Dumpster Fire Election 2016

During a personal IM I came to a realization about why I had and have such a visceral response to the new president.  And it also offers an explanation for why it seems so effortless for me to feel empathy and offer support to people of color, people in the LGBTQ community, women, and pretty much any group that isn’t white and straight.  It is not immediately obvious why; I do not belong to any of these groups and in fact I am white and I am straight.  This (edited) IM below probably simplifies the reason too much, and I am more likely the sum total of almost 50 years of just being in the world, but I suspect that this is at the root of what made me. 

In 1976 my older sister once rescued me from the repeated beatings of an older kid named Blane Miller in grammar school.  He tormented me on a regular basis and one day my sister appeared out of nowhere and sent him sliding across the loose gravel on the playground.  But, other ‘Blane Millers’ continued the onslaught when she wasn't around for about five years following, pummeling my head and arms and torso with closed fists in rapid fire, followed by kicking my stuff down the hall and a rash of verbal assaults -- "fag!  loser! nice holes in your clothes!!"  We were poor and I was small and skinny and I smiled a lot, I guess that made me a target.  Where the hell were the adults in the room?  Honestly, some of them were not much better.  Kids still endure this every day, and I and they recognize our abusers all too well in this dumpster fire of a president-elect.  On November 8^th, my country, including some people close to me, elected the embodiment of ‘Blane Millers’ everywhere to be the leader and moral compass of our country.  I do not know what to do with that.  Time I guess.

This is the best explanation I can think of for why I usually err on the side of empathy and on the side of groups who have suffered the most at the hands of the more powerful.  If you had asked me a week or two ago if I thought that my time in school had an effect on me, I would have told you that is ridiculous.  It is ancient history.  But I would have been wrong.  It is forever part of me. In hind sight it gave me the ability to feel the pain of other people almost as deeply as if it were my own, especially for people of color, women, LGBTQ, and most immigrant groups at one time or another.  And their pain has been so much worse than anything I endured.  These groups also see their abusers in DT (I can’t bring myself to use that name).  And America, you just acquitted, encouraged, and emboldened their abusers.  My hope was that you would send him sliding across the gravel on the playground, but instead you just threw in a few more punches of your own.