Looks Like We Made It...

Four years ago I was still in shock. I mean that was a big part of it at the beginning. From the moment he was elected until the moment he took office. There was part of you that was just still processing it all. How in the world could this be happening? 

Do you remember the deep breath moment every time you got a breaking news alert on your phone? And there were so many breaking news alerts. Each one telling the last horrific cabinet appointment or speech or promised first day action to "Hold my beer."

I have always suffered from insomnia, but that stretch? From the election to the inauguration? I can remember laying awake at night just sick. How could this be happening? How could he have been elected?

And there was the dealing with people who were telling you how you were being dramatic. How you were overreacting. How it wasn't going to be any different than any other Republican being in office. 

The good thing about having a blog like this is it gives me a space to write about what I am feeling. I like being able to go back and read my own words. To see if what I remember thinking is actually what I thought. What I felt. And mid to end of January 2017? This time period? I was angry. I had moved past just devastated and was pissed. 

Part of it was the way I get pissed every MLK Day. The way white people use Dr. King as a cudgel against Black people and poor people and any people who are fighting for their rights. They pick and choose the most innocuous of his quotes and say, "Look, this is the way you should act." There has been a movement in the Republican party of late to try and claim him as one of their own. Like they do Lincoln. Which, yes, at least with Lincoln he was a Republican. But he wasn't like the modern day party. And Dr. King wasn't either. And honestly, if you have to go back 60 years to find a decent Republican instead of just being a decent one now what does that say about your party anyway?

The American Carnage Inauguration Day Speech? Holy shit...That was fucking something else. 

I was pissed about the reaction to the Women's March. Oh they were so upset about the hats! The hats that came about because of what the person they elected to office said. What he bragged about doing. That didn't bother them, but the hats! 

I was so angry.

And I don't think that baseline anger ever left. It floated around pissed to disgusted to just perturbed, and back again, but never gone.

And now here we are. By this time tomorrow we will have a new president. 

And I'm worried. I've never been as worried about the potential safety of a sitting president as I am right now. And I was plenty worried during Obama's terms. I'm not sure if you have noticed, but we've got a really deep seated racism problem and people who are willing and ready to act on those impulses. I mean the person who is our current president (for less than a day to go) actually jump started his political career on the back of a racist claim against Obama. And instead of it disqualifying him, it found him an audience. Because they didn't want Obama to be president. And marking him as illegitimate made that seem possible. And if they "removed" him wouldn't that make them patriotic heroes? Again, I had friends who thought I was overly dramatic, but it turns out that he got a LOT of death threats, and most of them were wrapped in very colorful racist language. So... yeah... no. 

But now I'm worried about Biden. Because those same people, the ones who looked at Trump and thought he was something they needed, those people have eaten up his lies about the election being stolen. A large group attempted a coup at his behest. Though, of course, he's trying to say that's not what he meant. I'm waiting for the "it was sarcastic" moment, but I guess getting Twitter taken away from him short circuited his normal route. You know the one where he starts by saying it's Fake News he didn't say that. To then saying even if he said it it's not illegal. Then on to he was just being sarcastic. Rinse and repeat over four years.

We've had members of the National Guard removed from their posts because they can't be trusted to guard the Capitol from insurrectionist. And let's back up just a bit on that one, we have the fucking National Guard in place to protect the inauguration of the new president.  The NATIONAL GUARD is on hand to protect against INSURRECTIONISTS. And now we are finding out (or at least some are finding out, some of us have been warning about it for awhile) that members of our own military would gladly be part of an insurrection. 

What 

The

Fuck?

So yeah, I'm scared. I'm worried. I don't know where we go from here. I don't know what happens next. 

Looks like we made it...left each other on the way...

I don't know if we find our way back to being able to see the other side. I'm not sure I'm ready just yet to even try. I need them to all climb out of the deplorable basket (and as your friendly reminder, she gave you two baskets, one was all about economics and feeling abandoned, the other was the deplorable basket of racism and sexism and you all said, she called me deplorable! No, she didn't. You self selected.) I need you all to own your shit. 

I'm worried. 
I'm worried for Almost President Biden. I'm worried for Almost Vice President Harris. I'm worried for their actual safety. For their lives. 

But I'm also worried for all of us. 

Because that whole climbing out of the basket part? It's not happening. They are hunkering down. They are unapologetic. They can't own their own shit because they don't think they've done anything wrong. We aren't past this. We have just started. 

So less than 24 hours to go. Looks like we made it...

Sort of. 

Let's see what the next four years bring and what we can make of them.