🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
On Saturday, there was an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. The outrage from people all over the political spectrum has been swift and loud, as we've come to expect in the modern age. This is Joe Biden's fault, say the far-right pundits. Am I crazy to think this is a conspiracy? ask the young people. For me, it has hardly registered.
We are already traumatized as a nation. We went through a pandemic wherein millions of Americans died in a short amount of time; where we had to literally stay inside to save our lives. No one even talks about it. We've lived through mass shooting after mass shooting, each happening in such quick succession that we barely have time to mourn. We lived through a domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. We've seen the concept of party politics become as antiquated and irrelevant as iPod Shuffles and T-9 texting, something far more insidious taking its place in the form of extremism. We know the planet is burning and the oceans are rising. We know we exist in our own nano-cultures, monoculture long gone, and that we're lonely and disconnected as a result.
These wounds are recent, these wounds are untended, and these wounds fester.
Everyone I know is living with their own unique blend of anxiety. My conservative family in Texas is scared of the drag queens reading to children or trans kids joining a soccer league. My trans friends are scared for their lives, because many people don't like that they exist. My friends here in Brooklyn are terrified of Project 2025 and the very real existential threat that it brings to America.
My friends in LA have emergency preparedness kits, not for earthquakes (how quaint) but as a precaution in case of civil war. My Black friends are watching voter suppression techniques at work while still being murdered by police, and as mayonnaise-colored men expound on their Super Great, Super Fun Replacement Theories.
My Asian friends are still dealing with COVID-provoked racism. My Jewish friends are on the receiving end of Nü Wave antisemitism, the comeback no one wanted, while somehow finding themselves responsible for explaining the actions of the Israeli government. My Middle Eastern friends, while still having to prove their allegiance to America, are being blamed for the actions of Hamas. Some people I went to high school with are afraid of a world without "family values," although that is something of a misnomer, as only very specific families are valued and most others devalued.
Every woman I know is freaked out by the fact that our own bodily autonomy is no longer protected on a national level. A lot of people in former factory towns are scared, because the opioid crisis has hit them hard, at least partly as a result of shutting down manufacturing in the U.S. Many straight white men are terrified of a world where they are no longer the only demographic in power, fearful of what equality might look like on a practical level.
My community, the Gays™ as we are known, has well-founded nervousness that our newly won rights and basic protections are at risk. Some call my existence "political," as if I'm making an anti-American statement by being in a loving relationship with another adult.
Democrats are frightened because their candidate is quite possibly the ghost of Gerald Ford, more a liability than a leader. Some Republicans are scared because their party has been infiltrated by a megalomaniac who values loyalty above all, and if they don't vote along ye olde party lines, their careers are finished.
Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, beckons the Statue of Liberty. We're already here. The proverbial call is coming from inside the house. We're exhausted, we're in literal and metaphorical poverty, and we're terrified. That's why I can't find the energy to care if the conspiracy theories around the Trump shooting are real or fake. I'll get to processing the shooting at some point, but I'm several shootings back in terms of grieving. I'll get to it, I'm sure.
So, to paraphrase Langston Hughes, what becomes of the American dream deferred? That's not a question I can answer. But I believe in the goodness of people. I believe in the goodness of the American people. Have you met Americans? We're resilient. We're not stupid, even if most network executives seem to think we are.
We're just doing our best and trying to navigate a rapidly changing modern society and everyday life. We don't need to make America great again because we're already great, we're just too distracted to notice that. I believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and I bet you do, too. I know we are tired, believe me. But we're the United States. So, let's start acting like it. Check in on your neighbors. Start conversations. Listen to each other.
And then—then we can start healing.
Lori Chandler is a writer and filmmaker whose work has been published in The New York Times, Big Think, and CollegeHumor. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner Alex and their elderly Siamese cat.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
