Trump losing the election is something I feel relief about, but I also worry that that relief is fleeting because when all the excitement or relief fades away and we are left with a “nothing will fundamentally change” president, something even more disturbing will still remain. I saw the phrase “The rot runs deep” the other day and it resonated. As I tucked my daughter into bed last night - comforting her as she cry because her grandparents made the mistake of announcing to my kids that they voted Trump while they were babysitting during our recent date night - that phrase bounced around my head. Trump will be leaving office by the will of Democracy, but the rot runs deep and the rot remains.
When my daughter was three, she saw me crying while looking at the photo of Alan Kurdi, the three year old Syrian boy whose image on the beach went viral after his drowning during the refugee crisis. I did my best to explain the what and why as delicately and child appropriate as I could, but seeing that picture stayed with her, because to this day, she still talks about Alan unprompted and out of the blue. I can still hear her say in her little toddler voice say, “3 like me?”. She cares deeply for his memory.
As she's gotten older over the last four years and asked more questions about Alan and why he died, I have tried to explain the complicated politics, specifically the policies of the Trump presidency regarding refugees and immigration, in terms she could understand. She has gotten it in her head that Trump killed that boy, a boy she cares deeply about (and although each time she says it, I explain to her he did not literally kill him, I can't argue with her that he isn't at fault). She cares about people of color. She cares about Black Lives Matter. She cares about the brown kids in cages. In our house, love is not only a feeling, it is a verb, and we tell our kids we use our right to vote the way we love. So, she wanted to know why- “Why doesn't Nana love dark skinned people?” i.e. why didn't Nana vote to help people of color. I did not have an answer for her that wouldn't further damage her relationship with her Nana that the vote for Trump disclosure already caused. But I did tell my child, even if the people around us don't love as they should, love as Jesus tells us to, WE always can. And if we believe in God, we can choose to have faith that Love Always Wins at the end. When I told my children that Biden officially and finally won today, she jumped up and down with glee, and shouted, “Love wins!”
I love that my children will grow up the next four years knowing love won this time. But I will never forget who the people in my children's lives are that decided to vote for such a man. I will never trust them fully; I will never respect them fully; I will never feel fully safe to bring my children of color around them; I will never feel fully confident in their influence on my children's moral development.
The first election, I gave a lot of understanding to people duped by the man. This election, no where in my understanding, root for the underdog, devil's advocate, don't be a sheeple, walk a mile in someone else's shoes part of my brain could I find any excusable reason to vote for a man such as him after watching him the last four years. Vote for a Libertarian? I can understand and even respect that during the Trump era. Vote for Biden, of course I get that. Vote another third party, write someone ineligible in, leave the top of the ticket blank, sit out the election entirely.... again, I can understand all these people. Maybe its a failing on my part that no matter how hard I try, I fail to understand a second term Trump voter, or maybe there really is no goodness or logic to understand in it.
Whichever it is, I am left with a deep regrettable feeling that people my children know and love have rot somewhere inside them. My family will know that some part of their heart was willing to vote for such a man so unlike Christ and filled with hate for others. The rot runs deep, and I am nowhere near done forgetting where that rot had laid hidden until a Trump presidency brought it out in the open.
Sometimes, people act in ways that make relationships never the same again. I really wish my daughter had remained ignorant to how her Nana voted. I am sad for my child, who loves so deeply, and now knows the hurt of watching a person very important to her make a choice that breaks her heart. Trump will be leaving office by the will of Democracy, but I will know the rot remains, and I sit here and wonder, will the knowledge of the rot that exists in the people she loves stay with my child, just as Alan has stayed with her? As much I know it will stay with me, I hope the only thing that stays with her, is the knowledge that Love Wins.
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