I'm Blue

src/posts/2024/2024-11-07-i'm-blue.md

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+---
+title: "I'm Blue"
+permalink: /da-ba-dee-da-ba-di/index.html
+date: 2024-11-07T12:30:27Z
+description: I'm tired. I'm angry. I'm sad. I'm scared.
+tags: 
+  - Personal
+  - Election
+---
+
+## I’m Tired Because…
+
+- I woke up at 2am on Wednesday, saw the election results, and couldn’t get back to sleep. Then I spent the entire day traveling back home from vacation.
+- We’ve worked tirelessly for 8 years to prevent this and nearly 73 million people just decided “nah”.
+- I continue to hear pro-Trump, pro-"life", pro-gun, pro-fracking, pro-gas arguments that ignore all logic or ignore all the harm they would cause to people and the planet, and after 8 years of it, the misinformation firehose has finally worn me out.
+
+## I’m Angry Because…
+
+- There are people hiding in plain sight that want my family and my friends dead, deported, or as miserable as they can possibly be. They smile, they ask how you are, they say all the right things, they like photos of your friends and family on social media, and then they walk into a voting booth and spit in your face and say “fuck you” and vote for a fascist, sexist, irrational, felonious man who has clearly stated how he wants to make misery the new American currency.
+- “He tells it like it is!” + “Well that’s not what he meant!” over and over until they’re storming the Capitol. 
+- There are people using the name of Christ to weaponize hatred, conveniently ignoring the parts of their stories where he just… didn’t do that. Not to mention the "we'll pray over His Trumpiness for good leadership" and "wow, I remember when people used to concede gracefully" and "both sides are bad". Spare me.
+- There are people who call themselves allies who refused to cast a vote for Harris because of some reason. "She's not tough enough on Isreal." “She’s not left enough.” “She’s former law enforcement-adjacent.” “She was just given the position.” Y’all knew the stakes and said “eh it’s not gonna be so bad for me.”
+- I will inevitably get replies to this post like “well you’re just being dramatic, it’s not that bad.” or “you’re a cishet white man, you have nothing to complain about" because god forbid we practice kindness and empathy around here.
+
+## I’m Sad Because…
+
+- I have a red hat I really like that I just can’t wear anymore.
+- My friends are afraid for their lives, and I feel helpless.
+- My friends are looking into leaving the country, and I will miss them.
+- I don't have any hope remaining. I'll continue to do my part, but my hope for humanity, for this country, for progress, is gone.
+
+## I’m Scared Because…
+
+- I see this cycle repeating itself, in both large and small ways, all over the world. The number of safe havens for people are dwindling, they're expensive as hell, and who knows if they'll last.
+- We, the United States, have been the ones to stick our appendages in and "right the wrongs" all over the world for decades. But now there's nobody around to do this for us. Many across the globe hope for our complete and utter collapse.
+- The GOP platform is simple: make the world better for the rich, the powerful, the white, the straights, the men, and fuck everyone else, all while creating imagined realities where they are the ones being persecuted. And yet somehow, they've managed to rope some of the poor, weak,  non-white, non-straight, non-male population into believing that Trump is for them. The logic is right there, smacking them in the face, and they still voted for him.
+- My daughter's preschool has security plans and threat analysis and evacuation plans and active shooter plans because that's the world we live in nowadays.
+- I don’t know how we break this cycle.
+
+---
+
+{% include 'image.njk',
+  src: "im-blue.jpg",
+  position: "right",
+  alt: "The best feeling in the world."
+%}
+
+As I sat on our flight home yesterday, holding my daughter while she slept, I just felt an immense wave of sadness. We actively postponed having a child until Trump was out, because we wanted to make sure the country was on a better trajectory before bringing new life into the world.
+
+Welp.
+
+She doesn't know any better. She smiles at everyone and says "look Daddy, a red hat" not knowing what it means. And it breaks my heart to know that she'll have to grow up and quickly learn how to live in a world where many view her as a commodity, as property, as beneath them.
+
+So many men, with grandmothers, mothers, aunts, wives, friends, daughters, and granddaughters, voted for someone who sees all of those people as "less than". As people who shouldn't have as many rights as they do. And they'll do whatever hand-waving necessary to conveniently ignore that fact (or they'll lean in to it because that's exactly how they feel).
+
+---
+
+I went to get some carry out for dinner last night after we got home. The 2 cars in front of me weren't paying attention and missed the light turning green. After a few seconds, I honked. The car in the other lane moved. The car in front of me didn't.
+
+And my first thought was ***"ah fuck, wonder if this is a Trumper with a gun and I just pissed him off."***
+
+Thankfully, after another couple seconds, he noticed and drove ahead. But this is the world that I live in. That we live in.
+
+And that fucking sucks.