Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: democracy

How to self-soothe on a hard, painful day

We’re fucked.

America is fucked, I mean.

We’ve had (arguably) our good days, but those are behind us now.

The divide is growing day by day, and we should not be a country, anyway. We are fifty different mini-countries, and even within each state, there are vast differences. In Minnesota, for example, the Twin Cities are extremely blue as is the suburb in which I live. There are a sprinkle of other cities that are blue, too, but everywhere else is red. Are red? Not blue, in any case. This is the case in may states around the country.

Trump as a candidate has exposed the lie that is our democratic system. Presidents have very little actual accountability, and they are held in line mostly by social construct and pressure.

I’m so tired. I have said in the past that I did not come back from the dead (twice) to deal with this bullshit. It’s also really hard for me to swallow that a hefty portion of the country I live in wants me dead or to put it more mildly, to disappear. Or for me to change who I am.

I’m incredibly ‘lucky’in that I can hide some of the things about myself that would make me a target and the other ones aren’t as, ah, problematic as some others. Me being Asian? Probably not that dangerous, especially as I was born here. I do get mistaken for Chinese, which can be bad or good, depending. I can let my gender slide and not make it a big deal. I don’t have to deal with my lack of religion being an issue, either. I don’t live in an area that will punish you for that, thankfully.

I can mask, is what I’m sayying. I’m close to not having to care about abortion for myself (going through menopause, and I think I’m at the late stages of it). Yes, I’m trying to find the silver lining in a very dark cloud. The problem is that when I look at the bigger picture, it’s pretty grim. All the sensible Republicans have left the party, and I don’t blame them. The problem is that many of them did not cross the aisle, but just remained in the land of ‘undecided’.

I’m so depressed right now. not just depressed, but also incandescently angry. What the fuck is wrong with this country? That’s partly rhetorical, but it’s also a pain that hits me deep in my solar plexus. I know that I’m an outsider. I know that I’m not wanted. But to have it slapped in my face so brutally was not what I needed nor wanted.

We’ve broken the social contract. You know the one. It’s the contract that says we pretend to get along with each other and not notice (again, pretending) when someone commited a faux pas. I’m not saying those were good times (they weren’t), but tehy were at least tolerable times.


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Excited for the first time in 12 years

I’m excited. For the first time in 12 years, I’m…hopeful? And that is a dangerous thing because I was ready for America to go to hell. I was resigned to losing the election because this country is a fucking joke. And then, Kamala Harris did the unexpected and chose Tim Walz, my governor, as her running mate. I knew he was one of the finalists, but I assumed she would be sensible and choose someone from a swing state. Governor Josh Shapiro from Pennsylvania was the one who was mentioned the most often. I figured it would be him.

This morning, I woke up to the news that Harris had chosen Walz. Immediately, my mood lifted 100%. When it was *sigh* Biden running for reelection, I just could not muster any enthusiasm. At all. It was incredible to me that it was that close at all. And it sucked that the Supreme Court was intent on ruining democracy. And Trump chose someone as his running mate who is, to put it politely, a complete jackoff with no redeeming qualities, which made me feel even more hopeless.

I had written this election off, incredibly. There are still so many people in my country who are that upset at losing their privilege (white cis dudes, mainly), they’ll vote for the gross old white dude who tells them what they want to hear. Even though he does not give a single shit about them. I did not like what it said about my country. I did not come back from the dead for this!

Then, Biden steepped down from the election. And Trump was classless as always in what he had to say about it. He could have simply said, “Good luck to him; I wish him wel.” If that was too much, he could have said nothing. But, no, he chose the ugliest thing to say because that is who he is.

There was a debate about who would replace him, but there reall ywas no confusion over that. It would be Harris because Biden left too late for it to be anyone but her. I was skeptical beacuse America couldn’t even manage to hire a white woman, let alone a black woman. But then I thought that weirdly, it might be easier for a black woman because progressive white dudes would probably be more willing to vote for a black woman than a wihte one (three-thousand words here why that is true).


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