Despondency

It was another night with not much sleep. I stayed up until I was so tired I was sure I would fall asleep. And I did sleep for a couple hours but woke up and had to force myself back to sleep. It still wasn’t enough but I think it will get me through the day.

While I am incredibly angry that Trump was elected, that’s not really the source of my despondency. When I made the decision to cut off all conversation about politics with much of my family was when it became obvious that the problem for us is a fundamental difference in our views. There’s just no way I can bring someone else around to my thinking because I see the world so differently and I always have. I’ve been made to feel a traitor to family and country because I don’t agree with what most of them think. I have never been all that great at persuasion so it’s not even like I made any real attempt to change minds within this group. My main goal had always been to call out lies and misinformation but it didn’t make any difference and just increased the gulf between them and me. The funny thing is I ran across two articles in the past couple of weeks with more reasonable arguments against Hilary as president. Sadly I never saw anything like this from those trying to sway my opinion.

The worst part of all, though, is the meanness that comes along with these differences. It was bad enough to see all the name-calling of anyone with any association with liberals or liberal views. Some of these posts on social media were directed at me specifically and at me within a tiny group of family members who didn’t see things the same. But the worst thing I saw was after the result was announced and there was much mockery of those supporting Hilary. It was uncalled for. If Hilary had won and the conservatives had done this I would have been equally upset. It just made me feel that we are at a low point in humanity when there is so little regard for other humans, especially those different from us. I say this from a point of considerable privilege as a white person living in a western country.

On top of this I was also very dismayed to see reports of non-peaceful protests occurring. If these reports are true then I am truly disappointed. At the same time I do imagine that had Hilary won, there would have been not just protests but widespread riots throughout the country. This was a big source of anxiety for me even if she had won. Sigh…

Meanwhile, it’s a matter of moving on in some way at this point. I can’t change what’s happened so it’s important to brace myself to deal with the fallout. For the time being I plan to keep some distance from most of my family. That said, this was made a bit difficult because one of those people just happened to have a birthday yesterday. I really wanted to stay silent at this time but I wasn’t going to be ignore a birthday just because I was feeling angry…it’s not like it’s this person fault to have a birthday…of course, this person was really happy so maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Sigh!