Post-Election Blues

- by Stacey Prince

What did last week’s election mean to you? How did you feel about it? What do you think it signified for the future—for yourself, for the people you work with? Personally, I felt deflated. While I was relieved that WA state would continue to send a democratic Senator to DC, and happy to hear the news that the greatest number of out LGBT individuals in history were elected to public office, the rest of it was pretty demoralizing. With the GOP controlling Congress, I worry about what’s going to happen with healthcare reform (and their “no compromise” talk doesn’t help to allay those fears), immigration, and a return to big tax bailouts for the wealthy. I wonder if all of the hard won victories around Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, domestic partner rights, and adoption by gay and lesbian parents will be repealed (and the Iowa debacle doesn’t help allay those fears). My fantasies of fleeing the country, quiescent since 2008, have returned.

But there is something more, a cultural shift that I am trying to grasp. After all of the tremendous excitement around the election of Barack Obama, what does it mean that just two years in, we can already see the end of this era? What does it say about racism in America, and the ever-widening resource gap between rich and poor, between Euro-Americans and people of color, between the wealthy white people at the top of that pyramid and the rest of us? To help me understand this sinking feeling in my stomach, I turned, of course, to the internet. I found two articles that helped me make sense of things.

To read entire article click here.