PERSONAL RESPONSE ONE: MY TEAM, MY TRIBE
The election turned things upside down for me, first crushing me, then bringing relief that the tension of the fight was over and then forcing to figure out for myself how I would respond. So for the next 8 days, the next 8 posts, I am going to not listen much to anyone else and to figure out my own response to the election. If you are diehard MAGA or diehard Democrat, my idiosyncratic attempt to figure out my own response will probably seem stupid and irritating and weak. So you can stop reading right now and skip to November 9. And even if you half way agree with me, remember that this is a personal response out of my own experience and liable to change next month when I think about it more. If you read my response read it out of curiosity, more to see how another person sees things, than an attempt to show that I am right.
I was crushed election night when my team lost. But then I began to wonder why. I am not directly much affected. I don‘t have to flee, which was my first reaction, to some other country as Jews had to do after Hitler took power. I am wondering if my feeling of devastation is simply caused by losing, as if the election were a basketball game and I wanted my team to win and it narrowly lost.
The reason that I wondered that was that after one day of the feeling of crushed I was ready to let the election go and turn to other things. It was as if the election were a game and the game was over and my team had lost and the tension had broken and now I could let go.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 