I woke up to a feeling of pure helplessness on Nov. 6. The people of America have fallen into a hostage situation by two completely disparate parties that have completely dissimilar visions for the future of this country. For months, we have been absorbed into a cycle of hate, hysteria and horror at the wholly divergent campaigns that hundreds of candidates have chosen to run on.
What to do with this feeling? It won’t end now, days after Election Day. It won’t end at the Presidential Inauguration, on Jan. 20. And it sure won’t end during Donald Trump’s presidency, which I am positive will be filled with unease.
Going to school on Nov. 6 was like walking through a graveyard. Bleak faces, whispers of devastation, something heavy hung in the air. It felt like the world stopped spinning the second Trump was put back into power.
Part of me feels like it did. Right now the future may seem bleak, it may seem hopeless, but let’s not forget history’s precedence.
Let’s be blunt here, America has become more right-wing now than ever before in modern history. Trump is the first Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years. According to the New York Times, more than 90 percent of counties shifted in favor of President Trump this election cycle.
We’re going through change faster than ever before, more than I think anyone is comfortable with. From Covid-19, an explosion of wars across the planet, to extreme environmental disasters, this decade is anything but normal.
It’s haunting to be going through your formative years in a culture of unrest and uncertainty. But, it’s also monumental. Junior Ash Goodman knows this feeling.
“I was talking to my mom yesterday, the day after the election,” Goodman said. “I had been devastated all day and she knew this. [She] and I were grieving together. She had me sit down with her, and we sat and watched Kamala’s speech, and it reminded me of the flashbulb memories in AP Psych class.”
Flashbulb memories are when people have specific, vivid memories about emotional events such as 9/11 or the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
“I think the moment we watched the speech together will be more embedded in my brain than the moment I found out he won for the second time,” Goodman said. “I think I will remember Kamala’s words when I am old and dying in a hospice bed. I think the power of her empathy means more to my neurons than any of Trump’s hate.”
After going through all the denial, grief and anger, I don’t think I’m as scared anymore.
“You have the capacity to do extraordinary good in the world,” Harris said in her concession speech. “And so to everyone who is watching, do not despair. This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves. This is a time to organize, to mobilize, and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together.”
Harris obviously didn’t win, not the popular vote or the Electoral College. But, as she said herself, “sometimes the fight takes a while.”
It won’t be tomorrow, it won’t be next week, and it may not even be in four years, but just wait. We Americans, we are not good at stagnation. We grow, we drive the future, we are the beating heart of this great world of ours.
In the face of extreme injustice and moral failure, people have always fought. For every Frank Collin there is a Martin Luther King, for every John D. Rockefeller there is an Ida Tarbell, and from what we saw recently, for every Donald Trump there is a Kamala Harris.
America is not lost. Progress cannot just be stopped. America’s bright, lively future will not be thrown away by the icy, frozen heart of one man.
This election was not a complete travesty. In the Senate, Congress and many state constitutions, historical wins still happened. Sarah McBride in Delaware became the first transgender person ever elected to Congress. For the first time in history two black women, Lisa Blunt Rochester and Angela Alsobrooks, will serve in the Senate at the same time. Seven out of ten states also approved ballot measures that will protect or enshrine abortion rights into their state Constitutions.
I know it’s hard to believe, but hope is not gone. Don’t give up on America and don’t give up on yourself.
We will get through this.
