“We humans don’t take kindly to being knocked off our planned paths into unfamiliar territory. Our first reaction is to get back to the path we were on as soon as possible. But a good inciting event makes it impossible to immediately get back – first the character has to fix the problem. Then, she hopes, things can return to ‘normal’.”
This quote is from a book about writing, but today it feels more poignant for real life than ever. When I woke up this morning, and the dread and the fear and the resentment crept up into my consciousness, all I wanted to do was to push it away and get back to those good feelings I’d had on Tuesday morning. You see, this last weekend I finally broke past my writing block, and the world looked bright for the first time in over a month. I’ve decided to keep that extra hour we got with the end of daylight savings time, so I’m up at 4:45am every morning now, writing happily until I have to get the kids up at 6:30. What I wanted this morning was to get back to that. I wanted to go back to my comfort and my bubble as soon as possible.
And I could. I’m white and I live on the West Coast, I’m not experiencing the harassment and the cruelty that so many people experienced yesterday (and every day) at the hand of Trump’s followers. A Hispanic woman in Medford had coffee thrown on her, and was told to ‘go back to Mexico’. The KKK was hanging out on freeway overpasses in full hooded garb. High school boys were walking around telling girls they could do whatever they wanted to them because Trump is president now. A deeply religious Muslim mother begged her daughter not to wear her hijab. It’s fucking awful.
And everywhere I’m hearing that we should all ‘get over it’. As though this were just any election, and we’re all being whining whiners about our party losing. This is not just any election. It’s not about Democrats and Republicans. It’s about human decency. It’s about white supremacy, and how far so many people in this country are willing to go to keep it. It’s about centuries of misogyny, and people being so indoctrinated into the idea of male dominance that they’re willing to ELECT a man who openly declares that he assaults women. It’s about fear and hate and people on both sides being sick of the establishment.
The question today is, what do we do now? Do we curl up and hide? Pretend it isn’t happening? Listen to the Trump fans who tell us to get over it? No. Not this time. Not for me anyway. This has to be the inciting incident for us. It has to be the wake-up call and the event which prevents us from being able to continue on the path we were on. We are going to look back years later and say, “That was it – that was the moment when everything changed.” And personally, I want to be able to smile as I say that.
Both Secretary Clinton and President Obama talked yesterday about the peaceful transfer of power. It is one of the foundations of our country – being able to have power change hands without violence and revolution. It allows for the natural progression toward overall change – there isn’t one king or queen who rules for a lifetime and determines the course of the country based on only their viewpoint. We have elections, and the temperature of the country is taken regularly. The temperature this time around is frightening – we are deeply divided. Trump didn’t win the electoral vote by a landslide, or lose the popular vote by a landslide – we were splitting hairs most of the time. And if we go back to the Democratic primaries, Clinton didn’t win by a landslide either. We are, above all, divided.
So when I hear this plea for a peaceful transfer of power, I’m torn. On one hand, yes, of course I want a peaceful transfer of power – I don’t want most of the things a civil war would bring with it. But on the other hand…can a country this large be this divided and stay at peace? I’m sensing a genuine fear coming from both Secretary Clinton and President Obama – they know what having a country so divided could mean. They’re begging us to keep it peaceful, for everyone’s sake. And honestly, it’s not like me to hear that plea and still feel torn, but I do. Change is coming, whether we desire it or not. What each person does in response to and for the sake of that change will have a ripple effect like none we’ve seen in most of our lifetimes. I don’t want violence. Let me be clear – I’m not condoning anyone to go out and hurt people, and obviously I don’t want a full-blown war-like revolution. But I’m way too familiar with what middle class white people tend to do in these situations – we post on Facebook, we talk spiritedly about social change and justice for a few days, and then we go back to our lives.
Please, I’m begging you, not this time.
Find something you can do. Just one thing, if that’s all your mind and heart can handle right now. Do one thing. Then tomorrow or next week or next month, do one more thing. Don’t go back to that comfortable place you were in two days ago, don’t check out and pretend this isn’t happening. Because it is happening. Our inciting event has occurred, and we must respond. If we ignore the call for change, then we relinquish our ability to affect that change. We allow the other side to determine what that change looks like. Do you want to be the minor character – the red shirt, per say – who is powerless to do anything except be swept along with the story? Or do you want to be the protagonist, who proactively takes that step into the upside down world of Act Two, and helps to create our new establishment? Decide now.
Because if we don’t change our country, the other side will.