For most of 2016, I lived in a state of growing dread. After the election, I alternated between numbness, depression, and the grim necessity of moving forward. But by now, mostly I am angry.
I am angry about the children in cages torn from their parents.
I am angry that my daughter will not have seen the inside of a classroom for an entire year.
I am angry about the tear gas and the bayonets.
I am angry about losing four years we didn’t have for dealing with climate change.
I am angry about the rampant foreign corruption and the petty domestic venality.
I am angry about the degradation of the Department of Justice into a partisan political tool.
I am angry about the Muslim travel ban, and even angrier that the courts went along with it.
I am angry about the decimation of the civil service.
I am grateful that no ill-advised tweet set off a nuclear war, but I am angry that this is even something I had to worry about.
I am angry about the racism, the sexism, the xenohobia, the casual cruelty.
I am angry about the replacement of civic ritual and civic duty with a personality cult.
I am angry about stolen Supreme Court seats, and a judiciary often unwilling to enforce the Constitution or the laws.
I am angry that the best defense against authoritarianism has been incompetence.
I am angry about Sheriff of Nottingham tax reform that steals from the poor to give to the rich.
I am angry that a man who should be condemning white supremacists and domestic terrorists gives them aid and comfort instead.
I am angry about the constant attempts to take away people’s healthcare, to poison their air and water, to take away their civil rights, their reproductive rights, their right to vote.
I am angry about the constant lies, and about the people who know they are lies but play along anyway.
I am angry about the 227,000 Americans who have died so far from a preventable disease, and I am angrier every day.
I am angry that there is no limit to Donald Trump’s stupidity, his depravity, or his evil—and no limit to what Republican voters, Republican politicians, and Republican media will put up with.
And I am angry about the transparent, blatant attempts to steal this election.
But the thing about anger is that you can channel it, and the things I am angry about are the kinds of thing I can do something about. Not alone, but together with my fellow Americans, because that is what it means to live in a democracy. Election Day is the culmination of years of work, by longtime friends and by people I have met along the way, all working together to fix the things we are angry about, to cut out the rotted flesh and begin to heal the wounds.
On November 3 (or before, for many of us), we vote. And on November 4 (or after, if needed), we stand ready to make sure the results of that vote are followed.