When President Obama was elected in 2008, it felt like the beginning of a new era. There was good reason for hope and optimism — we had elected a President who was inspirational, thoughtful, and highly capable. His years ushered in many advancements, including marriage equality and health care access. We were making long-delayed progress toward a better society. The tide had turned.
What I didn’t see coming is that his election would indeed be a catalyst for a new era, the era of hate we are living with today. A backlash by white nationalists furious about that progress and, perhaps most critically, that we elected a Black man. That a woman could be nominated, twice.
I’ve always been a humanist, with a belief that people are more good than bad and that truly horrible people were not the norm. So I was (and remain) unprepared to grasp how cruel and bigoted so many Americans are. How many sociopaths walk among us, openly cheering for suffering and abuse for no apparent reason other than punching down. It’s always been there, it had simply grown more quiet and I chose not to look for it.
So much of what I cherish and believe in is being destroyed, including a piece of my heart that will never recover from the hatred that has been revealed.