I am supposed to be working on NaNoWriMo right now. I currently sit at 14,290 words and was really hoping to hit 16,000 before I went to bed tonight, but that will likely not happen, because instead of putting energy into NaNo, I’m writing this blog entry.
And I don’t want to. I don’t want to write this, I want to go back to my spaceships and aliens and people behaving like assholes…
Oh, wait. There’s the connection.
I can’t write NaNo at the moment because I need to get this out of my system. I need to vent, and frankly the language I’m about to use might get me fired from my day job, so you, dear reader, get the benefit of my surprising ability to not lose my shit at the office.
This is, as you have no doubt figured out if you read the title, about the American Presidential election.
Full disclosure: I’m Canadian, so I know that means many of you will tell me to mind my own fucking business. Here’s the thing… the United States of America, no matter how other countries might try to downplay the fact, is the most influential nation on Earth. Thanks to the unprecedented reach of media in the 21st century, the US is the most influential nation the world has ever seen. It may not be an Empire like the Brits once had, but every industrialized nation with the exception of North Korea imports American culture by the boatload. Everything you do affects all of us. So your elections are important to the rest of the world, too.
I didn’t sleep well last night. I wasn’t up late writing, which was actually the plan — I stopped writing at about 11:00 Eastern Time, but I stayed up until nearly 3:00 watching with growing dismay as the election results came in.
“That’s okay,” I told myself. “Clinton is all but guaranteed the 55 votes from California, so it should still be fine.”
Fuck, was I wrong.
More disclosure: if I had had a vote in it, Bernie Sanders would have been my choice for Democrat nominee. He was the most Canadian of the bunch.
The reason I didn’t sleep much last night can be boiled down to three words I never expected to hear strung together: President Donald Trump.
What the ever-loving fuck…?
In our recent (2015) Federal election, Canadians were presented with two very different approaches to politics. Well, more than two. We actually have five federal political parties up here versus the two in the United States — the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, the New Democratic Party, The Green Party and the Parti Quebecois. The last two always end up largely irrelevant in federal elections, the Greens never winning enough seats to accomplish much and the PQ because no one outside Quebec gives a shit about them. The two main parties, the ones who have essentially taken turns running the place since Confederation in 1867 are the Liberals and the Conservatives. Their names give you an idea of their general leanings, though “conservative” in Canada is not quite the same as “conservative” in the US. Kind of like how “expensive” in Walmart means something different than “expensive” in Banana Republic.
I’m getting sidetracked here. The point is, we were presented with two opposing approaches to politics and to the election. From the Liberals, under their new leader Justin Trudeau, we were presented with a message of hope, of inclusiveness, of strength through unity. A message that despite all the shit going on in the world, we can actually make it a better place. The Conservative Party, led by then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper, took the opposite approach. Their message was of fear — fear of terrorism, fear of immigrants — and of wedge issues that would divide us as a nation rather than pull us together. Harper even discussed “old-stock Canadians” at one point, trying to even further differentiate what he felt were real Canadians from not-so-real Canadians — i.e. immigrants. (Side note: I don’t recall anyone asking him what he was going to do to help the oldest of “old-stock Canadians” — our First Nations peoples). I’m sure you see some parallels here.
In the end, Canada rejected the politics of fear and division in favour of a vision of a brighter future.
Last night, American voters did the exact opposite. They actively chose fear and intolerance and bigotry and misogyny. They elected to govern their nation a man who cannot even govern his own temper on fucking Twitter. Christ on a bicycle, people.
I know, not my country, so none of my business.
Here’s my issue. As I have said here several times, and I think mentioned on Twitter once or twice, I have a step-daughter. I call her Lil Crazy. She’s ten.
How the living fuck do I deal with this?
We’ve been teaching her that telling lies to get what she wants is bad, that it’s not how adults behave.
We’ve taught her that when that boy in her class made lewd comments to her about how she should dance naked for him? Not acceptable for anyone to talk to her like that.
When we were out for breakfast and she squinted her eyes and made “ching-chong” noises, making fun of the Chinese family across the restaurant, we explained what racism was and why it was a horrible thing to make fun of people just because they looked different.
Someone tells her she can’t do something because she’s a girl? Fuck that, we tell her — you can do anything. Being a girl doesn’t make you any less capable, any less of a person.
And then Donald fucking Trump.
He lies continually. He makes fun of the disabled. He demonizes the “other.” He treats women like things as opposed to people worthy of respect. He fucking condones and brags about sexual assault.
Again, how the living fuck do I deal with this?
How does any parent or step-parent reconcile the fact that this man is about to assume the most important office on the planet? And how can any person with a kid, especially a daughter, be okay with it? Better yet, how could they, in good conscience, vote for him?
I do not understand this. Not one fucking bit. I didn’t come into Lil Crazy’s life until she was seven and she and her mom have only lived with me since she was nine. I don’t have a vast amount of parenting experience unless you count dogs, so maybe other people have a better grasp on how to deal with shit like this, I don’t know. Even at the best of times, I feel like I’m stumbling blindly with this parenting thing. But what I do know is that President Trump scares the shit out of me. Not for me, but for her, for her future.
How do I tell her that society values her as much as it values any male when the guy leading the world’s most powerful country has a history of treating women with contempt and treating them like they’re there for his amusement? How do I make her understand that it’s not acceptable for boys to touch her or grab her make lewd remarks to her when the President of the United States brags about doing those same goddamned things? How do I get her to understand that just because someone is from a different country or a different religion doesn’t automatically make them someone to fear or hate, and doesn’t make them any less worthy of your respect when Americans throw their lot in with a guy who campaigned on literally putting up walls between people, throwing people out of the country and refusal to let people of a certain religion in?
So much for “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
The answer is both really simple and really fucking difficult. Because the answer is me. The answer has always been me, before there was even a question.
That’s not ego talking. I’m not putting myself up as some kind of foul-mouthed messiah. I can’t turn water into wine — the closest I’ve managed is turning beer into urine. But that doesn’t change the answer.
Though I may not be Lil Crazy’s biological father, I am, more or less, a father figure in her life. I may not have any power to affect the outcome of a foreign election, but I can sure as shit do everything in my power to be her example. I refuse to let her think she is somehow less because she’s a girl or that treating a girl like a possession is just boys being boys. Or that we need to fear anyone who isn’t white because they might be terrorists, or that bringing refugees to our country is the wrong thing to do because FEAR. I will show her to the best of my ability what it means to treat all women as equals; to treat everyone, regardless of race, colour or creed as equals. I will show that even though I think religion as a whole is stupid, that doesn’t mean I’m afraid of anyone’s religion or want to prevent them from worshipping whoever or whatever the fuck they want. Will I fuck up at some point? Of course. Regardless of everything I’ve said in this post, I am still the product of North American society and, as was made abundantly clear last night, we’re nowhere near as enlightened as we like to believe.
That was a very, very hard truth for me.
And you know what? I’m done. I’m fucking done. And I’m pissed at myself that it took me so long to get to this point. Racism, sexism, bigotry, misogyny, rape culture — it all flourishes when good people say nothing, when they ignore it and hope it will go away. We Canadians are generally polite — it’s a stereotype reinforced by Hollywood, but it’s also very true. We try to avoid confrontation when we can, and I don’t think we’re alone in this — it can be really uncomfortable to call someone out on their racism in person. I will no doubt lose friends over this, but I’m done. I’m not going to let Lil Crazy finish growing up into a world where people would rather stare at their shoes than stand up for something and where creepy old bastards think that a bit of fame means they can manhandle a girl’s vagina.
She deserves a better world than that and while I am far, far from perfect on any front, I have to do what I can to make it happen.
You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power – let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work – that will give youth a future and old age a security. – Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator
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