I’ve been trying to figure out why this election has literally moved me to tears. Why I wake up in the middle of the night, can’t sleep, and find myself dry heaving in the bathroom. Why the possibility of a Drumpf presidency forces me to spend hours investigating a move to and appkly for visiting professorships in Canada.
In 2004, after the election of Bush for a second time, I was diagnosed with costochondritis. That’s an acute, often temporary inflammation of the costal cartilage, the thing that connects the sternum to everything else. It’s a pain in the middle of my chest. It felt to me like a broken heart.
But nothing compares to how I feel about the possibility of a Drumpf presidency. So I’ve been trying to figure out why. In actuality, the impact of any President on my personal life might be pretty limited. I’m not of child-bearing years, a refugee, or living on the border. True, I’m a woman, but in business I’ve had to deal with despicable men all my life. Men who could and sometimes did have control over my professional life—and though they may have upset me A LOT, a Drumpf presidency isn’t even in the same universe.
It’s that Drumpf being elected would be a repudiation of every principle I believe in and have been taught and continually work on about how one should conduct their life. The Golden Rule; fairness; meritocracy; working hard for what you get; treating everyone with respect; repairing the brokenness of the world… And now this country is perhaps on the cusp of electing someone who, as evidenced by his actions, doesn’t believe in any of these. Instead of doing unto others as you would want others to do to you- he proclaims the importance of taking vengeance on anyone who has crossed him; he hasn’t gotten where he is by exemplary work – but by obfuscation, using “legal” trickery, and generally shafting people who have worked for him; he continually debases people—Muslims, Mexicans, the disabled, women—barely respecting his wife, who at the Al Smith dinner (the centerpiece of which is self-deprecating humor), he instead made her the butt of his jokes; and rather than repairing the broken in the world, he is responsible for breaking it further- for causing divisiveness and hate to spew forward unchecked: “Gas the kikes” “Fuck Mexico” “Violence keeps things exciting” “If Black Lives Matter, go back to Africa.”… So for him to win, means to me that evil will actually win over good. It legitimizes the idea that what people should aspire to is the role of good snake oil salesperson and not worry about abusing others, in word or action.
So feeling how I feel, what could I possibly feel grateful for? That if Drumpf does win, I will have lived most of my life before this cancer took over our country. That for most of my life, although I didn’t necessarily believe life was fair, I did believe in the importance of being a good person, and tried to conduct my life ethically with a good heart and grace. And I feel grateful that if I do move to Canada, I will be going with the best man a woman could ask for, and six of the sweetest, funkiest cats in the world. I wish I had more today, but that’s what I have, and it’s got to be enough.
