It’s 10:10 P.M. on November 8th, 2016. For the past two hours, I’ve been trying to think of what I could write about for this blog post. The clear Event of the Day has been the U.S. presidential election, but I was determined not to write about Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, partly because I don’t know that much about politics, partly because politics aren’t that artistic, and partly because there isn’t really much more that can be said at this point.
But it’s 10:15 now and I can’t think of anything else, because it’s increasingly looking like Trump is going to win the presidential election.
I’ve always been very confident that I’m on the right side of history. I still think that. When I imagine our ideal society, maybe a couple centuries from now, I imagine widespread tolerance for LGBT people, no discrimination against people of other races, no sexism. I imagine a humble leader. This whole thing isn’t making me question my political opinions; I’ve never once wondered if maybe I was wrong. I mean, what would that even mean? ‘Maybe Mexicans really are rapists’? ‘Maybe the best possible choice is someone who’s never had any experience in politics, who pulls everything out of his ass’? No, obviously seeing these results aren’t making me believe in Trump.
But even as this is happening, I do feel my perspective changing about things. This whole time, I had this core belief that when it came down to it, everything would work out in our favor. Hillary would pull through. That seemed obvious from the beginning, but it felt really sealed back when the “grab ‘em by the pussy” comment happened. I didn’t even have a doubt! Even when the race inexplicably got closer in the past couple weeks, I still didn’t worry much. I woke up this morning knowing this would be a historic day, but I thought that it’d be historic for the right reasons.
I am a fundamentally optimistic person, who believes that people are fundamentally good. But I feel my beliefs slowly…not disintegrating, but eroding a little, maybe.
This is like a sports game. We’re watching this live like it’s SportsCenter. Except the outcome will actually shape our lives. Maybe that’s the thread that ties this to art—I still find myself viewing this all as a narrative, just one that’s existing in real time, in real life.
It continually stuns me to even imagine how actual oppressed peoples must feel right now. I’m terrified, and I am the apotheosis of privilege: white, heterosexual, male, upper-middle class.
It’s 11:40, and watching this live is so torturous. Part of me wishes I just waited until I got the actual results and had time to process it all at once. Seeing this all happening so slowly is so horrifying. CNN’s “new projection” screen triggers a Pavlovian response in me; my heart just starts racing.
I’m oscillating between feeling dead inside—not talking at all, zoning out a little, feeling drained—and feeling overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with too many things: sadness, disappointment, mostly incredulity. And once I start to think about any of the little particulars of this election—people voting third-party instead of voting for Hillary, or the FBI looking into Hillary’s emails with a week left before the election, or any of the stupid fucking people excusing anything that Trump has done—I get so, so enraged. I imagine Barack Obama’s face and I want to cry, because he was the epitome of grace, because for any faults he may have had, he was a real president. I imagine Hillary’s face and I want to cry, because it’s so absurdly unfair that she has to lose, so unjust that I couldn’t even imagine it happening, that I still can’t imagine her not being president, even as increasingly ridiculous things happened to ensure this was the outcome.
It’s 12:05 A.M., and overall I have the feeling that this is a turning point. I don’t know what that means, exactly. I’m not sure how much a Trump presidency will affect my own life. Maybe it will; like I said, I don’t know much about politics. But I’m scared imagining how it could affect others’ lives. People around the world, but even people in my little personal bubble, my LGBT friends, my friends of color, my female friends.
Tomorrow, there is going to be a shared understanding that things are different. My friends will be quiet. My professors will have to acknowledge what happened, if only because it’ll be all that’s on anyone’s minds.
I know, intellectually, that this isn’t the end of everything. As a critic I follow on Twitter said a moment ago, hope and humor aren’t dead; they’re just rare. I know that we can make things right, and I still believe history will work out in our favor. To be honest, I’ve never really had to be a politically active person before. I’ve voted, but I’ve never really protested, never gotten as involved as I should’ve. I regret that now. I will really, really try to change that.
Here is the picture of this historic moment: I sit on my living room couch. My roommate Kimmie and our friend Sean sit on the couch with me. My roommate Kyle sits on the armchair to our left, and our friend Emily on the floor near him. My roommate Erica went to her room, maybe to sleep or maybe just to have some time alone. The rest of us are all watching the computer screen live-streaming on the table in front of us, but we aren’t huddled with anticipation like we were before. Our comments—“oh, it’s tied in Michigan again”—are said in a halfhearted way, like it’s all incidental. It’s 12:23, and we know the outcome.
“If anyone says their vote doesn’t count again, I swear to god…” I say.
“I’ll kill them,” my friend says. “I’ll kill them, and their vote would’ve counted, but now it definitely won’t, because they’re dead.”
We all laugh more than we have in at least an hour, probably two.
I am a lucky person, because of my racial and gender privilege, but also because of my friends, and my family. I am lucky that I’ve been given enough that my optimism hasn’t been completely squashed. I am lucky that I live in a country where so many people did go out and vote, did go out and volunteer and be selfless and try to make the right thing happen.
I still believe in us. But it’s 12:56 A.M., and I am shaken.
