Hi Marilyn (and you too, John) -
Well, nice to hear from you, and thanks for asking, but no, everything is not okay. It's kind of like what I felt when Rod passed away, but maybe 5 or 10 times as bad. I lost a friend then yes, and now it feels like I lost my country. And I've tried analyzing it from a bunch of different viewpoints, but the feeling won't go away. And June is in much the same place - for some of the same reasons, and some a bit different, but in the end about the same.
When I first came to America, it was rough - WWII wasn't very far in the past, and there was a lot of hatred for Japanese people everywhere. For the first few years, until we moved to a better, less rural and more diverse community, I was confronted with the worst of human behavior; sometimes I would get beaten up, sometimes had rocks thrown at me, and got yelled at a lot. For a little kid, that was hard to take. I cried a lot, beat up some other kids in return and I was the one who was punished for it, and I also did a lot of thinking. Eventually I learned that I could use an ability to make friends, and my basic competence, to deflect most of it, and I survived.
Ever since then, I, and a whole lot of other people in America, have been living in the fiction bubble that things were getting better, that maybe racism was a thing of the past, with only a few hold out pockets of dumb ass redneck bigots here and there. Boy, were we all wrong.
Since Barack Obama was elected, the howling hordes of crazy Tea Party Birther assholes nationwide have come out of the shadows and continually reared their ugly heads to do what they could to delegitimize our first black President. And now, whipped into a new frenzy by an explicitly racist and fear-based election campaign, the white nationalist neo-Nazi fringe has shown they aren't a fringe at all, and put the original Birther, the KKK endorsed Trump, and his entire party, into total and complete control of power in the US government.
As a result of that, there is this:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/trump-supporter-muslim-registry-internment-camps.html
No, I don't think I and my children, or others of Japanese ancestry will again be rounded up, but I weep tears of despair and rage when I think about the sheer terror that Muslim families, as well as families of undocumented immigrants, are living in right now. That's right - terror. The families that will be targeted will most likely be left alone, but they will always live in terror, beginning now. And that is the whole point behind why the despicable people who dream these things up, do them.
We have elected a terrorist, a man who made a pitch to the country based on fear and naked bigotry, and the consequences of that will shadow America for a long time. The over 50% of white women and almost 70% of white men who voted this monstrosity in, as well as all those who chose not to vote at all, have shown themselves for who they really are, and the picture is not a pretty one. A national registry for an entire religious group wasn't such a great idea in its original German, and the translation isn't any better.
So, does how I feel have anything to do with maybe being a sore loser, my team lost, boo hoo, so get over it? But I know it's not that, since I didn't feel like this in past lost elections, and also literally tens of millions of others are having very similar reactions, at this very moment. I worked hard, and so did a lot of us who were paying attention, to make others aware of what was going on and what the stakes were, and maybe that makes the outcome worse, I don't know.
I'm not good company right now, and I don't know when I will be. I pick up a guitar or mandolin or bass, or sit at the piano, and the notes won't come. I am not consumed with angry thoughts or have fear for the future; it's more that something has died inside of me, some sort of deep grief, and I have no inspiration anymore. I rake leaves, I make meals and feed the family, and write blog posts. I go for bike rides, and last weekend I helped my kid make a costume for the Eucon comic and game convention, and I do all the things I usually do every day. But some sacred fire has gone out, and it's so difficult to make music, or sing songs, that it's hard to motivate myself to get started. Eventually I'll be okay, and hopefully so will we all.
I have no wish to go to any open mics in Cottage Grove or Marcola and hang out with the country folk, and I don't much feel like working up a set to do at a benefit event for the school district in the redneck part of town. Besides being disappointed, I don't hold any real animosity toward all the basically good and kind people who nevertheless voted for hatred and division; I've lived around them most of my life, and I also know how easy it is for charismatic leaders to incite mob behavior in simple, impressionable minds. It's just that at this time I don't feel like being around the simple folks.
June and I went to Portland the week before the election, and when we visited the Japanese Garden in Washington Park, it struck me how great it felt to be in a crowd of such diversity - literally children and women and men from all over the world, all shades of all colors, and speaking in many different languages and accents. That's my dream of the perfect country to live in, and it's just a dream, but may I eventually find it. Right now, it feels like Paradise lost.
---Jim
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This post was originally published at Origami Night Lamp.
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