Nine years and four months
What the Trump era has cost all of us
“The American people are exhausted by his gaslighting.” -Kamala Harris.
I often think about the Trump era and how traumatic it has been. It’s been nearly a decade since Donald Trump first announced his campaign for the White House, and some of the strangest experiences of my life come from that time. Big things like living through a Global Pandemic under Trump’s negligent leadership, and small things like not wanting to turn my phone on again at 10 PM after choir rehearsal. Because I knew some news had likely broken and whatever it was would raise my blood pressure.
I will never forget spending the Christmas holidays in 2020, isolated, heavily pregnant with twins, and tracking MAGA communities online. Hoping I was wrong and that these folks weren’t actually planning a coup out in plain sight. And still being shocked on January 6 by how far they got. I will never forget watching Brett Kavanaugh testifying on the Hill, behaving in a way so unbefitting of a public servant, telling us that he was entitled to be a Supreme Court Justice. Because he was speaking to an audience of one, a tyrant who would only respect a fellow tyrant.
Then there were the times when it was made clear to me that Trump and his cronies did not consider me fully human. The Access Hollywood tape, the day Roe fell, when Trump stood behind Hillary Clinton menacingly on the debate stage, and when he said women who had abortions should be punished. The list goes on and on and on. And I know for people in marginalized communities, the list is 10 times as long as my own.
What I’ve noticed is that I feel these memories in my body. I’ve come to recognize where I get tense in my shoulders or how my jaw clenches. My kids are at the age where we’re teaching them about feelings, and part of that is helping them tune into their bodies and learn to recognize their anger, frustration, joy, etc. A decade ago I’m not sure that I could have verbalized how things like rage and sadness feel physically in my body. Now, I can explain in great detail what every negative emotion feels like.
The Trump era has been traumatic. I suspect this is probably true even for most of his supporters, though I don’t feel much empathy for them. But this whole period of our lives is collective trauma. I don’t want to compare it to being in a war zone, as I know millions of people all over the world are living through much worse. But I also don’t want to minimize the weight of everything and what it’s done to us. I think it’s important to acknowledge that what has happened was not OK. We have a right to be angry and despair about the past decade. To feel everything we’re feeling.
We also deserve better. To feel safe in our country and our communities. We deserve elected officials who actually serve their constituents and work together in moments of national crisis. I won’t pretend America has ever lived up to its own mythology or met its own ideals, but it’s not unreasonable to expect the people who hold office and work in government to aspire to that and work towards it. We have every right to expect more from people in power.
I don’t have any easy answers. I wish I could take a magic wand and erase everything associated with Trump and MAGA from our memories. I wish I could say that a Kamala Harris victory will end the MAGA movement once and for all. It’s not that simple.
Mostly, I wanted to recognize what a long, strange journey it’s been. I want to tell you that whatever you’re feeling these days is normal and completely understandable. I’m ready for an end to the Trump era, and I believe we’re close. But to become a better nation, we must acknowledge all we’ve lost.
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