Feeling Trapped

 I wish I could say I can't believe we're here again.

The first election I voted in was 20 years ago, when John Kerry challenged George W. Bush for the White House after Bush failed to prevent 9/11 and got us into two wars that would last twenty years. It was a deeply disappointing moment to see Bush win re-election, the first time that I felt I was really, truly, not aligned with the majority of my countrymen.

2016 was a shock in part because we weren't taking him seriously. The Obama years, though they had been less impressive than the original 2008 campaign promised, had nevertheless felt like a period in which I could go outside the country and not feel ashamed. And Obama himself was still popular, despite the setbacks and disappointments.

The following years were one of deep angst and shame, and ultimately culminated in the Covid pandemic, something that would likely have happened no matter who was in the White House, but which was horribly mismanaged in this country. But 2020 felt like we were finally let up for a breath of air. These past four years, now rapidly coming to a close, have been mired in the residue of the previous administration, but at least there was a feeling that there was something truly powerful pushing back against it.

Now, though?

He's promised his supporters that they won't need to vote in the next election. He's promising that the responsiveness a democracy owes to its citizens will be a thing of the past.

And people voted for that.

We were let out into the light, still bleeding, still wrapped in barbed wire. And now, it almost feels like this respite was only there to make the pain of what is to come all the more brutal.

These forces, these grand things in such a massive country, are kind of incomprehensible. There is, of course, always a pendulum swing, but during my adult life - honestly, for my entire life, born as I was during the second term of the Reagan administration - it has felt like there's mostly a ratcheting that squeezes us further and further toward cruelty, toward a world that seeks domination rather than reconciliation.

Where will we be ten years from now? I have all manner of nightmare scenarios running in my head. And I feel powerless to affect what will happen. We're at the whims of forces larger than ourselves.

I'm not here to lend advice. I'm deep in the depths, struggling to get my head above water in all of this darkness.

My grandparents took my father and fled Hungary after the failed 1956 revolution against the Communist regime. My grandfather had always had ambitions to come to America after he narrowly survived the Holocaust - like every survivor, luck seemed the primary method of survival. The failure of the revolution and the Soviet-backed crackdown that followed led my grandparents to finally commit to this escape.

America, for all of its flaws, is supposed to be the beacon of freedom. I don't know if we'll still be that. Last time, the institutions remained resilient to efforts to subvert them, but they'll need to be more resilient this time.

I'm just one guy. One struggling writer. My words are not going to move masses.

So, for what it's worth, here's my survival strategy, such as it is: I'm going to focus on what's in front of me. I have a baby nephew. I have friends I love dearly. I have art and storytelling.

Is that enough from me? Is that enough from a citizen of a country whose character is in peril? I don't know.