Relief and Exhaustion
Just before 9am this morning CK shrieked with joy as I was playing a computer game (Animal Crossing New Horizons) in the yoga room.
She came in a few moments later to tell me that the numbers for Pennsylvania and Arizona had come in. The dreaded Electoral College had called the states for Joe Biden. Nevada came in shortly after that, also for Biden.
While there's still plentiful ghouls out there saying that the election isn't over until all the "legal votes" are counted. This is another dog whistle since there aren't illegal votes, there isn't voter fraud. The more outstanding votes that are counted, the more certain a Biden/Harris win becomes.
T* hasn't made a concession speech yet.
This morning my art group met online and it felt good to share the joy with everyone. Fittingly the topic today was "Gratitude Cards" and it led to a lot of good discussions. I'm making some bookmarks to give as gifts for my cards.
The rest of the day I just dragged. CK took a nap. I thought about it, but didn't. I mostly played my game, read the latest ebook from the library (The City We Became), and tried to convince myself to eat a real meal. I eventually had a larger meal when I got takeout sushi for us.
We did have a celebratory adult beverage. Perhaps tomorrow I'll have more energy to feel some pleasure.
The thing is, this doesn't change our plans. Yes, it will make our planning far easier and we'll be able to accomplish our goal more quickly. There is a tremendous feeling of relief and definite joy felt at seeing the positive outcome of countless grassroots organizers who got out the vote of so many disenfranchised communities.
I'm just not ready to put up an American flag again. I'm not sure I'll ever return to that kind of nationalism. I'll put up the new Pride flag or an Iron Front flag, even an Earth flag or the Thorns FC flag. But the sudden outpouring of "reclaim the flag" rhetoric I'm seeing just doesn't connect to my heart.
We're still a broken country that had to pull out all the stops to beat back fascism. We're still nearly half full of people who were just fine with the "Make the liberals cry again!" line. People who quite happily supported the cruelty of the T* regime, if not explicitly than complicity.
People who happily politicized wearing masks and following precautions during a pandemic, thus contributing to the 234,264 deaths from COVID19, as of today.
While there is a need for bridge building and rebuilding. There's also a need to put down our collective foot and say that we're done with tolerating the kind of viciousness we've seen. I'm not making peace with some of these people, nor am I wasting my empathy on them.
They aren't stupid or crazy, they're willfully cruel and need to be treated as such.
The Waiting
We still don't know. It's looking more and more like it will be Biden/Harris, but it isn't done.
There are T* supporters with guns at election offices demanding that they be allowed to count ballots (Arizona) or that counting be stopped (Michigan). Like the supporters running the Biden/Harris bus off the road in Texas last week, these are the newest incarnation of the Nazi Brownshirts who intimidated people to push their political agenda.
I have felt exhausted today. As usual, teaching at 10am online helped anchor me into the day. I enjoyed chatting with a favorite student afterward, one of those people who's become a friend as well, and that helped me feel a little less hopeless.
I ended up napping after lunch for a little while with Obie. He's been wanting to lay on the bed so I've been turning on the electric blanket to warm up his bones. He reached out his paws and chirped at me, which is pretty impossible to resist. Having got to bed close to 2am, a nap with Obie and Bertie was a good choice.
I felt really unmotivated by food, aside from wanting to turn several ripe apples and pears into a crisp. CK suggested that we have takeout, we picked pizza which I really enjoyed, despite feeling unmotivated. I kept searching for recipes and ended up just making it up; I needed more salt! I also just realized I forgot the cinnamon!
What's weighing on me is how we're just barely holding back fascism. Some small part of me hoped for an outright repudiation, instead T* supporters doubled-down, recruiting more hateful people. Voter suppression has also been so successful, redistricting and gutting the Voting Rights Act continues to disenfranchise people.
There are millions of Americans who are so opposed to everyone sharing a piece of the pie, where everyone gets a smaller piece but everyone gets pie, that they would prefer to just burn down all the pie shops rather than allow the "others" to have some pie.
I see rounds of social media posts about educating "T* voting friend, now's the time!", and I'm furious. This is not about education, we cannot educate people who are willfully ignorant, truth denying, and cruelty seeking!
Also, quit putting work on those of use who are already exhausted and afraid of losing rights we've only been celebrating a few years!
How do we engage with people who don't care if they get hurt so long as they get to see the "other" hurting? How do we just shut it down? How do we say to them, "We don't really care about how you feel about it, this is what is happening."
Limbo
As expected, the American people are failing to hand T* a decisive walloping. It's still too close to call and the results will take days.
Put Zoom on and essentially had "Office Hours" ask evening. Spoke with several friends and got to see the adorable kitten.
The house is well stocked, really shouldn't need to leave for days. Tomorrow I'm going to set up the bins in the van to facilitate hauling hazardous materials to the transfer station after picking them up from friends.
I can't shake the fear that the Electoral College will fuck us again. Who cares about the popular vote?!
Trying to hold hope in my heart.
Dread not Optimism
CK asked me this evening what I think will happen tomorrow. I had to reply that I really didn't know.
2016 taught us not to trust polls. We know that people were misleading them intentionally. We know not to trust our broken Electoral College.
We know that we're one of the hotbeds of militia activity. We know T* supporters are behaving like Brownshirts and cops nationwide are enabling it.
My discussion group for the "Seeing White" podcast had some folks who are feeling optimistic. I'm not one of them, I'm just feeling so much dread.
It wasn't helped by the Governor declaring a preemptive state of emergency starting at 5pm this evening. There's all kinds of businesses boarded up.
Clearly everything will be done to protect property, not people, not our votes.
I'm wrapping up the last grocery pickup and getting fuel in the vehicles tomorrow. Then we're hunkering down. I'm going to open up a Zoom in the afternoon and invite folks to just come hangout online with us.
I'm already exhausted.
On the positive side of today. I was approved for 13 more weeks of pandemic unemployment assistance! I also delighted myself making a cover comic for my new journal, that I'll add to periodically, just for comics!
November
Here we are, firmly in autumn and working on eight months of COVID life. I see people taking about a "second lockdown" and here we've never left the first one. It feels naive to have ever hoped that we'd share Thanksgiving with our chosen family.
Tonight we checked in on tasks we want done before Tuesday evening. CK ordered more first aid supplies; we still can't easily find isopropyl alcohol, even the 70% type. I ordered groceries to pick up Tuesday afternoon.
We're making plans for kitten arrival, ordering litter boxes to replace the ones downstairs. It will be easier for Obie ultimately and we'll train the kitten to use them upstairs. This will let us close the downstairs and use the space for sorting, cleaning, etc.
Using one of my new journals from an earlier Maido subscription box to continue making comics. The square shape is perfect!
Waiting
I asked students this morning what they were grateful for. When silence greeted me, again, I asked if there was anything anyone needed held in community.
A student spoke up about how uncertain and terrible everything feels to them. I noted that everyone was nodding along. I reminded them that what we're experiencing in the United States is unique and we're months into living in this state of heightened stress response, which is to say, trauma.
Tomorrow I'll be working on a new video, possibly two. One detailing the "legs-up-the-wall" restorative yoga pose and another where I talk about what a Self-Care Plan is.
I'm going to look for stuff around the house for the kitten and make a list of what to get. I'm also going to spend some quality time in the garage sorting all the stocking up I've been doing. I want to see if there's any last bits I want to get before Tuesday.
I want to be wrong about all this preparation. I really do.
CK read me news reports of armed Trump supporters harassing a bus of Biden supporters in Texas and cops refusing to help. There are armed people harassing the folks protesting another Black man who was killed in Vancouver, Washington, yesterday and the cops aren't helping.
I better make a list of what to check in on before Tuesday.
Could Have Been
I had a hard time getting to sleep last night. My brain just wanted to keep on going. Thankfully I stayed asleep until Obie woke me up at 6:45.
I went back to bed after making up some food for him, but felt not only tired when I woke up, but down too. The down mood has persisted all day.
I'm sad friends are leaving. I'm more sad that I can't hug them goodbye. I'm sad that inviting people over for Thanksgiving is reckless.
Is saw a tweet today that noted that what what we're feeling right now, the anxiety in the country right now, is as if, "All of America is waiting on biopsy results."
CK was watching something about the fight to exonerate an innocent, Black man on death row. At the end, seeing statistics for how many innocent people are killed, she said, "We could have been such a different country."
That sums it up so well. The dread/hope cycle around the election combined with a grief for what might have been, an America that might have been.
Then again, the deeper I go into the history of the founding of this country, perhaps this is the only place we could have ended up.
Preparing for Disaster Again
The election is coming. I've been restocking the freezer, snacks, comfort foods, and the like. Just like I did back in early March, when we thought somehow we'd all hunker down and COVID wouldn't be so bad. I'm planning to pick up another 5 gallon propane bottle so we go into November with 2 full tanks. I'll be finally deciding where our emergency water goes when those bottles are full.
If Trump wins, I think there will be unrest, protest, possible strikes.
If Trump loses, I think it might be even worse given the armed checkpoints brought on by fires.
Oh, and I awoke to the news that early this morning the Trump administration declared us an "anarchist jurisdiction", along with Seattle and NYC. There has been federal wiretapping of protestors here.
Each day I'm going to try to make a small step in our exodus. This week I'm going to prioritize all the bins of clothing I'm not sure fits. If it fits, or if I'm keeping it for emotional reasons (perfectly fine), then it gets kept and ready to pack. If it's usable winter gear, it sorts out to be donated on Friday. The rest into paper bags and into my van to be donated to Goodwill.
We made a plan for books over a game this evening.
Slowly we start to move forward with leaving even as I plan for us to be hunkered down at home in November.
I'm grateful I got to see my students today and chant with a couple of them!