We won’t know the results of the election tonight, but we do know one thing:
We hoped for a complete and overwhelming repudiation of this monster and everything he stands for—and that does not appear to be happening.
And it’s fucking heartbreaking.
— Leah McElrath 🏳️🌈🌻 (@leahmcelrath) November 4, 2020
I thought this, too. I really did, and I’m ashamed of myself tonight.
Not because I thought we were better than we were; I always think that and I’m always GOING to think that because you never know when that little bit of belief is going to be enough to make somebody not suck, like I will WILL you to not suck and you will LISTEN. I’m ashamed of myself because I really thought it would be easy to fight fascism.
Like sure, the ideology of white supremacy and resentment that burned down half the world and required the death of millions to defeat will be routed in seconds.
Generations of ingrained hatred toward any challenge to the status quo no matter how mild will just … fall away, in the face of the mildest of resistance.
Four hundred years of subjugating black people and resisting any attempt at their empowerment, just dissolving in daylight.
How dare we? Honestly, how dare we? Like this stuff doesn’t take hold because it’s not attractive, it’s not powerful, it doesn’t WORK for a certain subset of people during a certain amount of time. Fascism in Europe wasn’t some kind of accident, it didn’t arise overnight, and it required the sacrifice of generations to stamp it out. And we thought we’d solve it in a day? In a year? Like who were we kidding?
We thought it should be SIMPLE, to take on the most dangerous authoritarian impulses our dumb chimpanzee brains could throw at us, and just waltz across the finish line? Like we’re in this for peace? Like we wouldn’t have to fucking scrap for it?
Sharpen your teeth, assholes. They were never gonna give an inch we didn’t pry from their cold dead hands.
A.
Thanks for the “crack van” Zoom salon
Thank you for the kick in the keister! You’re right, of course. I was thinking this was just some terrible but temporary aberration, and there would be a landslide awakening last night, and the nightmare would be behind us. But of course, all that happened in the past 4 years happened because these feelings were already there, it just became okay to let them be seen again. Putting that particular djinn back in the bottle is going to take a lot more work. This is the first thing I’ve read that helps make sense of what’s been happening, and prods me to keep up the fight.
Thank you. While we are all disappointed it wasn’t a landslide to prove that America is still America, you’ve knocked some sense into many of us today I think. We need to stay calm, trust Nate Silver, and COUNT ALL THE VOTES. And we’ll fight them in the courts when they try to steal those votes.