On election day, I on a cruise ship traveling through the Dardanelles from Türkiye to Greece, waiting for the polls to close. I had commented to friends that at least with the time zone differences, I would be asleep during the most nailbiting hours waiting for the polls to close. Around 5AM I got an email from a friend with the subject line “It’s safe to wake up.” Of course, thinking I would sleep through a night like that was absurd, and I had been glued to the television for hours already, but I agreed with her words nonetheless. It does feel safe to wake up now.
I haven’t felt this level of joy since the first inauguration of Barack Obama. It’s the same feeling of coming out from something dark and uncomfortable into a beautiful new light. I’m not naïve enough to think that anything is easily fixed, but at least there’s a playing field that doesn’t feel like a gladiatorial arena where everything I care about is under attack.
My emotions have been all over the place today. The ship does a ceremony honouring military service, and at one point, they played the national anthems of the United States and Great Britain, the two nations most represented among the guests. For the first time in years, I didn’t feel like taking a knee, and actually sang along, near tears at the last line about the land of the free and the home of the brave. It wasn’t the only time today when I found my throat getting tight and eyes stinging.
It’s so good not to feel threatened anymore. It’s so good to feel the affirmation of seeing so many people of colour and women taking their place at the high levels of government, despite the appalling efforts of the current administration to belittle us. It’s so good to see the strong rejection of a vision of America that only includes some of its people.
What feels so overwhelmingly joyous is the realization that the entire country rose up and said that this is not who we are. It wasn’t just people in my bubble. It was critical mass of the nation. I felt one with people in Kansas, in Ohio, even in Florida and Texas in a way I hadn’t before. I had wondered whether maybe I was wrong about what Americans really are, that maybe all the ugliness was revealing a fundamental truth that I just didn’t want to believe. Now I think the country has said we are better than the loudest ugly voices, that we have had enough of the dark vision of this country that this administration has tried to scream into existence.
I read that people in Minneapolis were pasting their “I voted” stickers at the memorial to Alex Pretti. I can’t think of a better way of summoning up how this feels, both the horror of the past and the power of the present. We are experiencing a great moment in history. I hope we do right by it.