not posting this on facebook was hard in In which our ignoble friend

I’ve been putting in 12 hour days since the US election result came in; for me, that was the small hours of Wednesday morning. I’ve been trying not to think. Focused on my responsibilities to my partner, to myself, to our shared future. I have been doing this because I cannot shake this thought:

I suspect that the liberal moment is over. That it required unsustainable prosperity upon which to stand, and that post-imperial western democracies have reached an economic / cultural tipping point in their inevitable decay.

I suspect that the time of truth, reason, and empathy is over. That a significant proportion of those who espoused liberal values were fair-weather friends to humanity, now rats from this sinking ship, reverting to a state of nature red in rotten tooth and broken claw.

I know that my idealism is dormant, if not dead. Every liberal candidate I’m permitted to vote for, who does not promote bigotry or violence, will have my vote. But I’m done thinking about it, I’m done feeling about it. The world gets 15 minutes of my time every few years, and the people who fight to be on top of the shit heap that used to be civilisation can do whatever they fucking want.

I will live my own life to reflect my values, and hope that they don’t make me a criminal before I die.

Those of you who see this as an over reaction - yeah, probably. But this is what my brain sees, and I cannot see anything else. I have to look away.

— additional, also typed on facebook and thought better of it

I am incapable of giving vent to my rage, or my sorrow, or my fear. I cannot riot. I cannot non-violently resist. I cannot fight hate with love, or darkness with light. I cannot, when ‘they’ go low, choose to go high.

Over the last year, the world as evident has diverged greatly from the world as I thought it was. The liberal values that I hold, which I thought were the inevitable product of progress in human culture, are not even broadly respected, much less held.

I have maintained previously that we are all obligated to engage with the world as it is, not as we wish, hope, or believe it to be.

I do not know how to engage with this world. How to read or think about it. How, some days, to walk around in it. I’m not even capable of the cowardly self-defence of jaded, cynical humour.

I’m seriously considering just leaving all social media, and avoiding all news. I might be done with the wider world. It seems done with people like me.

My politics were precious to me. A world that I was capable of loving and not fearing disappeared from beneath my feet and before my eyes. I thought people might be, a lot of the time, kind of ok.

they’re not. most people are awful. the majority of humans are just fucking awful. I don’t want to have to deal with feeling or thinking this way. fuck.

Last updated November 12, 2016