There’s an awful habit some people of making light of others for expressing emotions. Not just on The Bore, but all over the internet. It sucks. There’s a lot of despair in the US right now and there totally should be. The election was less than 2 months ago. I understand why people are worried. Trump’s presidency is going to be harmful for most us. Where I disagree with the thread linked in the OP, and what I’ve seen through the lens of my own social media bubble is the suggestion that our situation is completely hopeless. The far right is not “basically unstoppable”, but it’ll continue to gain momentum if you don’t vote, if you don’t demand more from your candidates, or if you don’t vote locally.
The sky isn’t falling. Things can and will turn around eventually. It doesn’t take an expert to see that Trump’s presidency will be marked by gross incompetence, deception, and bigotry. He’s starting his term with the lowest approval rating of any incoming president in decades (by a pretty
wide margin too). I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a tough time getting re-elected in 2020. Even if he does win again that’s still no reason to give up.
I’m personally very hopeful for the future. We’ve literally had slave owners in the White House before. The country’s least empowered kept pushing back and got us where we are today: a much more enlightened yet still cold and ugly society. I like that people are acknowledging that racism played a role in Trump’s election. Republicans have been courting the racist vote for a long ass time. The Republican candidate can usually count on them the same way Democrats can expect to win the black vote. Were Trump’s voters exclusively racist? Heck no, but he heavily relied on racism to win. Democrats can’t win with
only the black vote, but they can usually expect it even if you’re Clinton and have made anti-black comments in the past.
As a liberal the way to respond isn’t “Hey everyone I know on Facebook, please unfriend me if you voted Trump,” but instead make the effort to have those uncomfortable conversations with your friends and relatives. Don’t wait until after the election to decide “Well, I’m not visiting my folks for Thanksgiving this year.” What you should be doing is showing up to dinner prepared to discuss why communities of color and LGBT people are terrified. Don’t do it just that one time of the year either. It has to be an ongoing discussion. They’ve had years for those views to ossify. They aren’t going to do a 180 in one weekend. For people of color, it is
tiring and occasionally life threatening to be the one confronting racists about this stuff. We need our white liberal friends to talk to their parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles even more. A lot of them are
very poorly informed and sadly are more likely to believe racism exists when they hear white people complaining about it. I don’t mean to suggest that we coddle racists, just that we can approach the problem from more than one angle.
