The Morning After

on the election

It is the morning after the election. Last night I slept on the couch. My back has been tight for a few days and I thought maybe it was due to my laughably-firm mattress. A couch retreat seemed like a good idea. The jury is out on whether that worked. It could just be that I’m 35.

The blackout curtains in my studio apartment are closed still. My eyes have barely cracked open and I feel hungover in spite of not touching alcohol last night. My head hit the pillow around 12:30 a.m. At the time, North Carolina had been called for Trump. Georgia looked like it would soon follow suit. My gut told me exactly what I would find when I awoke. Sure enough when I came to consciousness awhile ago, my phone, and what felt like a few hundred texts from friends, alerted me that Trump had a decisive win.

While I feed Birdie and get some coffee in my system, I feel…hollowed out. Perhaps ‘numb’ is more accurate. There’s an emptiness inside that has replaced the cacophony of emotions leading up to this moment. The anger, hope, fear, confusion, excitement, disappointment, and peace I’ve felt in the last few months have dissipated into a kind of nothingness. In this moment, those feelings are gone and all that remains is an internal sensory deprivation chamber.

Back to the couch and after a few minutes on my phone, I put it down. Not that. Not right now. Social media is a firestorm of emotion. Everyone, from celebrity to old high school acquaintance, is spilling out their grief and rage in the town square. They have every right to do that. Maybe it makes them feel better. If it does, I say keep going. But for me, I can’t. I must walk away from the town square. Quiet is the only thing that feels correct.

I stare out at a misty grey morning. It’s balmy outside but I leave my windows open. Birdie, now full on chicken breast and kibble, cuddles up next to me. We’re butt to butt. I start to think.

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Sometime in my early 20s I got a hypertension diagnosis. After that, regardless of my weight or diet or lifestyle, I could never get it “under control.” I tried. In the back of my mind it gnawed at me, this amorphous evil lurking in my veins. But I was resistant to treatment because it somehow felt like a moral failing. I’d bought into our culture’s strange message that any and all health outcomes are a result of personal choice and therefore one’s ability to be a good person. That was until about two years ago when my doctor told me if I didn’t get on medication that I would have a stroke or heart attack in my 40s. Needless to say, I opted for meds.

Every morning I pop that tiny ACE inhibitor, along with a handful of other pills and vitamins, into my mouth and swallow. I don’t think twice about it any more. Like an itty bitty piece of magic, that pill keeps my blood pressure down to normal ranges. It is the only effective thing fighting that amorphous evil in my veins. That minuscule pill, the size of a grain of rice, will likely prevent me from having a cardiac event in the next decade and beyond. I sleep better at night knowing I’m on it.

Within that fistful of capsules and pills is PrEP. This pill, substantially larger than my blood pressure medication, is a pre-exposure prophylaxis. It reduces the transmission of HIV by 99%.  As someone who is HIV-negative, it gives me an added level of security against a virus which decimated my community a few short decades ago and continues to spread even today. PrEP is ubiquitous among urban queer men. It has had a major impact on reducing HIV transmission rates. It has saved lives.

Both of these medications are prescribed by my doctor and they cost me exactly zero dollars. Every three months when I get a refill, I tell the CVS pharmacist my name and birthdate and they then hand me a bag of pills that save my life. No credit card involved. This is because these meds are covered by my insurance, Blue Cross Blue Shield. I get this insurance through Market Place and the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare.

My health insurance, which is only a step above catastrophic, is expensive. My monthly premium is $316. My yearly deductible is around $8,500. It is not perfect but it is all I have. It is the only safeguard I have against complete financial ruin should anything major, or even relatively minor, happen to my physical body. While I hate paying that premium, especially given that I drive a 17 year-old car on his last leg and could certainly use that money toward a car payment, I know I am fortunate enough to have that protection. I know that 316 dollars is saving my life.

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Project 2025, Trump’s policy blueprint for another term, would seek to weaken the Affordable Care Act or repeal it all together. In spite of the ACA’s popularity, covering millions of American families, the republican party would certainly back such a measure as they have attempted to do in the past. Since it is part of Obama’s legacy, and Obama being the Democrat who goes bump in the night, they will do what they can to destroy it. If that happens, my premiums might rise to an untenable level. Those prescription drugs that save my life might become more expensive, if they remain covered at all. It’s even possible that I might be denied coverage entirely because of my hypertension diagnosis (a.k.a. a preexisting condition).

This same policy blueprint that Trump, who I believe couldn’t care less about governance and who will gladly outsource it to the Heritage Foundation, will follow is also explicitly clear about what they intend to with LGBTQ+ rights and protections. Within Project 2025, the administration is directed to “delet[e] the words ‘sexual orientation and gender identity ('SOGI'), diversity, equity, and inclusion ('DEI'), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights’ ... out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.” In other words, they are attempting to erase queer people out of whatever meager federal protections they currently have. This affects everything from hate crime legislation to workplace discrimination protections. As a queer person who walks around in the world, this has incredibly stark and scary possibilities.

That 1000-page document also defines family in a way that clearly excludes queer people. They define family as being “comprised of a married mother, father, and their children.”  They state that “only heterosexual, two-parent families are safe for children” and that, “all other family forms involve higher levels of instability (the average length of same-sex marriages is half that of heterosexual marriages); financial stress or poverty; and poor behavioral, psychological, or educational outcomes.” These claims are all false. They have been outrightly debunked by institutions such as the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

One day I hope to be married. At least, I think I do. To be honest, I don’t see a ton of great marriage ambassadors in my life. In general y’all make it look miserable. Nevertheless it’s something that represents safety, stability, and belonging. And should that happen for me, my family will never look like the Project 2025 vision of family. We will be two men, with or without children. With a presidential policy bible that excludes me and my family, we might be barred from adoption or IVF. Or the exclusionary apparatus could make adoption and/or IVF prohibitively difficult and expensive. My kids could be discriminated against at school with no recourse. We could be denied housing. My marriage itself, presently very fictitious, could be in jeopardy. Clarence Thomas made it clear in his concurrent Dobbs opinion that marriage equality should be reexamined. If it were to make its way to the Supreme Court, the right wing majority of justices would certainly undo marriage protection for queer couples.

I’m also surrounded by a tribe of women. They are wildly important to me and pivotal in my ability to navigate this life. And while, yes, we are getting older, some of them are having kids. Quite a few have had children in the last few years. Within that bunch there have also been miscarriages and scary deliveries, ectopic pregnancies and close calls. I can’t imagine what my life would look like if one of my friends or sisters was allowed to die because their doctor was prohibited from performing a life-saving abortion. If that were to happen, part of me would die with them. I cannot fathom the pit of grief that would await me on the other side. A second Trump term will bring with it a national abortion ban. And this worst-case scenario, which is already happening in some states, will continue to worsen and spread into every single corner of this country, possibly including my own little world.

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All of this, this litany of fears and dark thoughts, isn’t left-wing hyperbole. It isn’t liberal propaganda or fear mongering or snowflake tears. This litany consists of very concrete tangibles that will affect my life. Policies set forth by the incoming Trump administration will impact me, my health, and my safety directly. And, for the record, I am lightyears away from being the most vulnerable among us.

The reason all of this is possible is because Trump and his followers do not see me as human. My humanity is nonexistent in their eyes. Instead, my existence is, at best, a nuance and, at worst, a threat to be eradicated. That is the most insidious and vile thing about him. He created this pressure cooker where the abject worst in all of us boils first and hottest. We strip each other of humanity so that we might have something, not someone, to blame for the hardships of our lives. Every unspeakable evil throughout time has required some level of dehumanization.

I realize I will get pushback for even saying this, and that’s okay, but we on the left are guilty of dehumanization too. For nearly 10 years we’ve pointed to Trump supporters and called them racists, misogynists, and xenophobes. Directly and loudly. And to be clear, outspoken white supremacists, women haters, and Christian nationalists flock to Trump as though he is the second coming. Make no mistake. But outside of that self-identified group, I don’t believe the rest of the 73+ million people who voted for him see themselves as racists and misogynists. Most people see themselves as good. Most people are just trying to do what’s best for their families, put food on the table, and go on the occasional vacation. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, wants safety and security most of all.

But we label them. We use a single word or two to describe people who are as vastly complex and human as we are. We strip them of any nuance. With that label, we can then put them safely away in a different category. One where reasoning, intelligence, compassion, and morality do not exist. It’s much easier to hate a type of person than an actual person.

And if your undies are in a wad right now, let me clarify that I’m not equating someone actively stripping another person of their rights with calling someone a misogynist. Those are two different things. I’m keenly aware that they are different in severity and impact. However, while they are different, they both require one ingredient: dehumanization.

The toughest pill for me to swallow right now is the truth that those Trump voters likely went into the election with a litany of fears too. We can dissect unconscious bias as the day is long. In fact I can guarantee that every pundit everywhere will do just that in the coming days/weeks/months/years. We can discuss the notion of strongmen and why people felt safer with an angry man instead of a level-headed woman. We can discuss propaganda, disinformation, and echo chambers. We can talk about bad actors, social media, and interference. We can certainly discuss racism, misogyny, and xenophobia. But at the end of the day, those Trump voters did what they thought was best for their lives, their families, and their communities.

That choice was at the expense of my life, my family, and my community. They couldn’t see my humanity in their decision. Obviously I wish they had chosen otherwise.

But what I refuse to do is continue participating in this damning cycle of dehumanization. I’m resolved, now more than ever, to look at people in the full spectrum of their humanity as best I can. The longer I sit with this, staring out at a dull sky in the morning after, the more I feel that this in itself is an act of revolution. Humanization, or better yet, rehumanization might be the only thing that truly moves us forward.

And those aren’t soft words. That’s not an excuse for passivity. In the coming years, this rehumanization effort might look like protest. It might look like uncomfortable conversations. It might look like organizing to stop policies that harm people. It might look like saying, or shouting, “No!” No you cannot erase my humanity. No you do not get to strip me of my rights. No you do not get to put my loved ones in jeopardy. But I can no longer do that at the expense of anyone else’s humanity, even those who can’t see mine. I cannot demand that my humanity be protected while disregarding the humanity of others. It only adds to our collective sickness. It only helps to heat up the pressure cooker.

Perhaps I'll feel differently in a year or after the inauguration or in an hour or by the time this publishes. But for right now, as I stare out at a grey November morning having slept on the couch, this resolve feels a little like —

hope.