I know, on the surface, the obvious things. Many of the things happening are good and unprecedented. Many of the things that are happening could have been so much better, and we've all been under tremendous burdens in the past four years.
Many people have been under these burdens for much longer than that, and this celebration offers hope and reprieve-and a deep concern that returning to normal will mean the same racism, classism, ablism, sexism and transphobia that this country was founded and built upon, and it's only recently that these issues have been even partially acknowledged publicly by the people in power.
I need to work through my own feelings. There's a part of me that feels it's unfair to jeer like this, that feels it's mean to mock. And if I work through this, I don't see it as helpful to bring up the jeering of four years ago, of people telling me to suck it up, that we lost and they didn't, to fuck my feelings. I think it's unproductive to have this rationalization that is, essentially, "Well, they did it first!!"
I think it's been unproductive to focus on Trump throughout the presidency. For four years this small minded and small hearted man pretended that reality tv show laws held firm outside of the television, and that consequences were just what happened when the director asked for a different take, a free do-over. For four years we watched the circus and pretended along with him.
It's not about him. It's about the system, which is harder to hate in a productive way. He has been a voice of the racist, the sexist, the ablist ideas and thoughts within each one of us, and externalizing that helps us to duck consequences. It's not about him. He doesn't matter.
It's hard to see this sad old man as the same person who allowed so many people to die, to be hurt. It's easy to let my inner voice tell me that it isn't fair to be gleeful, and it's easy to be gleeful anyway. It's still true, though, that atrocities happened. It's true that the system that supports me actively permitted and encouraged these atrocities. It's true that Trump, as both a nationalist and racist figure AND as the elected president of the united states, encouraged and benefited from the harm and death of hundreds of thousands of people, who don't need to be innocent of all wrongdoing to be mourned.
I think in some ways I shy away from the idea that he could be put on trial. I shy away from the idea that these things could be put to the light, and possibly I also shy away from the idea that I will see in his trial, moments that I could and should have done more than what I was doing. It's always difficult to see a person who has done terrible things and know that not only am I also capable of those things, but so are my friends. So are my family. Not only capable, but culpable. By being white, I benefit from the system that gave us Trump. By presenting as ablebodied, I benefit from the system that gave us Trump.
I imagine that if Hitler hadn't killed himself, if he had actually gone to trial for his crimes, my feelings now would reflect those of many people in germany.
