Why Monday Was Just Monday
Except for it being MLK Day
Someone asked me Monday if I was doing okay. I reflected on the question, thinking through that day. It was later in the evening, after dark. My morning productivity had not yielded much because my kids were still home from school, it being a holiday. But my counseling sessions had gone well enough. I was a little weary from everyone being at home during a cold spell.
I answered that I guessed so, and then I realized what she was talking about. The inauguration had been that day. I hadn’t planned to watch it. There wasn’t anything special that would happen that would be positive for my own mental health. I wasn’t exactly boycotting it, but I did feel it unnecessary for celebration to occur when someone dehumanizing and divisive was chosen to lead the country in an electoral victory. My time had already been served watching the acceptance speech in November, and the whiny voice was just as irritating as I had remembered the first four years he had been President.
The choice wasn’t even close, in my view. I didn’t know why people had elected to vote for such a foul person, but to my mind, “Be careful what you ask for.” So I let my mind drift away from that Monday until it was brought up to me, and I indicated that my coping mechanism was to not think about it.
I had been reminded by TikTok, which let me know that I could thank President Trump for bringing it back. He wasn’t even the President yet, and I immediately wanted to avoid TikTok because of the grossness I felt at its opener. I went to Red Note instead and began using it. I even reopened Duolingo so that I could begin learning Mandarin. F*ck TikTok.The people in China seemed very nice to #TikTokRefugees.
Many in my therapy client load had experienced a very difficult November with the election going in a more fascist direction. Who would be deported? What would happen to trans friends? Wouldn’t tariffs have the effect of keeping goods more expensive and not less? Would schools be okay?
So many questions. Legitimate ones, because when he had been President before, he didn’t want to follow tradition or Constitutional norms. He wanted to do what he wanted to do, and seemed perturbed when he couldn’t.
And his cabinet was all loyalists. Forget the Best and the Brightest. Embrace groupthink. Unqualified cronies that were set to be his minions.
Ironically, this really didn’t phase me, at least like it had in 2016. Back then, a completely competent and qualified statesman had been vilified and the country chose a hyper-toxic narcissist who subtly embraced white supremacy, misogyny, public humiliation of people, sexualization of women, and general disrespect. I was amazed that the country had really voted for such a terrible person, and I was crushed that the evangelical church had blessed it.
That had been the beginning for me of the realization that my religious heritage embraced power more than spirituality, and that power was more important than principle for more people than I had ever realized. It began to be difficult to have relationships with people who were okay with promoting such a person, because it meant that they allowed injustice, and doing so didn’t sit right with me.
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Fast forward to 2020, and half the country cannot accept a loss. Democrats start being demonized as rigging an election. Despite any lack of proof of this, it keeps being repeated, as a tactic to encourage the false belief. So much so that the Capitol is stormed. And we all know how January 6 went down. The date is like 9/ll, seared into our collective consciousness.
In the summer and early fall of 2024 I had hopes that at the national leadership level the culture of otherizing would continue to diminish. That’s what the Kamala Harris campaign had been about. A call to optimism. I hadn’t known her very well as a candidate, but I really liked her. It wasn’t a perfect campaign by any means, but each candidate highlighted either the best (cooperation, counting on each other) or the worst (otherizing, xenophobia) of American attitudes.
By November, the fact that the candidates were even close made me realize that there were a significant number of people that were willing to overlook the toxic energy of the worst American attitudes. I was watching the news pretty closely, but more in a guarded sense. My spidey senses said we have been here before.
That’s what kept any surprise from hitting me on election day. From the moment the first Republican state was called, I somehow knew that it was going to go this way the whole evening. In 2016, the blow was traumatic. In a few weeks, the Pantsuit Nation had been formed. I helped found PFLAG in Midland, TX. I dedicated energy advocating for the LGBTQIA plus community. But this time, by the end of the evening I was asking myself, what do I need to do?
In some ways, my home state is a microcosm of a fascist state. Its voting is gerrymandered. The governor holds public school money from public schools because he cannot yet get legislation for school vouchers passed. He also invades the civil liberties of trans people, directing the Department of Public Safety, which manages drivers licenses, to not allow gender marker changes. Same for birth certificates.
Odessa, TX, close to where I used to live, the city council passed a law that allows trans women to be sued for using the women’s restroom. Minors, even with medical evaluations, psychological evaluations and therapy, may not have puberty blockers because the conservative ideology trumps parental rights. We are also a state in which many school districts have banned LGBTQIA plus and books regarding race from school libraries, ideological school board leaders deeming them inappropriate. Many of these school boards are funded by religious conservative superpacs.
And of course, Ken Paxton, our attorney general, has been impeached by his own party and let off the hook. But power is more important than principle here.
Texas leaders try to keep up with Florida leaders, also conservative, in its religious ideological mandate of law on the general populace. Sometimes I feel like Greg Abbot and Ron DeSantis are all about pissing contests on how anti-woke they can be. Woke meaning treating people decently and with respect.
Zooming backward to the national state in November, I simply realized that I was going to have to advocate for those who would be mistreated. History told me that they will be, because there was mistreatment in the four years that Donald Trump was President toward the LGBTQIA plus community. Why should it be any different now that he knows had to enact poor treatment more swiftly and effectively? And so a waiting game commenced. What will happen when, and what will I need to do to help?
I thought to myself, I’m going to be okay. I’m white, male, and have full-time work. There will be more stress in the next four years, so probably people will need counseling. But I’ll need to help others.
So Monday passed without fanfare for me. But I’m pretty sure others are going to have a hard time. I know that any protective orders that Biden had directed have all been undone the first day by his successor. So we’ll see what that looks like.
I don’t mean to catastrophize, but as Han Solo says, I have a bad feeling about this.
