This Week's Opening Thought: November 11, 2024

This week’s opening thought: I’m a firm believer in the schadenfreude that comes with people effin’ around and finding out, but there is no joy to be found in the eff around and find out we’re all about to endure for the next four years because of how people decided to vote last week’s election—just pain and trauma.

I’m seeing all the stories and videos about people losing friends and family members, their marriages, chances at higher wages, potential citizenship, and employment because of how they decided to vote. I’m seeing the Google search results from the night of the election, which show hundreds of thousands of people looking up such things as “Are tariffs bad?” and “How can I change my vote?” well after they’ve already cast their ballots. I’m seeing small business owners who voted for this incoming administration realizing how these tariffs and tax cuts for billionaires are going to debilitate their businesses and freaking out, hoarding supplies and eliminating raises, bonuses, and even hiring. I’m seeing people saying their female, femme-identifying, and LGBTQIA+ friends and family members have walked away from them and are not coming back because of their voting decisions. I watched a video today with a Latine man upset that his neighbors of pallor, who voted for this current administration with the same level of glee that he did, refused to let their kids play with his son anymore and threatened to run them off with gunfire.

There’s no joy or amusement in any of this.

There's no “I told you so” moment.

There is no reveling in watching the leopards eat faces.

Just sadness and anger.

If it was someone’s ignorant personal decisions leading to personal consequences? That’s their cross to bear. I’m like, “Catch your L.” Depending on the situation, I might even chuckle and shake my head. But when tens of millions of U.S. voters make ignorant, bigotry-driven decisions based on blatant misinformation intent on stoking fear and insecurities that lead to long-term consequences for everyone in the country and place millions of people in danger?

It should never be eff around and everyone finds out, but y'all made that choice for all of us.

No schadenfreude, just uncertainty.

But, you know, make America great again.

On An Election and A Country's True Identity

I'm not surprised. I'm saddened, but I’m not surprised.

I'm unsurprised that 59% of men of pallor and 52% of women of pallor voted the way they did. I'm sadly not surprised that after everything he said and will do to immigrants when he takes office, he still got 54% of the masculine-identifying and 37% of the feminine-identifying Latine and Hispanic vote.

I'm saddened, but I’m not surprised.

I am disheartened but unsurprised.

I didn’t need a reminder, but for those who did, this election was a firm reminder that the United States is precisely what it has always been: a country steeped in individualism and fear of moving forward, unwilling to be progressive and care for all its citizens, and legitimately uninterested in trying to be the country it likes to claim it is.

He won this election, and it wasn't even close in the popular or electoral vote. A party with a platform of hate, oppression, and regression will be in complete control of the Government come January 2025, and it wasn't even a fight.

And I know so many of y'all voted for this man and this party while playin’ in the faces of the people in your life who you know their policies and governance will do extreme harm to. Most of y'all are quick to bust out a Black Lives Matter sign or bring up trans and reproductive rights just to have a smoke screen to vote against everyone’s best interests.

I loathe that most of y'all won’t own your hatred and fear of losing what you think is exclusively yours - rights, privileges, and safety from tyranny.

I loathe that most of y'all won’t own who you are in front of those your choices impact.

I loathe that most of y’all will be shocked when the people you elected do the exact things you hired them to do and you find yourself and your families adversely impacted and in physical, mental, emotional, and economic distress.

But I’m not surprised.

You're Americans! That's what Americans do, right?

I'm saddened. I'm disheartened. I'm not surprised, though.

This is the American way, y'all.

Note: This poll data is from a subsection of the voter base from 10 states.

This Week's Opening Thought: November 4, 2024

This week’s opening thought: If your response to people from underserved, invisible, and marginalized communities who find themselves constantly on the defensive who are struggling with the anxiety that comes with deep uncertainty about the future of this country post-Election Day is “I don’t know why everyone is so stressed,” “It’ll work itself out,” or “We made it through the last time he was President so we’ll make it through this time, too,” you are one of two things:

1. A person with a great deal of privilege who isn't emotionally mature enough to understand that everything isn’t hunky-dory just because you don't think what you perceive as your rights and freedoms or safety are at risk.

2. A person who legitimately doesn't care about those around you because you enjoy paddling around in a pool of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and ableism.

Real talk? Many of y'all are both, and it is not a good look.

I'm not in the business of telling people how to vote, especially during an election as divisive and multi-layered as this one. However, I will always speak truth to power regarding accountability for those who normalize the notion that everyone doesn't deserve rights, privileges, and the safety to exist and thrive.

Humans only thrive as a collective. Period. And by collective, I mean EVERY HUMAN BEING working together to ensure everyone is seen, heard, and supported in direct opposition to hate and oppression. You not caring about the collective is pure white supremacist heteronormative colonialist garbage. And if that is your stance, you need to be willing to vocally own said garbage as openly and eagerly as you toss out sentences like, “I wish everyone would chill out” during a supremely intense week in a country teetering on the brink of possibly irreparable harm for most of its citizens.

Check yourself.

This Week's Opening Thought: October 28, 2024

This week's opening thought: I will always find myself intrigued by the behavior and rhetoric people will defend and play devil’s advocate for as long as they can do so while vaguely covering up the beliefs and feelings they actually prescribe so they can avoid poking holes in the holier-than-thou masks they wear in mixed company.

Living in the United States, I have always been curious about what thoughts go through people’s heads as they justify supporting causes and people who harm communities and groups they constantly claim to care about. I often marvel at the mental gymnastics people engage in to get people to like them and view them as "good people” as they ride the fence between oppression and equity.

Trying to keep a mask on while doing cartwheels to distract the masses has to be so exhausting.

Living in Portland, I regularly find myself captivated by how many people swear they care about our homeless and housing-insecure neighbors while happily voting for every person running on a platform of “public safety” who thinks corralling human beings in need into encampments on the outskirts of town is a sound policy. I'm mystified by how hard those people work to get co-signs from communities in danger because they can't maintain their facades without endorsements from those they don't care about beyond the most surface of levels.

Their arms must be so tired, trying to juggle those chainsaws while ensuring their mask doesn't slip off.

The funny thing is how many people are bad at maintaining the act.

The sad thing is how many people still try it anyway.

The disheartening thing is how many people allow themselves to be OK with these false identities around them, lest they lose their own masks and be subject to owning who they are.

If your beliefs and behaviors are so abhorrent and harmful to one or many communities that you have to put on an act to bamboozle yourself and others into believing you're a “good person” not to own who you really are? You're not the acrobat or juggler you think you are.

You're a clown.

And I have yet to find anyone who has a mask that suitably hides clown makeup.

On Blackness and Being A Team Player

Being Black is being told you're not a team player for not allowing a workplace to place a metric ton of work and stress on your shoulders while you watch your “affable” co-workers of pallor do the barest of bare minimums while being lauded as great people.

Being Black is being told you're not a team player because you don't want to participate in work parties and picnics and prefer doing your job, doing it well, then going home to live the life you've worked so hard to create in a white supremacist capitalist society.

Being Black is being told you're not a team player because you have boundaries that you enforce and reinforce with co-workers who have none.

Being Black is being told you're not a team player because you don't want to be friends with every person of pallor in your office looking to capture a “Black friend” to co-sign their racist nonsense.

Being Black is being told you're not a team player and being subjected to oppressive actions and attitudes in the workplace that aim to break you and push you into assimilation or conformity as a fraudulent means of survival.

Being Black is being told you're not a team player so much that you start wondering if it's your name.

But real talk?

Being Black eventually comes with the realization that most of y'all don't know what a team player is because y'all are too busy being mired in the nonsense of white supremacist likeability politics.

But you know, keep telling Black folx we’re not team players while we're some of the only ones scoring points for the team.