I am currently as middle aged as I can possibly be.
Barring the onset of some sudden acute and terminal illness or an oncoming Mack truck spiraling out of control, I am more or less at the very midpoint of my life, with half my life lived and half my life left to be lived.
And at this point, after the events of yesterday, I can only think of the two sets of people who will be affected most by all of this--my parents and my children.
My parents raised me right. They instilled in me a true, genuine sense of decency and morals and ethics for which I couldn't have asked for a better possible upbringing. And I'll forever be grateful for that...I know that not everyone has had an uncomplicated, unblemished relationship with their parents, but I certainly have.
And I would like to say I've tried to raise my own children right in turn. It's not always easy to gauge, but when I heard that my youngest stood up for a friend of hers after someone called her friend a racial slur, I couldn't help but be immensely proud of the young woman I've raised. Or when my older one gently patted me on the arm this morning and told me it would be all right. To their great credit, neither of them were at all happy with these unsavory developments.
But my parents are old. Thank God, they are still very much active as possible for octogenarians, but they are old. And even though they are active at the moment, the time will eventually come where they will reach their twilight years. Hopefully it will not be within the next four years, but to be honest I don't know if we as a country will continue to be bound by four-year intervals of hope any longer.
And for someone in their twilight years, I can only imagine that as they look back at their long life, they can see that society as a whole progressed for the better as they aged. And that would give them hope for their next generations even after they pass.
But I feel as though Donald Trump has robbed many of that. The damage he and his ilk have done, and the damage that he will now continue to do for the foreseeable future...the idea that someone would leave their earthly life and that being the last impression that they get. It's terrible and it's tragic.
And my children--growing up their formidable teen years, with all this around them. It has the potential to make anyone cynical and pessimistic for the future. That shouldn't be the case for children, ever. There should always be the promise of great things to come. That things are good, and that they can get even better. But Donald Trump and company suppress that feeling. Their worldview is ugly and hopeless and hateful, with only selfish motives to rule the day.
I grew up in the 90s. The Cold War had ended, the economy was good, and while nothing in the world was perfect (ask anyone living in the Balkans or Rwanda, for example), there was still an overall sense of immense optimism of the times. 9-11 and the Iraq War and the Great Recession quelled that a bit, but we figured it was just a speed bump of sorts. Obama was elected, which made us proud, but then something happened. Roughly 10 years ago, maybe a little longer, but we began to lose that optimism that we once took for granted.
Trump's first election hit us in the gut. Then COVID. Then January 6th. The hope was that the Biden years was the end of the storm, but really it was just the eye of the hurricane, a brief lull of momentary calm before the devastating winds picked up once again.
Whether it's your life's legacy when your old, or your dreams and aspirations when you're young, they don't deserve to be robbed by the dark forces of nature. That's just cruel.
And that's why I'm heartbroken today.
Not for myself, but for my parents and for my children.
They deserve so, so, so much better.
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