I watched the victory speech of President-Elect Joe Biden last Saturday night with my infant daughter in my arms, fresh off an empowering word from Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. It was a special moment for me as a father, being able to point out to my daughter the female on screen, a public servant chosen by the people, not merely married to one.
Just as I was beginning to well up with emotion, my wife turned to me and said, “it’s really nice to see decent people waving the flag for once.”
A flag is just a flag waving freely on a pole until it’s loaded down with centuries of baggage. American imperialists, crooked cops, white nationalists, right-wing Twitter bots – they have all contributed to the downfall of an inherently neutral symbol. I took a walk through my neighborhood Toluca Lake, California, later that night, a small neighborhood dotted with Biden-Harris campaign signs. I spotted an American flag in a window and noted that it was not hung outside. What can I assume about this person? Are they ashamed to show their patriotism in this neighborhood? Am I reading too much into their décor?
To get it out of the way: I view the last week of American politics as a victory for democracy, science, education and decency. Ignoring Trump for a moment, there are any number of trash individuals carried by nepotism and sycophancy that will now be dropped into a wormhole. Betsy fucking Devos, an embarrassment to anyone in education, is my personal favorite ousting. I will feel so much safer as a teacher when her smarmy ass, so thinly veiling the incompetence behind it, no longer holds relevance. Fuck her.
And yeah, my mood is elevated. I have seldom been more plugged into the goings-on of my nation and exited it feeling enlightened and empowered. Politics are a dirty game, but true activism can connect you to your fellow man like little else. And in a year marked by social distance, connection within a community is an oasis. This past week has felt like a collective tug-of-war between opposing sides and now, if but for a moment, I get to rest.
Certainly, I am feeling better about the health of my country than I did a week ago, if only because its disease has been identified and a treatment selected by the majority. But will it be adopted? The wonderful news that Pfizer’s long-awaited COVID-19 vaccine possesses at least 90% efficacy makes this metaphor literal. No matter how well-founded in science, facts, and logic, there will be a loud and aggressive faction of my country that will fight to stop progress. Their reaction may be founded in misinformation. Some of them may not even know why they feel the way they do.
And so, even great strides are streaked with doubt and cynicism when only half of the population shares in them. An election involving an incumbent president is a referendum on the current administration’s policies and execution. Nearly 75 million Americans, accounting for a record turnout, wanted to try something new. Much to the befuddlement of many Democrats, 70 million Americans did not. Those 70 million people waved American flags at their rallies just like the other 75 million did at theirs.
I haven’t spoken to my parents since the election. I love them dearly and respect their intellect and insight in most matters. But we occupy different bubbles and appear to now receive information from competing sources. It is increasingly difficult to reach across that gap and share ideas the way we used to, and that goes for all political discourse. The deflection, memeification of complex information, political-party-as-sports-team mentality and tendency to reduce disagreeable revelations to “fake news” has made it impossible to debate opposing views in a constructive manner.
I am physically and mentally exhausted by having a president who actively brings out the worst in people. Donald Trump brings out the hatred in his followers and he brings out the fear and dread in the rest of us. It's easy to excuse this as simply bringing to the surface what was already wrong with America, but we do bear a small responsibility in not making the people around us actively worse. You can reach out to people and offer them respect, even if they don’t deserve it, and some may live up to expectations.
My support for Biden didn’t so much stem from his policies – I supported Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren ahead of him. Rather, I supported the way conducts himself and the decorum that he encourages from his supporters. I desperately hope for another shot at having decent conversations with my neighbors about things that actually matter. I'm tired of speaking in memes and slogans when there are very real problems that we need to figure out together. We do need to find some semblance of unity.
But that raises the question: unity with whom? A gaggle of Klansmen and Channer trolls who sincerely believe that vaccines are poison, that the election was rigged and that the opposing party is a Chinese Satan-worshipping death cult predicated on the sacrifice of unborn children? Surely, an ideological purist would balk at the idea. Truthfully, when Joe Biden speaks about national unification, it makes me feel a bit ill inside. I also know he is at least partially right.
Truthfully, I have been radicalized. I am just as at fault as anyone else with regards to surrendering my neutrality to the sway of information. I have my own bubble, just as my countrymen have theirs. And yes, it has fermented in hatred. I really do hate the MAGA chud motherfuckers that have spewed invective and Pepe memes for the past 5 years. I hate that they tained my relationship with my parents by suckering them in, made me doubt the foundations of my Christian faith by being such horrendously awful examples of it, and continue to verbally and physically harass anyone who isn’t just like them. If someone who falls into that category is reading this, please know that I do not respect your views, but I do respect your right to have them and am not looking to silence you. I only privately wish that you would go away.
So, how can I love my country if I hate half the people in it? How I one be a good, empathic person if I am full of hatred? These are questions that have been rattling in my brain for the past several days. Believe it or not, I love people. My life revolves around the success of others; I work with at-risk students every day, doing the most to help them receive their high school diplomas and contribute to society. Some of them are Trump supporters and that doesn’t change the way I treat them. People see me and assume that I am a giving, understanding person because I talk big game. But I don’t love Trump supporters. I cannot reconcile the actions of my countrymen, who will likely never change. The election will lead to a change of administrations, but it takes more than one man to change hearts and minds. It takes a cultural shift that begins with parents.
The one point I want to end on is that, as disappointing as it may be, hope is worth holding onto. Earlier this year, as the pandemic began in earnest, I lost hope. I couldn’t find work, I was terrified for my safety and the safety of my loved ones, and I saw no path forward. I was explicitly suicidal. This is what life is like without hope. I am fortunate enough to have friends and family who pulled me back from the ledge, and from April forward I began to accept that while life was unlikely to change for the better any time soon, it “could” change. Open-ended statements like these are the core of cognitive behavioral therapy, and they made a big difference in my road to recovery.
Hope comes with risk, of course. The Barack Obama administration was built on hope and many progressive voters were left wanting afterward for reasons that were, in part, not Obama’s fault at all. The elation and optimism I felt when I saw the turnout for this election was unparalleled in a dark, seemingly hopeless year, but it was quickly dashed when I saw what that meant: a record number of people think my ideology is full of shit. Progressive Democrats are not only a minority; they are, in fact, the Problem! I help to make an already sick country that much more toxic! We will soon have a pleasant, educated and experienced leader. That is good. But that won’t stop half the country from seething at the idea. For all of these reasons and more, hoping for change in a country built on racism and conquest is an enormous risk.
Nonetheless, as I listened to Joe Biden speak about unity and togetherness and American respectability in that crowd of American flags, I softly cried. I cried because, deep down, I still long for those ideals. I want the melting pot to be more than oil and water, even if I don’t like oil. As long as I live, I will always hope for a return to the days when we accepted that opposing ideas could have merit. To arguing around the dinner table in a vain attempt at understanding. Even if I don’t deserve it, even if my hatred is the root of it, I still hope that people on the other side of the aisle will reach out to me when I am too weak of a man to do the same. I have let my country down and fallen short of my ideals, but I know that it is full of better people than me. It is through them that we will turn things around.