What do we tell our children? The grown ones, especially? The ones who understand what just happened?
It just became a lot more dangerous to be a young woman in America. Our next president boasts of grabbing female genitals and has been accused of multiple sexual assaults. His election opens the door to a new normal of misogyny that is terrifying to contemplate. This is the message he has given to our sons.
If you have daughters, it’s worse. There is now no institution of governmental power — not the White House, not the Senate, not the House of Representatives, and soon, not the Supreme Court — that has their interests at heart. And guess what: Many of the parents reading this are luckier than most. Your children are possibly white and decently educated and middle- to upper-middle class. They’re probably American citizens. The beasts that this election has loosed will not be coming for them, at least not right away.
No, the beasts — Hillary’s “deplorables,” the slice of Donald Trump’s bigger constituency that has always hated and feared anyone not like them — have been given the go-ahead, and it is a terrible time to be a person of any color other than white in America. The reprisals and hate crimes are just beginning. Not from your neighbor who voted for Trump and was too timid to tell you. But certainly from the KKK, whose official newspaper supported Trump’s campaign, and the white supremacist fringes, and the cretins who tweet Nazi hate messages at anyone with a Jewish-sounding name. For them, it’s morning in America.
For anyone else it’s mourning in America.
How do we look our children in the eyes and tell them they have a promising future when any meaningful US action on climate change now stands to be shut down? Our president-elect doesn’t believe it exists, remember? That stance emboldens everyone who wants to keep stripping our resources and warming their hands over a slowly burning Earth, as if the time for draconian measures was not already past.
How do we tell them their country still tries to stand for democracy abroad and open arms at home when our president-elect admires the worst of international actors and vows vengeance against those seeking a better life here? We raise our children, in theory and hopefully in our actions, to help those in need and to work for the interests of the less powerful. To our immense pride, most of them do that in all their various ways, with the fire and passion that comes with being young and believing a difference can be made.
I am fearful that Tuesday night poured water on their hopes. I want to apologize to them for the country they are inheriting. As if we didn’t do enough. As very likely we didn’t.
But. But. Tomorrow is another day, as the heroine of a silly Hollywood artifact once said. Here are some thoughts we might offer to the young people of this country — the kids in high school and college and just stepping into the world — as America gets handed to an agent not of change but of potential disaster.
You are our best hope for the future. You have the numbers, and they are growing. Many of you have lived a mostly charmed life in which the culture seems to have mostly gone your way, and you still have it better than most others in the world. That is why it’s your duty now, along with ours, to regroup and gather strength from your peers and struggle harder for the people who stand to be pushed further into the darkness. Some of those people — a lot of them actually — voted for Trump, and you will need to convince them in whose interests their new government really works. You and they will need to remind yourselves that we are not enemies in this. Some of them — many of them — are friends.
On the other hand, the older generations have to regird and return to the fray as well. Who are we — who am I — to tell you to clean up the mess we’ve made? You need to be living your lives, pursuing your dreams, doing what you can to get to a place where you feel you have autonomy and success as a person and then, hopefully, power as a citizen. But understand that those responsibilities are now knitted together in ways we can’t yet fathom.
You will need to make your voices heard alongside ours. We will need to fight hard against the erosion of our freedoms, individually and in groups that will be more demonized than ever. Know that the country is changing. This may be the final stand of an older order. You represent the very best of the new, and you are not alone.
Someone close to me said Wednesday morning that “goodness and clear-headedness will prevail.” I believe that, and I hope you do too, but we have just been reminded that goodness and clear-headedness do not come easy. We have to fight for them in words and actions and personal choices. Take heart from the strongest and most empathetic of your generation and ours. Force the issues. Use social media to forge connections rather than sow divisions. Understand the grievances of those who believe the new regime is their friend. Push back hard against the newly empowered forces of hate with every ounce of your energy. Protect those they threaten. We are far from alone.
Many of your parents woke this morning distressed to tears about the country our generation is handing yours. I’d say we should apologize, but it’s too late for that. Rather, we need to start talking now, today, about what we can do to get our country back.
And we need your help.