I came to the 2020 election cycle a much different person than I was in 2016.
Back then, I believed that America was progressing. This year, I knew progress was not a given, and could vanish in the stroke of a presidential pen.
Back then, I thought we were coming together. This year, I saw a nation falling apart.
Back then, I was certain that hatreds were dying, that truth would eventually wear down ignorance, that no sane person or country could possibly look in the mirror and aspire to be a monster. This year, I knew different.
For four years, I watched as worst-case scenarios repeatedly proved to be too optimistic for reality.
I watched as "alternative facts"- actual acknowledged lies, not simple ignorance or misunderstanding, but proven falsehoods brazenly manufactured and marketed as such - became the basis for national and international policy.
I watched a regime smear its excrement over every honor and every office within its reach, and do it with a smirk.
I watched a "president" and his family praise the worst among us as "very fine people," openly encouraging them to "have fun" and unleash tactics worthy of terrorists upon their fellow Americans.
I watched images straight out of an ISIS recruitment video - machine-gun toting "militias" taking over state capitals, caravans of pickups waving giant flags shutting down infrastructure - play out in American cities.
I watched law enforcement unleashed upon the very populace they nominally served and protected.
I watched civility crumble and laws shrugged off - outright laughed off.
I watched revelations and monstrosities that should've ended careers get brushed off as yesterday's news... sometimes before the actual next day.
I watched the utter failure of our media and the majority of journalists to perform their jobs, or to even remember that journalism was supposed to be about more than advertising dollars and clickbait headlines and appeasing power.
And I felt like a fool for not realizing before that none of this was new. All of this had been here, in the America I grew up in, the America I pledged allegiance to every morning in school and sang praises to in countless songs, and I was just too blindered and privileged and ignorant to really see it. I'd known there were monsters, known there was a different justice for rich and poor (and to a certain degree black and white, not to mention male and female and other), but I'd figured these were small problems, workable problems, fixable problems if we aspired to the best of us... and America was supposed to be all about aspiring to the best of us, wasn't it? For four years, I was forced to look into a mirror and witness the worst of us. In the news and on the internet, in every foul word praised by the masses and every outright laugh at justice undermined and equality thwarted, the entire country was staring into a mirror and seeing the worst of us, who we were when we were encouraged toward our lowest, basest, most divisive and selfish and backwards and outright evil selves.
Surely, I thought - even the newer, rather more jaded and cynical me - surely, after four years of this, no American could possibly look in that mirror another moment without being utterly revolted, without wanting a change. I knew that the cult - the 40-odd percent base that never significantly wavered - was likely beyond all reach at this point, American blood long replaced by orange kool-aid and synapses filled with convoluted conspiracies about Deep State operatives. But that still left about 60% of the population that should, by any reasonable measure of humanity, have been angered and terrified and disgusted by that reflection.
Then came Election Day 2020.
Once again, hope appears to have won. The country, once more, turns toward tomorrow instead of burrowing back into a warped vision of the past.
And yet, for all the elation I feel tonight after finally watching President-Elect Biden speak... still, I cannot help but feel a deep and shamed sadness.
The popular vote was indeed won by over four million... out of nearly 150 million people.
Over seventy million people, after four years staring into that mirror, four years of seeing what happens when the worst of us is elevated to the highest halls of power... over seventy million people decided that they wanted more of that.
I honestly do not know which scares (or angers) me more: the ones who openly embrace the division and mockery and selfish impulse to hurt and destroy, or the ones who smile and shrug and decide that becoming monsters isn't so bad because of whatever rationalization they happen to use.
What I do know is that any elation I feel, any spark of optimism, cannot help but be tempered. We have all looked into the mirror now. We have seen the monsters revealed - the ones around us, and within ourselves. We cannot pretend they aren't there, that they aren't dangerous, that they are simply going to go away with time, or will vanish if we ignore them.
And four years seems like much, much too short a time to even begin to address them...
