A New Era

Writing this is hard…

Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election and next year he will be the president of the United States.

I am in a state of disbelief, anger, and sadness. Except, maybe I do believe it because I don’t know if I am surprised. Trump, as bad as he is, is a symptom of an overarching issue with American culture.

I’m angry because like many voters I’m tired of the false promises of the Democratic party and its continued pandering to rich donors. I’m angry because apparently, this pandering was worse than people’s rights being stolen away, accelerated destruction of the environment, and a world that will be more dangerous and cynical than it already is. I’m angry because some of the people who voted for him have been failed by their education systems for years. I’m angry that my life and the lives of my loved ones are potentially in danger. I’m angry that I have to worry about this at all!

I’m sad because I don’t know what the future might hold. I’m sad because as we surpass multiple tipping points related to climate change we are no longer slowing down. I’m sad because people will die if Trump keeps his promise. I’m sad that this isn’t a problem relegated just to the US, but because of our colonial and media influence, this will change the world for the worse. I’m sad that people may lose the few lifelines they have. I’m sad that I may lose my own.

I started this blog to imagine a better future, and I have a bunch of articles lined up about hope, change, and what it takes to make a better world.

Now I get this feeling that I should scrap it all. That it doesn’t feel worth it anymore. That my words will just be lost in an ocean of hatred and fear.

I feel hopeless…

I’m black, autistic, a woman, and a member of the LGBTQ+ community. My friends fulfill all of these categories and my boyfriend is from a family of immigrants. I want to curl into myself and lay in my bed and cry. I may very well do that this weekend.

I resent the world as I continue to go to work despite everything. I’m angry that people around me can walk through the day. I’m struggling not to throw up in my sorrow and spiral into anxiety. My mind even floods me with thoughts about giving up my pursuit of a doctorate, because every day the legitimacy of science in the eyes of the public wears thinner and thinner.

I used to think that after everything that happened in human history, we would have learned our lesson, but no. We forget every four years. We forget every generation. We forget every dynasty.

And so in this moment, I’ve lost hope…

…but it’s not completely gone

Hope is fickle, fleeting, and thin. It can also be used as a weapon. The United States, my home country, is built on the false hope that everyone can be accepted and live and love here. It’s true that the US has many luxuries that other countries don’t have, but at what cost? Bananas at the cost of democracy. Raw materials at the cost of childhood. Cheap products at the cost of upward mobility. No war here in exchange for a war somewhere else. The land of the free: but not for women, people of color, or the sick, or the disabled, or those seeking education, or those who exist outside of the gender binary and heteronormative expectation.

I keep thinking about history in the US and around the world and wonder what went wrong.

It seems it was something set in motion before I was born. The US has been broken for years and maybe it always was. Maybe all past societies were broken. Built on violence and oppression; pillars that often crumble under their own weight. We’ve got so much to seethe about. We’ve got so much to cry about.

And so for now, I mourn. I want to sleep and so I will sleep. I will wake up again though. I will go to work and I will stand and I will write and I will create art and I’ll keep learning and I’ll keep teaching.

In a world that wants me to consume its misery, I chose to create better. It may be flawed and biased and emotional but I will still write. Maybe my efforts are fruitless. I’m not confident America will ever change in the way I think it needs to, but America isn’t the world. America will not last forever. Whether this is the end of our country or not, this has remained true. No nation has lasted. No empire is infinite.

I find sick solace in the fact that no matter how fucked up it will all get, the pain will end. The persecution will end. I’ve been seeing comparisons to idiocracy and us barreling down that future. Maybe we are. A hyper-capitalist world where all the labor of ideas and thought and critical thinking is passed on to the corporations who can afford your attention. I also think about the universe of Star Trek. How canonically chaos and cruelty reigned on earth before Utopia arrived.

Maybe you read this and think I’m crazy. Maybe you read this and relate. Maybe you read this and like me, you cry. Maybe no one reads this but me.

Still, I will continue, because I realize keeping my thoughts to myself has accomplished nothing.

So…

Here I will write about what I am doing to try and make change where I can.

Here I will write about what I want for the future.

Here I will ask what others want for the future.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope Trump's policies won’t lead to the deaths of women and those outside of the gender binary. I hope he lied about deporting 20 million people. I hope he has no association with Project 2025 and it will not be implemented… but to those actions, I would be more surprised than I was about his recent victory.

To my 10 subscribers, I thank you for sticking around with my slow and inconsistent posting and I will continue to write and post at the pace that I can.

Here is a piece of art of mine that is unfinished. I wanted it to have words or dramatic lighting, but I haven’t decided what to do. Something about it feels incomplete, so I haven’t done anything with it. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy it in it's incomplete form and maybe you can tell me what you think might be missing:

It is Atlas forced to carry a world on fire. You cannot see the flames, but where he touches the world, he is burned.