i was sitting on my couch, in tears, and my dad, an Old Liberal, sits down next to me and he says
‘i know i can’t say anything that will make any of this better, but i want you to know that, in 1980, when i was 18 years old, i watched the country elect ronald reagan, and i was just as devastated as you are now. it felt like everyone had gone insane. my friends and i joked about moving to canada or japan or england, just like you are with your friends. i was angry then, and i’m still a little bitter now, but I got through it. we all did. donald trump is not ronald reagan, i know, but if i can get through it, so can you.’
anyway that soothed my hurt a miniscule amount, hope it soothes you a bit
I keep seeing this comparison and @tiddybones? and I talked about it yesterday too.
“but if i can get through it”
A lot of gay men didn’t get through Reagan’s presidency.
A lot of black people didn’t get through Reagan’s presidency.
A lot of trans people didn’t get through Reagan’s presidency.
A lot of mentally ill people didn’t get through Reagan’s presidency.
Ronald Reagan’s presidency flat out murdered us. His policies and opinions about HIV murdered hundreds of thousands of at risk people. He defunded the mental healthcare system and it has NEVER been fixed. To this day mentally ill people are still disproportionately likely to be homeless because the hospitals that could have been overhauled to provide better care were instead shut down.
And we in 2016, 27 years after he left office, are STILL struggling with shit he put into effect. POC are still intentionally targeted and shoveled into the prison system by his war on drugs. His tax and wage policies are the reason our current minimum wage is 20 years behind the national inflation rate making it impossible to survive on.
Too many poor, queer, non-white, non-binary, mentally ill, addicted, or just desperate people did not survive Reagan’s presidency.
The good news is we do have survivors of Reagan’s presidency. We have community leaders who managed to get through and can guide us through Trumps presidency together thanks to a level of communication and connectedness we didn’t have during Reagan’s reign.
We will do better this time. We have to.
Yeah, anyone burbling “we survived” platitudes were never in danger of not surviving in the first place.
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