Raw undiluted grief

Today, November 6, 2024 is the day that democracy died - the day that america died. What there will be left to salvage in 2028 will be an empty shell of what once was. Why? Because american's voted (in droves!) to forsake their morality and their decency in exchange for cheaper groceries.

My musings will be brief today - I don't much feel like writing...

I have been vacillating between disbelief, pain, and a subtle desire to vomit since I awoke with a start at 0200 this morning with an acute sense that something was very very wrong. Before I flicked my iPhone awake though I knew what I was about to see...

I wrote yesterday that I did not have much hope that love and compassion would win... but oh how I was hoping that I could write today about how wrong I was, that america had responded to the hate, intolerance, anger, and ignorance by restraining it.

I read this post on Reddit early this morning and it inspired me (it was pulled from the Buddhist subreddit but I found it in conservativeterrorism. It was quite beautiful - poignant yet inspiring). To paraphrase the post the OP mused that the americans who had voted for [a pedophile, lying, crass, felon] did so from a place of anger, hatred, and ignorance. Perhaps they had never been shown a way of life, of thinking, that revolved around compassion, love, and affirmation. As a Buddhist I now have, whether I like it or not, an immense opportunity (responsibility?) to respond to this hate, anger, and ignorance with a measure of compassion and love. Even if you aren't a Buddhist a measured and loving response to those we interact with in the coming years who unleashed this travesty upon our country is the most constructive, therapeutic, and effective. Let me close with a story that proves this premise:

In 2016 I was in the depths of my xtian nationalist alt-right ideology and as such I voted for "the one who shall not be named" (hasn't he already been centered enough by even those who are opposed to what he represents?). I remember thinking how odd and laughable even (a fact that I am ashamed to admit now) the Democrats weeping was when Hillary lost. Then fast-forward to January 6, 2020 - I was only a few months into my deconstruction (de-conversion was still a solid year away at that point) and I was struck by the dichotomy of responses. Democrats cried and then moved on with their lives. Republicans stormed the capitol, tried to kill politicians and police officers (how many of those 'protestors' went home that day and climbed into their lifted pickups that were plastered with 'thin blue line' stickers emblazoned on their windows?), and in general threw temper-tantrums for the next four years like toddlers. I noticed the difference and it was formational in my rejecting xtianity and embracing a way of life rooted in love and compassion.

We (the #bluewall) are better than that, we must be better than that. We may have lost the culture war but we don't have to lose our humanity and decency or else we are just as bad as those who voted red last night.

Namaste 🙏🏾