Nancy Flanagan: Frightened, Angered, Fatigued

Nancy Flanagan retired from teaching music in Michigan public schools after a long career in the classroom. She then turned blogger and writes one of the best school-related blogs. In this one, she mirrors how many of us feel right now.

She writes:

A few weeks back, I wrote a blog about my fascination with a Michigan Women for Harris Facebook page—a community now numbering upwards of 85,000—and how the (mostly) women there morphed from showing off their blue fingernails and Chuck Taylors to sharing heartbreaking stories of neighbors and family members who are die-hard Trumpers. From stolen signs to the ruin of holiday dinners, it was a kind of running anthropological study of what it’s like to live in Michigan right now.

I’m still following the page which has become a kind of lifeline for many women, if you can believe the poignant and distressing posts appearing now. The blue fingernails are bitten to the quick and we’re all sick of 24/7 political ads in Michigan—holy tamales, they’re disgusting—but we seem to have reached a nadir. Shaky marriages, the destruction of truth, firing squads and Nazis.

Not to mention fake hillbillies and a Supreme Court bent on violating federal law.

But I live in a purple state. And I think Lyz gets this right:

The myth tells us that America is cut up into places that are insulated and isolated from one another. Red states where they can pretend their kids aren’t gay. Blue states where they can pretend that abortion access is easy.

The reality is and always has been that if you are insulated from the realities of American politics, you are rich or a white guy (or both!). And there is nothing more political than that.

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The only real bubble is wealth — enough cash money to paper over a series of political injustices and enough access to move around the barriers to health care, childcare and education.

There’s only one America, and we all live here.

Which is why I’m more than a little terrified of November 6.

That’s not a typo. I’m not afraid of the election results. I think they’ll be OK. I’m afraid of post-election anger and post-election fear. Plus post-election violence. When the bubble of wealth and privilege is punctured, and folks who have held power are threatened.

In The Washington Post, Ruth Marcus articulated her emotional state: “I am guessing many of you are in the same condition in which I find myself: uneasy, drenched in anxiety and layered with dread — a flaky napoleon of neurosis. If you aren’t feeling this way, congratulations; I’ll have what you’re having.”

So–I am not looking for ways to decompress. And while I admire the efforts to bring “both sides” together, I’m not ready to make nice with people who are sheltered and protected but unwilling to look at injustice. I understand that a better world is both possible, and very hard to achieve.

We’re not going to get there without some fear, some anger and a lot of hard work.

Only one America.