I’ve said to just about anyone who would listen that I felt like the real change from the Obama presidency to the Trump one is that with Obama we had the symbology and pretense of hope. It was all over his campaign, all over his behavior, on his posters, in the title of his book. Living in Obama’s America gave the impression that there could be hope. We were allowed to dream, even as the country ground to a halt.
With Trump, that veneer is gone. There is no false sense of hope coming from this White House. If anything, there is a marked lack of hope being projected. We’ve entered the era of saying the mean things we think, into an era of alternative facts and the slow de-funding of everything that matters so we can reenforce our war machine. Welcome to the new world order.
There’s an interesting side-effect of all of this for me. As a minority who rather easily passes, I’ve not felt the sort of apprehension and lack of safety that I know others feel in public. Being male, I’ve also never faced the fears that women face. I’m a large guy; beyond that making me a magnet for fat jokes, I sort of had it good. No one really messes with a six-foot-two stocky guy with a goatee.
But I have another trait that I’m not sure many people realize (or even respect): I have a very high level of empathy. I’m not going to claim some sort of mutant tower or anything like that, but I’m pretty well attuned to the mood of a room, of people I encounter, etc.
Since the Trump win, I have had serious issues with feeling like allowing people to realize my political affiliation in public. I live in central Indiana; I am in the minority in not loving the current President. I work at a University where the faculty is fairly liberal (all colleges are, right? That’s why Trump wants to destroy the educational system), but the students really aren’t. I always felt like I needed to be careful not to offend.
But I feel as if I might be at risk now. I feel like sometimes I have to be really quiet for fear of exposing myself to what has become a harsh, punishing world.
My wife has been asked numerous times about when we are going to have kids. People who ask that are sort of callous; it makes a number of assumptions and usually upsets Julie a great deal. We do not plan to have kids, and the time has really passed for us without either of us having the earning power. But I’d ask a pointed question to anyone who asks me when I’m going to have kids: why would I bring someone new into this world? Why would I want to invest my love and energy into someone I knew I’d have to leave in this place, this country that is increasingly, by the day, telling anyone who isn’t part of a small subset of the population that they don’t deserve rights, food, shelter, medical care, etc. Why bring a child into a world where I have to explain the Dakota Pipeline and the Washington Redskins and why people are scared to death of the unisex bathroom at Target?
This place isn’t safe. Whoever told you it is… is your enemy.