Thoughts on the next four years
I sincerely hope this is one of the only posts I have to tag with “politics.” It’s not a subject I particularly enjoy writing about, as I’d much rather be goofing around making a video game like I intended to. But, for reasons I will get into, I’ve been having a serious anxiety attack since last night, and I need to write as a form of self-therapy.
I’m not a big fan of Hillary Clinton, but I did support her over Trump for a very good reason: she’s qualified and capable of doing the job of President of the United States. She would have brought a sense of continued stability (and the markets seem to agree). She’s not perfect, but no candidate ever is. Trump on his own scares me not just because he’s a bigoted bully, but because he has no idea how to run a country, and I’m pretty sure he’s just going to make a fool of himself (and the rest of us) when it comes to foreign policy. He doesn’t have a diplomatic bone in his body. His domestic policy will probably be just as bad (don’t worry, I’ll get to it in a minute).
But it isn’t just Trump. Last night, America voted to put the GOP firmly in power of our entire government. This is a party that very much wants to take rights away from people like me. Trump in particular has gone on the record of wanting to undo keystone decisions made by the Supreme Court, and now he’s in a position to do it. His little monkeychump Mike Pence specifically likes to target people like me.
Last year my wife and I had a genuine feeling that this country might be going in the right direction, that things might get better for us. After the Supreme Court decision granting universal marriage equality, we even moved back to Texas, a place we had been essentially exiled from because of our sexual orientation. It was great to be near friends and family again. Now it seems that we may have to change our minds again. In 2004, when Bush was re-elected, I joked about wanting to move to Canada simply because I disagreed with his policies. Now my wife and I seriously talked this morning about where we want to move to just so we can be safe. That’s messed up.
And it’s not just the governmental impact. I do have a very real concern that if Trump wants to reverse a decision like Roe v. Wade, it wouldn’t be a far stretch for him to try and reverse Obergefell v. Hodges. But more importantly, I fear the people that Trump has empowered. His victory has vindicated some of the worst parts of society who supported him. White supremacists, homophobes, misogynists all rallied to him during the election cycle, and whether he directly acknowledges it or not, he appealed to them. I’m not implying they’re the majority that voted him—far from it—but they will see his election as tacitly endorsing their views. If America is willing to accept a president with these qualities, then certainly it’s fine for common people. As I said before, I now genuinely fear for my safety going forward, and that of other minorities Trump has spewed hate towards. In particular, living in a red state like Texas makes me feel even more vulnerable, as there is certainly a higher concentration of Trump followers here.
At this point, though, I honestly don’t know what I should do. My fears are merely assumptions at this point (though they are assumptions based on the well-documented past behavior of our president-elect and his associates). I sincerely hope that our slide into a fascist state can be abated. The best I can hope for is that Trump is a one-term president and maybe we can return to some sense of sanity in 2020. But that sure feels like a long way off.