Nina Katchadourian’s “Monument to the Unelected” at the Lefferts Historic House in Prospect Park, Brooklyn (Photo by Allison Meier for Hyperallergic)
Yesterday we all woke up to the terrifying reality that Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States. A few hours after the election had been ‘called’, my 24-year-old daughter Nona sent a text to her dad (and my spouse) James, who was traveling on business, looking for reassurance. I found some solace in their exchange.
Nona:
Are you awake? I’m laying on Claire’s couch in existential dread about a republican majority and a human fart filled noxious gas as president. I know you said you lived through Reagan but a) he has a legacy of having fucked a lot of shit up so tbh* not a great example (I get it, we survived, but we certainly would be better off today without Reagonomics) and b) Trump’s rhetoric is way more terrifying and c) he has validated insane white supremacists who will now come out of the woodwork and be fuckin wild and d) what if he appoints crazies to the Supreme Court and makes abortion illegal/actually starts a campaign of terror where he deports people/makes gay marriage illegal again or makes an executive order that trans people can’t use whatever bathroom they want/IS NOT IMPEACHED
I guess that is to say: how will this be ok?
*
James:
I would say this: it’s not ok and has never been ok. The rights we are worried about losing today have already de facto been taken from or never fully granted to most Americans and most people. We now wake up from the fog of pretending that the slow drip of neoliberal criminality and imperial hubris in which our political culture is now fully bathed was somehow an unintended or collateral side effect. We have now been given the privilege of joining the struggle as comrades rather than cognoscenti, as we in our relatively privileged pocket of the culture sometimes imagine ourselves to be. Of course you are already fully engaged in struggle as a young queer woman and as a thinking human being, among other identities. Now more than ever the paths, with your help, will be cleared to connect and join with many more amazing people and communities in struggle, in powerful ways yet to be imagined!
*tbh = to be honest
Nancy Kricorian
November 10, 2016