I felt the same amount of mild panic and anguish that everyone who was anti-Trump felt when he crossed the Electoral threshold to become our next President Elect. What happens now? Will he implement all the things he claimed that he would, even the unconstitutional ones? How did the candidate that was backed by the KKK and the American Nazi Party win? That alone should be a deal breaker! WTF, America?
The next day, hate crimes spiked. Muslim women in hijab were forcibly uncovered. Gay Pride flags were burned on people's own property. Bullies in school have gotten cocky. Swastikas abound. A few of my friends were harassed in the street regarding their voting rights being taken away. Someone slowed down his PT Cruiser to tell me to get a job and call me a dumb [something] monkey, doubling the flow of my racist period. I usually only get called a racial epithet once a month, and I thought I had already met my quota when earlier in the week someone told called me a “dumb nigger” for thinking that CSS is a programming language...which is something I never claimed…
Protests popped up everywhere, some of them violent. The vitriol online hit a high I had not seen since...the last presidential election. Besides racist conservative assholes calling Michelle Obama an “ape in heels” and sexist liberal assholes sharing more nude pictures of Melania Trump, the arguments amongst my friends and acquaintances yielded many hurt feelings and blocked former friends. I had to take a break from participating in social media for a week or so. I only observed, just to keep up with the news.
The future will always be uncertain, but after about two weeks, it doesn't look like much will change. I’m sure many will disagree, given some of Trump’s initial appointments to his cabinet. Steve Bannon is to be Chief of Staff. Former CEO of Breitbart Steve Bannon is reviled as a rabid anti-semite, but that is an unfair description. Steve Bannon is a rabid racist and misogynist as well. He likely has rabies. He presided over a “news” organization that would be able to demonize minorities, no matter how innocuous the story. A story that would headline here on Earth-1 as “Chicago Teen Saves Kitten from Burning Pet Store” would headline in Bannon’s Earth-1849 as “BLM Thug Loots Innocent Cat From Building He Just Burned”. He recently stated that there are too many Asian CEOs in Silicon Valley, and that they may disrupt civic society. The fact is that there is only 1 Asian executive per 201, but that is likely one too many for Bannon. He has found someone else to scapegoat for any of his shortcomings. Congratulations, Asians. You’re the new Jews.
Trump also picked Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General. If the word “Alabama” wasn’t enough of a clue, Jeff Sessions is one of the US Senate’s most prominent bigoted pieces of shit, likely second only to Iowa Senator Steve King. Sessions is a champion of anti-amnesty programs. His racist apologies for the KKK cost him federal judgeship. He is anti-abortion, and anti-women’s rights in general. And if there were anyone who would spearhead a Muslim registry program, Sessions is definitely the “man” to do it.
Despite these two appointments, I still don’t think much will change. I say this, because even before January, Trump is rolling back on some of the things he said during the race. Remember when he said Hillary Clinton should be in jail? On 60 Minutes he did a 180, stating that she couldn’t have been a nicer person, and her family is beautiful. He rolled back his staunch “repeal and replace” rhetoric on Obamacare. Even his promise to build a wall on the Mexican Border is faltering. Now he says that he’d be OK with a fence. We should have expected that. His entire campaign was founded on offense. I AM NOT SORRY ABOUT THAT PUN. Despite his choices of white supremacists for AG and and Chief of Staff, his initial choice for CoS was Reince Priebus. The supposedly anti-establishment, outside-the -Beltway candidate chose the head of the Republican National Committee as a cabinet member. How anti-establishment will you be if YOU HIRE THE ESTABLISHMENT? Moreover, when he met with Obama, every image of them together was of Obama sitting tall and proud, and Trump slouched like he had been defeated. I know this look. This is what fuckboys do when they talk about you LOUD behind your back, but can’t bear to look you in the eye. I saw this look in a dude who called me a nigger as I was riding my bike, but was meek as a kitten when I rode up on the sidewalk and demanded that he repeat himself. Trump obviously is out of his depth, and he knows it. He has not been inaugurated yet, and he’s already a mess. Therefore, I’m not as worried about this Trump-transition. That does NOT mean, though, that things will be better.
Simply by virtue of the amount of hate crimes and harassment by emboldened bigots in the first week of the election, I can tell that white supremacy will be a little bit more normalized, kind of like the way it was prior to the 21st Century. I should expect to be called “nigger” bi-weekly instead of monthly. If Sessions is going to be Attorney General, we should expect all the investigations into police bias and sexual assault on campuses and in education institutions will stop, because Sessions doesn’t give a damn about women or black people. Homophobic bigots will be able to hide behind their hate by claiming “state’s rights” or “religious liberty”, just the way racist bigots did in the 1960s. I know what to expect, but that doesn’t mean we should be resigned to it. It means we now know what we need to do to combat it.
I saw a lot of my white friends distraught over the Trump win. How could (less than) half of America vote for someone who is such an anathema to America’s promise of equality? My friends of color saw this as a phenomenon called “Tuesday”, though. We’ve been talking about this stuff for decades. Trump’s greatest achievement prior to even becoming president was to show liberal white people who were doubtful of marginalized people’s claims that bigotry in America is alive, well, and festering in the open. This is not to say that all Trump voters are racist, misogynist, anti-Muslim, homophobic bigots. Some of them just don't give a fuck about people of color, women, non-Christians, or the LGBT community. They claim it's about the economy, and we must take them at their word. They think that electing someone who bankrupted businesses, cheated people out of pay for their work, and ran his businesses like pyramid schemes or straight up racketeering fronts is the remedy to a president who cut the national deficit by $1 trillion and fomented continual job growth. For some, money > people's lives. Don't you feel better for know who they are? It is callous to say that everything will be all right (I am guilty of saying it myself), but trust me, we’ve survived dismissive leaders since Thomas Jefferson’s initiation of the #AllLivesMatter movement. We’ll survive this. But we won’t by sitting on our asses and doing nothing.
Minorities of all races, religions, creeds, and genders, you have to be EXTRA whatever you are. For the next 4 years, I’m going to be black as fuck. No...I’m going to be black as FUUUUCCCKKKK! I’m replacing my white noise machine with an endless loop of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King speeches. My alarm is going to be Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”. I’m gonna talk through ALL your movies,drop ebonics ALL through my vernacular, bump my music loud and bass heavy, write revolutionary slam poetry, do my taxes on time, dance through TSA Pre-Check, all types of black shit. I encourage other groups to do it up, too. Ladies, woman UP. Gays, SLAY. Latinos, Viva le Revolucion! Jews, get Schwifty! Muslims, Hijab so hard [I have no idea how that would look]. And if you see someone getting shit, DEFEND YOUR COMRADES. If you are not a straight white man, you are a target for derision in Trump’s America. We all need to be allies in this world. Our humanity is at stake. And ss much as I hate to say it, Trump and his constituents are right. We need to stop being politically correct. Stop calling it the “alt-right”. Call it what it is: white supremacist shit-baggery. Bannon isn’t a leader of the alt-right. He’s a white supremacist bag of human filth!
This is how we’ll survive the next four years. I’m sure that the Dems in Congress will be as obstructionist AF. Send RBG gift baskets of protein bars and fruit. Make your voice hear during the mid-term elections, and look out for your fellow humans. We got through Plessy v. Ferguson, through Japanese Internment, through that shitty Dick Tracy cartoon, through the failure of the Equal RIghts Act. We’ll get through this, and we’ll be better for it.
