The long battle has ended, and the forces of darkness have won. None of us can even imagine the devastation that lies ahead during the next four years, and right now I don’t even want to try. I don’t want to tell myself that we’ll survive the way Americans always have, I don’t want to give myself a pep talk about how everything will be okay, and I don’t want to see any more ignorant social media posts from Trump voters gloating because their side won. None of us won. We all lost. Yes, we’re going to somehow get through the next four years, but today all I can do is cry. Tomorrow I’ll make a plan for going forward, but today I mourn.
As the shock set in during the wee hours of November 9, I finally had to turn off the TV, and then I had a few moments of inconsolable weeping. I’ve been on the losing side of presidential elections before; and everybody knows from the outset that one side is going to win, one side is going to lose, and we may or may not be lucky enough to be on the winning side. Those are givens. This election, however, was not the same; this election was not about which qualified candidate was better qualified to lead. This election was a referendum on the American way of life, on our collective American values, and those things lost. The worst thing that happened this election was and is trying to treat it like a normal election. It’s not just the Democrats who lost Tuesday night. We all lost. We lost our country and our self-respect, and we can’t even begin to comprehend at this moment the far-reaching consequences of our fellow citizens’ actions. I’m heartbroken not because my side lost but because my country lost.
I mourn today for my country. The America that elected Donald Trump as president is not the America I thought I lived in, and it’s not the America I want to live in. The America that listened to an emotional and intellectual toddler insult women, minorities, Muslims, the handicapped, veterans, heroes, heroes’ families, immigrants, people of color, and anyone else who got under his very thin skin and decided he’d be perfect for the job of the presidency is not the America I thought I lived in. The America that sold out our country to the most vulgar person ever to apply for the job of being president is not the America I thought I lived in. By vulgar, I don’t mean just his language; I mean his coarseness, his lack of class, his lack of dignity.
The America that heard him talk about building a giant wall and deporting millions of people who are living peaceably among us and thought those were good ideas is not the America I thought I lived in. The America that sold out our country’s values and their own values because they wanted someone who professed to share their views on abortion to make the next several Supreme Court appointments and were too conned by the con man to realize that this person lacks the judgment or self-control to make wise choices, and lacks the honesty even to make the choices he promised them he’d make, for our high court is not the America I thought I lived in. The America that listened to a presidential candidate stand on a debate stage with the whole world as witnesses and threaten to jail his opponent and who led chants at his rallies to “Lock her up” is definitely not the America I thought I lived in. My America is not a banana republic!
I mourn today because I no longer know my country, because the values I’ve been taught during my decades as an American citizen have all been reversed, because the people who are my neighbors, friends, family, co-workers voted that they don’t respect those values any more. They voted to erase 240 years of progress in the “great experiment” and to say to the whole world that our “city on a hill” is a sham, that we are really just a bunch of ignorant, bigoted, misogynistic cretins who can’t even pick an intelligent leader for ourselves much less for the rest of the free world.
I mourn for my black friends, my Latino friends, my LGBT friends who now fear for their lives and livelihoods. I lived through the ‘60s and all of the years since then when my country made remarkable strides to reverse the sins of our past and to make life safer and more fair for all the people. We were still working on it; we hadn’t gotten it just right, but we had come a long way from the America of my childhood. Now millions of my fellow citizens have voted to reverse those decades of progress and return to an America even more bigoted than the period when I was growing up.
I mourn for my grandchildren who will read about this dark moment in their history books and will try to make sense of what their parents’ and grandparents’ generation did to the world they were born into. Their teachers will tell them how America used to be, and they’ll wonder why anyone would have interrupted that progress and would have been ignorant enough to elect a fascist demagogue to change their world into something dark and scary. I held my 7-month-old firstborn son on my lap and cried as I listened to Richard Nixon’s resignation speech, unable to believe what I was hearing. Presidents don’t resign; presidents don’t commit crimes. What kind of world were my son and his siblings yet unborn going to grow up in? Now I weep for the world in which my 11-, 8-, 5-, and 3-year-old grandchildren will grow up. My only consolation, and it sounds hollow right now, is that I’ll be able to look each one of them in the eye and say “Your Mimi did her best.”
I mourn for my faith, that anchor that has grounded and sustained me throughout my life, which I see now turned into a political weapon not in any way reflective of the humble teachings of Jesus. Jesus’ love has been replaced by hate—hate for the “other,” whoever that may be at any given time—Jesus’ compassion has been replaced by disgust and cruelty, Jesus’ “cup of cold water” has been replaced by a cup of bitter gall. Donald Trump would not be our president-elect today were it not for the evangelical vote. I’m not an evangelical, but I’m a Christian, and today I’m ashamed of those with whom I share that name.
I mourn for President Obama who has given us eight years of an intelligent, moral, scandal-free presidency; who has led with warmth, love, and compassion; who has made errors in judgment but not in character. Now he must graciously receive his polar opposite and hand the baton to the vulgarian who will shred his legacy without thought or discretion and will implement and validate everything the Do-Nothing Congress has done to him for the last eight years. He doesn’t deserve this.
I mourn for Hillary Clinton, a woman who has given her entire life to public service and without whose service and spirit the world would be poorer. With all of her flaws and errors in judgment, she did not deserve to be subjected to the mean-spirited campaign she has just endured. She did not deserve to stand on a debate stage and go through the motions of having an intellectual debate with a person so much her intellectual inferior. I wept again watching her graciously concede defeat to a person not qualified to iron her pantsuits. Nobody feels good when your team loses; but if you know you got outplayed by a team with superior skill and strategy, at least you know you lost “fair and square.” What really hurts down deep is losing to a lousy team because you had an off day, the weather was bad, the field was wet, or the officials made unfair calls. Hillary Clinton did not deserve the humiliation of losing to a loud-mouthed, vulgar ignoramus.
I know I will find the spirit to accept the reality of this nightmare and to live through the next four years with all the energy, grace, and strength I can muster. I know I will use my white privilege to support my friends who will be affected in ways I can’t imagine. I know the sun will rise every day for the next four years and I will still have love and friendship and faith, but I’m not ready to think of those things yet. Today all I can do is mourn.