“I’m scared,” they say. This is what I’ve heard from my friends, people who voted like me. They are not angry or sad. The loudest noise has not been a noise at all, but silence. Our democracy has always been full of heated argument, lying, scheming, profanity, change, ingenuity, and passion. Now there is only fear. Why is their fear? It never feels good to have to explain oneself, but you don’t know what you don’t know, and if we don’t talk to one another, how will we ever understand? How will we ever move forward?
I have heard them speak of fears they hold to walk home because they do not know now, in America, what will happen to them. They fear not just for the future but for now. They are worried about being attacked on the street, harassed, and having a government, a law, standing behind them that neither cares nor was designed to help. They are scared for the world and their futures. These, their formative years, will now be defined in a way so unfamiliar they cannot see anything they ever planned or dreamed for themselves coming to fruition. They worry about war because they no longer see any rules being followed.
I can only speak for myself. Here is why I am scared:
I am scared because I am not a full person, not all the time. I am not a full person under the law. How is that possible? When I hold a job? And I have the right to vote? Because of a medical condition. Can you imagine having a medical condition, and because of this condition the government can take your rights? Tell you how to live? What procedures and medicine you can access? It’s the very thing everyone, no matter who you vote for, fights against. Having rights taken away. I am not a full person because I am female. I am not a full person in America when and if I become pregnant. As soon as the shadow of a baby exists inside me I no longer matter. My health, my future, is compromised. I have fewer rights than a corporation. Who takes my rights? The baby and the government. Both are considered more important than me, under the law. Sometimes I am not a full person, and I worry that sometimes could turn into all the time.
I am scared because I have been taught that being kind, and working hard leads to success. I, like everyone who votes, believe my daily work is worthwhile and that I deserve to be, in some way, rewarded for it. And yet tonight I have seen that those who have not worked in the same way I have, in the same way all those of us with our weekly ordinary day jobs, must, succeed. Instead I watched someone be rewarded for not working the same way I have had to, for not treating others with the same decency and respect I have been taught to exude. How can I tell students not to bully, and co-workers to be polite? How can I trust our country to listen? To have a level head? I have heard the same arguments, and lying, and profanity we always associate with politics directed not at politics, but at people. And if we can’t respect people, what is there worth respecting?
I am scared because I am a student of history. The idea of turning people away from our boarders, and throwing people out of our country, and dividing people by color, and race, and religion has never played out well in the books I have read, or in the chronicle of my family. Perhaps you do not have this family story. But can you imagine being turned away in a moment of need? Or represented with lies? Perhaps, in some other way, you know exactly how this feels. So why will we be better, our country be better, the world be better, greater, if we do this to others? Perhaps we need to be careful, but a black and white answer, any decree without respect for the complexities of the issue and the lives involved, will never fix what is, or what we perceive, as wrong.
I am not asking for agreement. I am only trying to explain. Because no one has been able to explain to me how we got here, and I want to do my part to help someone, on the other side, if there really are sides, to understand in a way I still do not.
Those are my answers. But here are my question: Can someone explain why I should not be afraid? If so many people see the world so differently from me, can they help me understand? And what do we do now? How do we take action? Because being scared and doing nothing leaves us exactly where we are. Nowhere.