nimby

Dur­ing the election,
I stopped talk­ing about the elec­tion to most people,
es­pe­cial­ly men,
be­cause of the nev­er-end­ing lava flow of hot takes com­ing from their mouths, most of which were lift­ed from memes, sub­red­dits, YouTube videos, and web­sites that, post elec­tion, would be ex­posed as dis­rep­utable, most of them shut­ting down and all traces dis­ap­pear­ing from the in­ter­net (USUn­cut).

One of the dumb­est al­le­gories re­galed to me was of Wall Street as the Mafia and Hillary as a lock­smith who had known Mafia ties. 

I was asked if I was will­ing to trust her with is­su­ing me the keys to my house. Try­ing not to be com­bat­ive or lose my tem­per, I said I would at least give some con­sid­er­a­tion to the ques­tion, when re­al­ly I should have burned that per­son to the ground and told them to fuck off for­ev­er and stop spew­ing their stu­pid bull­shit and nev­er talk to me again.

And of course, that per­son – like mil­lions of oth­ers – af­ter play­ing their part to spread false­hoods and cause ir­repara­ble dam­age based most­ly on un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed non­sense, did an about face and vot­ed for her. When I asked why, they said,
“We have to stop Trump,” because
“[their] kids’ fu­tures depend[ed] on it.”

Cool.

I’m re­mind­ed of a fa­ble with many vari­a­tions, told across all faiths and cul­tures. The ver­sion – in Ju­daism I’m fa­mil­iar with – goes some­thing like this: Ba­si­cal­ly, some­one says some­thing to some­one else that is dam­ag­ing and un­true. It spreads, and then they see the dam­age it has done to peo­ple and the com­mu­ni­ty. They seek the coun­sel of their Rab­bi, who tells them to take a pil­low to the rooftops, cut it open, and shake out all the feath­ers into the wind. The per­son does this, then goes back to the Rab­bi and asks what to do now. The Rab­bi tells them to gath­er up every last feath­er and put it back in the pil­low. When the per­son ex­claims how that’s im­pos­si­ble, the Rab­bi says, “That’s gos­sip!”

Do NOT mis­take what I am say­ing as idol­a­try of Hillary Clin­ton or a de­nial of any of her short­com­ings. This is about the non­cha­lant dis­missal of all of the very real con­cerns that any­one who isn’t a straight white male had dur­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion, cou­pled with at­ti­tudes rang­ing from
“she didn’t earn my vote” to
“fuck that bitch” to
“we need to burn it all down.”

The last one es­pe­cial­ly in­censed me and con­tin­ues to do so, for I couldn’t help but no­tice that any­one who took that po­si­tion was al­ways some­one who knew that noth­ing they had would be lost in the fire.

The hon­est truth is that un­til yes­ter­day, the Trump Ad­min­is­tra­tion re­al­ly hadn’t im­pact­ed me per­son­al­ly at all. It hadn’t. Maybe it did in some very in­di­rect, blur­ry way that would come lat­er in the form of in­vest­ments that weren’t worth as much as they could have been, or more ex­pen­sive peaches. 

But as a straight mid­dle class Amer­i­can born Eng­lish speak­ing white woman who owns a house and has a rather good pay­ing, se­cure job with ben­e­fits, who is mar­ried to some­one who also has a good pay­ing job, and has no kids and no ‘bad debt,’ I’ve al­ways known I was way back at the end of the line as far as who this ad­min­is­tra­tion would fuck over.

The thing is, I knew this would hurt all those peo­ple in front of me in line, who weren’t as priv­i­leged and lucky and com­fort­able and as ‘nor­mal’ as me. I un­der­stood that even though I prob­a­bly wasn’t go­ing to get all the things I want­ed, there were mil­lions of peo­ple who stood to lose what lit­tle they did have.

And that has been hap­pen­ing, every day, since the day he took office. 

And now, yes­ter­day, some­thing else hap­pened and my num­ber came up. Now I, as a woman, stand to lose a whole fuck­ing lot. And I prob­a­bly will.

If we even get to par­tic­i­pate in a free and fair elec­tion in 2020 (or shit, in less than five months), hope­ful­ly peo­ple will have got­ten over them­selves enough and learned some­thing from all of this.
 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2018 Emi­ly Duchaine.

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