Don’t Let the Next 4 Years Kill You
Five tips for you, based on the bad post-election medical test results I just got
There I was, sitting in my cardiologist’s office for a routine visit two days after the election. I felt great (physically, at least. I’ve been on a health journey for the past year and dropped a ton of weight) and had no reason to expect anything but a thumbs up.
“Have you been feeling anything odd?” the doctor asked me. “Because the EKG detected some irregularities with your heartbeat. We’re going to want to put you on a heart monitor for the next two weeks to make sure it’s not something serious.”
The irony of the situation made sense to me. I’ve been feeling spiritually heartbroken all week, of course my heart was going to be physically broken too.
Life always smacks you upside the head with the least clever metaphors when you’re feeling especially low. If you saw this in a movie you’d roll your eyes with disbelief. Hell, I hesitated even writing about this because it seemed too on the nose. But then I remembered that so many of us are feeling the oppressive weight of this election in so many different ways, and when I’m sick with worry it’s significantly worse to be alone with that pain.
So here’s how I’ve been trying to make sense of it all. I’m by no means an expert on any of this, I’m just a devastated American trying to understand what we’ve done and how to move forward.
I hate to say it, but this is what America always has been
One of the things that I’ve heard countless times is people saying, “This isn’t who we are.” Bullshit. Our ideals have been lofty, but rarely have we ever lived up to them. We are a product of colonialism and built to be an empire. Manifest destiny was only achievable through genocide, our system of chattel slavery was the cruelest and most robust in the world, and every immigrant group has been thrown to the wolves at some point. This is our history and we shouldn’t forget it.
Yet, this is also the country whose birth inspired countless other revolutions against monarchies, that fought a war to give Black people their freedom, established the five-day work week, defeated fascism in World War II, and put astronauts on the moon. There has always been a yin and yang to America. Yes, it’s the country that gave us Donald Trump. But it’s also the country that gave us Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Susan B. Anthony, and Marsha P. Johnson.
For me, a devout history nerd and a little bit of a weirdo, when it comes to political setbacks, I always turn to my personal Bible — A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. When I first read it in high school I was blown away by how blunt Zinn’s take was, how bleak a picture of the nation he paints. Over the years, I found that I’d go back and read entire chapters that closely pertained to current matters and find myself inspired. Not by the horrors committed by or in the name of our government, but by the action ordinary citizens took to defeat them. With the prospect of a mass deportation taking place, I read the section about the Japanese Internment Camps of World War II. It helped me understand how something like that could (and did) happen here, as well as get my head around a way that ordinary folks could fight back against it (long story short, the secrecy of the internment camps at the time is what made them possible).
When I need more inspiration, I’ll turn to The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, a chronicle of the Great Migration when six million Black people moved from the Jim Crow South to northern cities in hopes of finding a better life. Seeing the dozens of ways people showed extreme courage to fight against a system that questioned their humanity is always inspirational, but it becomes doubly so when it feels so prescient. And this was within our parents’ lifetimes (if not our own), so not exactly ancient history.
It’s important to acknowledge that whenever we take a step forward, there is a very real chance we’ll be taking two steps back not too long thereafter. We can never get too comfortable or feel like the fight for progress is over — because it never is.
Resist the urge to punch down
A lot of people I love and respect are saying some truly troubling things right now, and I’m not talking about Trump supporters. I’m talking about people who claim that every red state is a hell hole; the people who immediately want to point fingers at [insert group of voters here] and blame them for the defeat; the politicians (like Seth Moulton) who are gleefully throwing trans kids under the bus the second it isn’t politically beneficial to support them.
One of the problems with wanting to claim the moral high ground is that every once in a while you’re going to have to act on those morals. And sometimes that means taking an L to stand up for a person’s very humanity. If Democrats want to stake their identity on being the party that fights for the underdog, they’re going to need to actually fight to protect those people, or else they’re as morally bankrupt as the Republicans. This should be a no-brainer.
I could write 10,000 words off the top of my head about why the Electoral College needs to be blown up, but its existence doesn’t justify castigating entire swaths of the country as deserving of punishment. Sure, on an electoral map, Georgia is bright red, but there are more than 2.5 million people there who are hurting just as much as you are right now, if not more so. There are even more Democratic voters in perpetual liberal punching bags Texas and Florida. If you think posting on Facebook that you’ll be choosing to not visit those states is a viable form of political protest please, I implore you, shut the fuck up. This helps nobody.
Get ready to fight
Remember the first Trump presidency? Every day there was a new horror to fight. The best-case scenario for his second term is that it’s about the same, but as his rhetoric has skewed more towards retribution, all signs point to this being an even more difficult four years. And you need to be ready for it. But first…
Take some time to grieve
You’re not being dramatic if you truly feel like you’ve lost someone.
My mom died six years ago. Sometimes it feels like it just happened, other times it feels like I’ve lived an entire lifetime since she passed. One thing that surprised me on Wednesday morning was the way that I was processing the election loss and how closely it mirrored the experience.
I know that sounds melodramatic, but in order to keep on going I had to do some compartmentalization. I can’t keep doom scrolling. I need to go outside. I need every emotional comfort blanket I can find. I need to talk to my friends and tell them I love them. And lastly, I need to have actionable items to work on in both the short and long term. It’s the same process.
And that’s how I found myself writing this article in the same way I wrote her eulogy — blasting the same band in my headphones (The Lawrence Arms) and struggling to put all my thoughts together in one place.
In doing so, this sometimes means staring down the bleak thoughts we’re having, giving them the appropriate amount of space, and then moving on. One of the darkest thoughts that came out of me on Wednesday morning has lingered in the back of my brain ever since — I’m glad my mom isn’t alive to experience this.
This is the first time I’ve ever considered that the world we live in is one I wouldn’t want her to be a part of. Please don’t misunderstand me, my world will always be dimmer without her in it, but I don’t know if I could watch her endure the steps backward this country has already taken, nor the ones it's about to take. Every feminist thought I have is at least indirectly attributable to her and I am personally ashamed that we all let her down. Complicated thoughts like this need to be given time and processed, they can’t just be shoved down and ignored.
Do what you can, when you can, no matter how small it is
I hate to close this with such a saccharine, sentimental thought, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t true. You don’t need to save the entire nation at once, just help push for those incremental changes that make your life a little brighter. Donate money to your local abortion fund. Volunteer at a food bank. Reach out to organizations helping immigrants who desperately need it. Be there to listen to your friends when they’re struggling. Every small kindness adds up.
When my cardiologist told me the news, my face must have fallen. I’d put in all this hard work to get healthier (and doing a damn good job, if I can gloat a little), yet I was getting bad news again.
“Don’t worry, no matter what we find, it will be treatable,” my cardiologist assured me. “We’ll figure it out.”
Like I said earlier, the metaphors can be pretty heavy-handed at times. But it doesn’t mean they aren’t true.
Thank you for this. I’ve been avoiding any post-election “takes,” and this was the one I actually needed to read.
Sharon McMahon’s (@Sharonsaysso/The Preamble on Substack) content can be frustratingly rage free in a time when rage-baiting and reactivity just feels so good (haha), but she holds the line on calling on people to act from their better selves and contribute to positive change in small ways. It seems corny because her content doesn’t match the ragey energy of the moment, but it is not trite “we all just need kindness,” either.