{"id":7860,"date":"2016-11-09T02:15:15","date_gmt":"2016-11-09T06:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/?p=7860"},"modified":"2016-11-09T02:15:15","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T06:15:15","slug":"a-turning-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/2016\/11\/09\/a-turning-point\/","title":{"rendered":"A Turning Point."},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s 10:10 P.M. on November 8th<\/sup>, 2016. For the past two hours, I\u2019ve 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\u2019t know that much about politics, partly because politics aren\u2019t that artistic, and partly because there isn\u2019t really much more that can be said at this point.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s 10:15 now and I can\u2019t think of anything else, because it\u2019s increasingly looking like Trump is going to win the presidential election.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always been very confident that I\u2019m 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\u2019t making me question my political opinions; I\u2019ve never once wondered if maybe I was wrong. I mean, what would that even mean? \u2018Maybe Mexicans really are rapists\u2019? \u2018Maybe the best possible choice is<\/em> someone who\u2019s never had any experience in politics, who pulls everything out of his ass\u2019? No, obviously seeing these results aren\u2019t making me believe<\/em> in Trump.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cgrab \u2018em by the pussy\u201d comment happened. I didn\u2019t even have a doubt! Even when the race inexplicably got closer in the past couple weeks, I still didn\u2019t worry much. I woke up this morning knowing this would be a historic day, but I thought that it\u2019d be historic for the right reasons.<\/p>\n

I am a fundamentally optimistic person, who believes that people are fundamentally good. But I feel my beliefs slowly\u2026not disintegrating, but eroding a little, maybe.<\/p>\n

This is like a sports game. We\u2019re watching this live like it\u2019s SportsCenter. Except the outcome will actually shape our lives. Maybe that\u2019s the thread that ties this to art\u2014I still find myself viewing this all as a narrative, just one that\u2019s existing in real time, in real life.<\/p>\n

It continually stuns me to even imagine how actual oppressed peoples must feel right now. I\u2019m terrified, and I am the apotheosis of privilege: white, heterosexual, male, upper-middle class.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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\u2019s \u201cnew projection\u201d screen triggers a Pavlovian response in me; my heart just starts racing.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m oscillating between feeling dead inside\u2014not talking at all, zoning out a little, feeling drained\u2014and 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\u2014people voting third-party instead of voting for Hillary, or the FBI looking into Hillary\u2019s emails with a week left before the election, or any of the stupid fucking people excusing anything that Trump has done\u2014I get so, so enraged. I imagine Barack Obama\u2019s 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\u2019s face and I want to cry, because it\u2019s so absurdly unfair that she has to lose, so unjust that I couldn\u2019t even imagine it happening, that I still can\u2019t imagine her not<\/em> being president, even as increasingly ridiculous things happened to ensure this was the outcome.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 12:05 A.M., and overall I have the feeling that this is a turning point. I don\u2019t know what that means, exactly. I\u2019m not sure how much a Trump presidency will affect my own life. Maybe it will; like I said, I don\u2019t know much about politics. But I\u2019m scared imagining how it could affect others\u2019 lives. People around the world, but even people in my little personal bubble, my LGBT friends, my friends of color, my female<\/em> friends.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow, there is going to be a shared understanding that things are different. My friends will be quiet. My professors will have<\/em> to acknowledge what happened, if only because it\u2019ll be all that\u2019s on anyone\u2019s minds.<\/p>\n

I know, intellectually, that this isn\u2019t the end of everything. As a critic I follow on Twitter said a moment ago, hope and humor aren\u2019t dead; they\u2019re 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\u2019ve never really had to be a politically active person before. I\u2019ve voted, but I\u2019ve never really protested, never gotten as involved as I should\u2019ve. I regret that now. I will really, really try to change that.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t huddled with anticipation like we were before. Our comments\u2014\u201coh, it\u2019s tied in Michigan again\u201d\u2014are said in a halfhearted way, like it\u2019s all incidental. It\u2019s 12:23, and we know the outcome.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf anyone says their vote doesn\u2019t count again, I swear to god\u2026\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll kill them,\u201d my friend says. \u201cI\u2019ll kill them, and their vote would\u2019ve<\/em> counted, but now it definitely won\u2019t, because they\u2019re dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

We all laugh more than we have in at least an hour, probably two.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve been given enough that my optimism hasn\u2019t been completely squashed. I am lucky that I live in a country where so many people did<\/em> go out and vote, did<\/em> go out and volunteer and be selfless and try to make the right thing happen.<\/p>\n

I still believe in us. But it\u2019s 12:56 A.M., and I am shaken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s 10:10 P.M. on November 8th, 2016. For the past two hours, I\u2019ve 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2178,"featured_media":7861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1048,1046,1047],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7860"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2178"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7862,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7860\/revisions\/7862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}