I’m scared.
I’m still in China, here until February. I had yesterday off work, and I didn’t sleep the night of 8 November (here, because I live in the future). I was anxious about the election in a country I’m not a citizen of, on the opposite side of the world. I sat up at 7 am yesterday, turned on my VPN (because I’m in China), and the shaky live-feed of CBC news because I wanted — hoped — to watch the first woman ever be elected President of the United States.
I don’t want to talk about the reasons the other candidate got in instead — I follow Joyce Carol Oates on Twitter, and she has NEVER referred to him by name on her feed, and neither will I. I can’t dwell on how a woman who has spent all her life in public service lost to someone like…that. And since I’m not American, I don’t live there, and even if I did, I’m white, I’m not even immediately affected, personally, by what’s happened.
Canada is utterly dependent upon the US economically, and our language and cultures make it a permanent fact that I’ll be mistaken for American outside the US. So, there are meta, existential, personal-vanity issues I have with the election’s results.
These are my genuine worries. Half of the popular vote in the election put that man in office, and:
- one of my former co-workers here in China, and my closest friend here, returned home — to the US — in the spring. She’s black. Just typing that has made me stop breathing for a second.
- my sister, brother-in-law, and their daughter live in the US. Daughter. My niece. Little girl. In the United States.
- Being a theatre person, I have met or social-media-communicated with other American theatre people. Some of whom are gay. Some of whom are women. ALL of whom are theatre people, in America, now.
- Half of the popular vote in the election — voters, people — have just told all these people they don’t matter.
- That half of voters genuinely believe that all the non-white people are going to made miserable — why they’d want that, that…I can’t fathom — but all THEIR wishes are going to come true. Everyone is going to be miserable. Half of the US wants misery, and that boggles me.
- I’m a woman. Canada has its issues with pay equity, misogyny, and…sexual assault. That the US has just told the world they think this is all okay, is NOT OKAY.
I’m scared for the people I personally know in the US. I’m scared about how the US will affect Canada. I’m scared because I’m not even in Canada right now, and I more feel alone and vulnerable than I ever have in my life.
And as for the nuclear codes. What is there to say about that except: