I found out that Kamala Harris lost and Trump would be our next president at about 1 o’clock in the morning, when Tatum woke me up, crying. She fell asleep with me, inconsolable. I knew how she felt.
While more than half the country clearly appreciates Trump’s vision for our future, I find it destructive. I see dismantling of basic checks and balances in our trifold system, stripping away of women’s rights not only to make decisions about our health and bodies but also about our very lives—since having a child only gets started at delivery (see last post); destabilizing our economy since I don’t believe that this administration cares very much about the working or middle class, in spite of their sales pitch; ignoring the planet’s health; and decreasing our sense of safety with each other and in the world.
It makes me sad, more than anything because I love the country we have built up over the last few hundred years. It takes so long to build and it’s so easy to kick structures down. To reflect on this, I took the children to see the Constitution and Bills of Rights the week of the election. It was moving.
My hope is the incoming administration will bring honor to those men who constructed our cool system of democracy. I hope they will restore more dignity and respect to people who feel left out or disrespected. I hope they will bring better budgets at the household level and the country level, and feelings of hope, trust and pride in all that the United States represent. Will they do the good works that my conservative grandfather would be proud to be associated with?
Will they honor the vision of George Washington, who represented the best in bestowed and elected power by modeling how to carry power lightly and peacefully, handing it over graciously when one’s turn is up?
My hope is that sadness is transformed into pride. Sometimes we lose our lives to find them when the broken pieces reassemble into something even better. Let’s see what each of us can do individually, collectively to reassemble into the better.
@theterrace 