In these few days following the election, I have seen an outpouring of rhetoric, whether it be intentionally or unintentionally inflammatory, regarding the reactions of myself and others like me. "Not everyone who voted for Trump is racist!" Some have said. "Donald doesn't actually want to kill gay people!"
Not once in my life have I uttered either of those statements, so I will begin by reasserting that any attempt to refute points I make herein with the above will be categorically dismissed as a failure to even attempt to read and understand what I am desperately attempting to convey to folks struggling to wrap their minds around the upset surrounding these results.
The inherent discomfort I feel stems from a place far deeper than "losing an election." I live in rural Pennsylvania. On the state and congressional level, the political party I affiliate with has not won an election since I've been eligible to vote. I am an ideological outlier, and this is something I have accepted while continuing to build a community of like-minded folks in an otherwise overwhelmingly conservative area. I do not hiss at my neighbors, I do not shout at everyone in the grocery store and presume them to be bigots because that would be one, hopefully entirely untrue, and, two, a monumental waste of my precious time and effort.
Despite the fact that I find myself in the middle of a political island, I have found a profound sense of hope over the past 8 years with the progress I thought we were making surrounding rights for marginalized groups. Things were far from perfect, and a lot of changes still needed to be made, but I was confident that the movements would continue to grow and positive change would keep rolling in.
This admittedly rose-tinted vision I had of the future was shattered over my head like that glass plate The Trunchbull smacked Bruce Bogtrotter with in Matilda. The Saturday preceding the election, a group of several dozen Neo-Nazis held their bi-annual rally against diversity on the steps of Pennsylvania's State Capitol. A black Trump supporter was thrown out of a Trump rally while Donald himself referred to him as a "thug." Kids in a middle school in Michigan started chanting "Build The Wall" in their school cafeteria. Students are referring to classmates as "cotton-pickers," "dykes," and other insults I refuse to type out at a school in Lehigh Valley.
This behavior has been reported at rallies for months leading up to the election, and that's nothing to say of the demagoguery coming out of Donald's mouth itself. And while I fully understand that every individual who voted for Drumpf is not violently racist, homophobic, Islamaphobic, or otherwise wholly intolerant of anyone who has some sort of perceived difference, what I am saying is that the election of him as president has created a space for this kind of rhetoric where those who do feel that way. I am concerned these individuals now have a space that they feel they can vocally and physically assert these opinions without recompense. His vice president (who, as of today, has taken on responsibility for the governmental transition team) has vocally supported conversion therapy for LGBT youth. Because this involves minors, it does not require their consent. Electroshock therapy is often used in conversion therapy. Just to revisit this point, Pence supports forcing children into traumatizing therapy sessions against their will.
As many of you know, I am a student of political science and have spent a decent amount of time reading essays from John Locke, who is considered one of the most important political philosophers in Western history, as well as one of the first developers of modern democratic thought. In his essays Two Treatises on Government, he explores a concept referred to as tacit consent. "Political power," he writes, "is that power which every man in the state of nature has given up into the hands of the society and therein to the governors whom the society has set over itself, with this express or tacit trust, that it shall be employed for their good and the preservation of their property."
Without regurgitating his writing further, what Locke asserts in his essays is that in order for a government to be a legitimate, individuals living within that government must consent to it. Obviously, not every individual does (one needs only to look at electoral turnout and note that half of the eligible voting population in America tends to stay home). This is where tacit consent comes into play-- if you accept the benefits living within a government gives you, you are consenting to the burdens the government places on you (i.e. if you use the roads the government has paved, you pay the taxes for their upkeep).
I am vocal because I want it to be known, explicitly, that there is not one fiber of my being that consents to the behavior flaring up as a result of his victory. Do I hope to god that this is a minor flare-up and that minority communities are not in a perpetual state of heightened danger? Absolutely. But, I'm going to be as loud as hell about opposing it until it stops.
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