. I happened upon a meeting of young Republicans. About 1/4 of them were women. I could feel the shriek building in my throat. I fantasized about yelling at them. I didn't. Not even when they dwindled down, to two men in blue blazers, and one woman.

I didn't pull her aside and say, "You can leave, it's OK, they hate you, they hate me, they'll never respect you, you are nothing but a vessel for them, a prize, a thing, not an actual human with rights, the president isn't an anomaly, he's the actual expression of conservatism today, you can leave, I will help." But it wouldn't help.

Nothing helps a white woman complicit in her own repression, economically dependent on a white man, and therefore propping him up, to the true detriment of our Republic. Poisoned against other women, all our sisters. Tangible economic ties from patriarchy through structural racism lead us to perpetuate the precarious position, continually throw women of color under to maintain our position.

Women aren't delusional, they're economically invested in Trump being "ordained by God to be president." Creating this fiction of a man who is divinely inspired, placed where he should be, to help bring Christianity back to America, a place where 80% of us are Christian. What if he is just the manifestation of our rot, not our divinity, the worship of money and idols in one avaricious form.

That's what I think about when I hear you're still a Republican, can't wait to vote for another Republican. Because you don't understand what the world is like for people who are not like you, who don't have your privileges and security, people who just need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and stop complaining so much!

I want a shirt to wear, a card to hand out, to say, "I'm 47%, not 53%. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry."


You'll notice I haven't even brought up the hacking of the election by Russians, obstruction of justice, the misinformation of fake news and our social feeds, because that's the most predictability of this all. He told us who he was. You thought it was entertainment.

It should have been enough when he made fun of a disabled man, but it wasn't.

It should have been enough when he called Mexicans rapists, but it wasn't.

It should have been more than enough when he sneered about a professional woman's menstrual cycle. He was just having fun, just poking the establishment in the eye! It's funny! Well, your children will be just as drafted as mine in this hilarity.

I’ve been considering how we used to think things would get better—the arc of the universe bending toward justice—and I just don’t know if it’s true anymore, if it ever was. The hubris of our time, coming of age at the end of the Cold War, young adults at the turn of the century, maybe gave us a misplaced sort of hope in what was possible.

On dark mornings I don't know what's possible, the air a vacuum, the Republic shredding.

Trump isn't an anomaly, he's not a freak accident, he is the culmination of 40 years of appealing to a base with racism, sexism, nativism, and hollow morals. The fact that good Christian people voted for him, is not only disgusting, it makes me realize that all the 90s moralizing was nothing but hollow lies anyway.

A Facebook friend posted recently about going to the Anne Frank home in Amsterdam, about visiting a concentration camp on this family trip. It made me so, so, so angry I had to leave Facebook. This is the same friend who took her son to see Trump when he visited our state because "he was such a big fan." That level of disconnection between what is happening now and what once did makes me feel like I'm crazy.

Don't you see this is how it started? With people saying America First, then blood and soil? By marginalizing and blaming minorities? By making their country about the few, and not all? Nazism didn't happen by accident. It happened because 1/3 of people started destroying another 1/3 while the other 1/3 just watched. Good people watching, but not the right things. I don't watch the news! It's too much! It makes me feel bad! So much negativity! Because it's not about you, not yet. It's always too late when you wake up. How are you raising a boy who is a "fan" of a man who assaults women and moves through the world defrauding anyone he can, who has cheated on every wife, especially right after she has given birth.

Meanwhile I'm the Cassandra in a cul-de-sac, forever the hysteric.

I turn sometimes to J and say, "I hate him, I hate him so much." He shrugs the shrug of the pessimist. It's easier, somehow, to be in this world and expect nothing, or to expect the worst from people, because then you're not disappointed or anguished, you're just right.

I had to leave because I was so angry.
I had to leave because you're not angry enough.

Avarice and corruption are fine as long as Ivanka's dress is pretty, I guess.

I unfollowed another person when they posted about how family friendly and wonderful the Trump resort was. A nice place to stay is fine, I guess, never mind the corruption, the ties to organized crime, line the pockets of wicked Russian oligarchs, put my greenbacks next to the emoluments clause, take your daughters to this place, because they do not matter, they are things, as all women are.

Every time I see a mother torn from her children I think, you voted for that. I fantasize about posting those ICE videos on the pages of people I know voted for him. This is what you voted for, I say, let them watch the children crying and the police state built on racism and nationalism.

I don't post the video, it might be over the line. A line I drew, not them, because they do not care. Better for me to walk away. The votes of the misinformed, the easily fooled, the "low information."

"This is all your fault," My mother said, when I walked through her door the day after the election. "Your fault and all your friends," she continued, "You didn't do enough."

She might be right, I don't know.

I thought America was smarter, kinder, bigger picture than this, and I was wrong. How is this livable? So that's what I'm mostly thinking about.