By NIARA SAVAGE | Nashville Voice
An unprecedented, countrywide movement has just fizzled to a long-anticipated conclusion.
Record-breaking numbers of people in states across the nation exercised their right to vote, in what former President Barack Obama has called “the most important election of our generation.”
And now, the polls have closed. Election day is over. All of the energy, expressed by current and former political officer holders, news anchors, and everyday citizens alike, has served its purpose.
But what next? The damage has already been done. Trump is still in office. Eleven senior citizens, slaughtered in the largest Anti-Semitic attack in US history, remain dead.
Bombs were sent by mail to over a dozen liberal political leaders just two weeks ago. A group of migrants in Central America, most of them women and children seeking asylum, remain demonized by President Trump and right-wing media.
Yes, Americans made history at the polls, but the Trump Administration has already made its own twisted, and permanent mark our nation’s history. And so the question remains: What next?
We still live in a nation, under a president who spoke not of issues regarding healthcare or the economy, but of xenophobia, and racism, to excite his base.
Our president, as much as it pains me to use this phrase), continues to rally and campaign on a platform of fear-mongering, by capitalizing on White fragility and anxiety.
All of this tension and anxiety resulted in a Trump-centric mid-term election. A CNN poll showed that 38 percent of voters voted simply to oppose Donald Trump, while another 34 percent voted simply to support him. What kind of story do these statistics tell about the state of the nation?
We are living in a country in which 34 percent of voters wish to support a man, who, when questioned about solutions to gun violence in the wake of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, stated that the victims should have had an “armed guard inside the temple.”
Even over the dead bodies of eleven Jewish senior citizens, and two Black grandparents shopping at a Kentucky Kroger Supermarket, and countless, nameless others, 34 percent percent of voters wish to support a self-proclaimed “nationalist.”
The racial climate of this country has been irrevocably changed, and in the midst of a race war, here we are, basking in the aftermath of a history-making midterm election.
But for now, we are in the same sinking boat we were 24 hours ago. Progressive legislation and impeachment are months and months away, and neither of these things can make a racist heart emboldened by Trump’s rhetoric, any less racist.
So once again, the unanswered question hangs over our strangled, starving democracy: What’s next?
