BLUF: Be compassionate. Yes, even if it hurts. Yes, even if they’re assholes and dickwads. I want to know that I picked the right side. I want to know that this is the side that isn’t lying to me.
Right, we have a new President Elect. Trump defied the odds, and he took it all. He is the President Elect. He won us the Senate. And it looks like he won us the House. I’m sure most of us have been celebrating in some fashion or another for the past couple of days. And now it’s time to buckle down.
The Right have decried the Left for having majorities and doing nothing with them. We have the majority across the board for the next while, and we NEED to be doing stuff with it. We need to enact those campaign promises. Better economy, getting dangerous criminal aliens out of the country, lower grocery costs, better housing market, and the list goes on. This isn’t going to happen overnight, but Trump must put himself to work immediately and start getting things done.
The Left is so aflutter with terror right now that there might actually be a teaching moment, if the Right can keep things together. For the next few weeks, between election results and inauguration, the Left expects to be treated like dirt. We can’t. We must act with compassion.
Why, you ask? Because we have, so far, taken the high road and we’ve won. It is time to show the Left that we are not going to round them up and put them into reeducation camps. They need to know that, painful as it might be to us, we’ll continue to fight for their right to speak. They need to see that marriage is marriage, and no one’s going to take that away from them. They need to understand that being gay can happen on the Right as much as on the Left. Hell, the Right even has trans people.
It’s not long since I would have been devastated by a Trump win. It’s so recent a change that I am still reeling a bit from my body and hind brain screaming in gibbering fear at me right now, even though the thinking part is soothing it and telling it to shush. I think I have a very good idea of what the Left is thinking and feeling right now. And whether there is any reality behind their fear, the fear itself is real. It’s as real as our fear that Harris would tank our economy and turn us into a “third world shithole.”
Over the next several weeks, I plan on being there for my friends and family who are Left. I started doing so mere hours after Trump was declared the winner. Crowing over the win or berating the Left for “stupid fears” is not going to fix anything, and will only make things worse. Instead, I am standing beside my Left friends.
When a lady friend I care about said, “I’m afraid that I’m going to have my marriage with my wife dissolved or have to go underground again,” I comforted her. I told her flat out, if anyone attempts to make your relationship illegal, I will stand at your side and fight with you. And I will, because it’s what I believe in. Near as I can tell, it’s what Trump believes in as well, so I’m not the least bit worried, but she is. Telling her she’s being silly, or that Trump isn’t going to take away her marriage, isn’t going to do anything. It just makes me look like a dick. So I’m holding her hand and assuring her that I’m there for her.
Disabled friends who are not married because the current laws have made it so that if they do get married they lose all their benefits (apparently disabled people can’t have relationships or they suddenly become “abled”) are freaking out because they worry things will get worse. I look at them in compassion, because I’m pretty sure quite the opposite is about to happen for them. I think that Trump will, as he becomes aware of these inequities, fix them. So I am saying comforting words and being as present for them as I can.
The ones that are making threats, those I’m either ignoring (if I think it’s a momentary response to a huge shock) or walking away from (if I think they’re actually going to cause violence). I’m willing to give people a bit of leeway because they are grieving, but not so much that I’m going to allow violence in a place I have control over. I have compassion, but I’m not stupid. I’m not calling for you to give in, to cowtow to anyone, or to lie about your beliefs or how you voted.
In any case, please think how you’d be feeling right now, if Harris had won. Think about how you felt four years ago, when Biden won. It was soul crushing, depressing, and there was a bit of fear mongering that went on (of course the fear mongering wasn’t as bad as some of the stuff that ACTUALLY happened, but that’s besides the point). That is how your Left family and friends and acquaintances are feeling right now, only magnified.
Harris painted this pretty picture for those who drank the kool-aid. She was going to be a female messiah. She didn’t prepare her people at all for what might happen if they lost. You and I know this is because she isn’t capable of planning, and didn’t know what she was going to do even if she won… but that’s another thing altogether. Her avid followers, unlike Trump’s people, didn’t hear her saying, “We get up tomorrow and go to work, no matter who wins. We do what we’ve always done, because this is America.” Trump let his people know that we needed to “keep carrying on” no matter who won. Preparation was made. He urged people to be kind. Harris just ran on “we’re going to win; we have to.”
The thing that I took away from the exit polls I followed, was that most of the new people who voted for Trump, weren’t voting for Trump. They were voting for someone who had any kind of plan at all. People went to Harris’s rallies hoping/expecting to hear what she was going to do if she became president. Instead, they got concerts, declarations from television and movie stars, and a lot of smoke and mirrors. They got chants and songs. They didn’t get answers. And when they tried to ASK questions, they were overlooked and hushed up. This forced a lot of people who were on the fence to go toward the only person in the race who had an idea of what was going on.
In closing, please, just be nice. I know it’s hard. They weren’t nice. They *aren’t* nice. But we are. If you can’t be nice, just walk away. Don’t bait people. It’s a bad look, and one I don’t want to be associated with. It’s one I don’t want associated with my President.
I love you all. Thank you for helping me to get to a place where November 6th’s results were not soul crushing, as they would have been a couple of years ago.
I’m leaving you with a TikTok, because this is me today. Sobbing incoherently on and off, because half of my world, my family, my friends, just slammed the door on me. Most of them don’t realize they did it, which makes it even worse. So have some fucking compassion.
@autumnwitbeck♬ original sound – Autumn
Comments
9 responses to “Compassion”
How about benign indifference?
Perfectly acceptable, at least in my eyes. Walking away, too. I’ve had to do that several times. It’s just the gloating and baiting that does no good, especially right now.
In February, a month after Trump takes office, I’m going to start a weekly post. I’m going to ask my friends if they’ve lost (or gained) any protected rights that week, whether they’ve lost (or gained) medical care, childcare costs, homes, cars, etc etc. I’m going to be very polite, but very specific, addressing each of the things I’m hearing out of them right now that they’re going to suddenly lose. The right to vote. The right to free speech. The right to IVF. The list goes on. I’m going to ask it week after week after week.
Yes, it’ll get frustrating for them. But the answer is, they aren’t going to lose any of those rights, because Trump isn’t doing that. He never did. And on the off chance they DO lose a right to something, I’m morally certain that people on the Right will stand strong with them. Because the Right isn’t about ending people’s gay or interracial marriages, or stopping gay parents from raising their kids, or taking hormones away from *consenting adults* who’ve chosen to change their gender. But I need to do it this way, steadily, draggingly, so they can see.
Fwiw, Mrs B and I spent about two hours last night talking a friend off the metaphorical ledge. She’s a very smart person, but has been so saturated by the negaTrump propaganda it’s hard for her to step back and think things through rationally; the claws are very deep into the emotional centers.
She is, I have observed, naturally centrist to slightly conservative on most things if she can decouple from the immediate emotional response. But after living in Seattle for 15+ years, well… Exposure matters.
Living most of your life in the center of The Peoples Repubelick of Pugetopia will put a kink in anyone’s psyche.
the difference between “us and them” I find is they are confrontational and nasty, quick to blame us for perceived wrongs. we just shake our heads and walk away. We the People don’t have time to argue and fight with grown up toddlers. WE have to work and take care of our families. back us into a corner and we become unshirted hell. back them into a corner and they become victims and cry for police(that they want to unfund)… I chose a long time ago to not engage them, speak to them, try to be friends with them.. leave me alone, I will leave you alone..
“live and let live” is one of my preferred approaches. The only problem is, both parties need to agree to do so. If they don’t, there can be … trouble.
Around here its fairly easy to tell who is a liberal so keeping them at arms reach is easy. Like we teach in ccw class- walk away, de-escalation. you can’t fix stupid, and numbing it with a stick just makes you tired..
I agree fully. Living in Western New York State (the Conservative end, by Lake Erie) it’s easy to see the triggered melting down. At least our House Reps are staunch supporters of the Administration.
With President-Elect Donald Trump, a Republican Senate and the likelihood of a Republican House, they should realize that We, the People weren’t adopting their Progressive Agenda.
For now, take some solace that the Tyrant Leaders of NY, the ones who tried to put him in jail, shook her fists at the soon to be Trump Administration.
Disabled friends who are not married because the current laws have made it so that if they do get married they lose all their benefits (apparently disabled people can’t have relationships or they suddenly become “abled”)
This is the stinger in any government “aid” policy. A friend wanted some food assistance while he was at college. He was told to divorce his wife and she and the kids could get aid. Bottom line is that the government is a soulless b**tard but that’s an entire nother post.