The Difference Four Years Makes
By: Jd Glass
Tags: Human Rights, Women, LGBT, Biden Harris, America

On the morning of the first day back at work after Trump was confirmed as the President elect, I was working at my station (it was just the two of us — my manager and I — in that early), and he tossed something on the counter next to me.

Now mind you, people did that constantly, but there was something about the energy of whatever it was that made me jump back and recoil a bit — and turns out, there was good reason for it.

It was an actual, honest-to-evil for-real Nazi helmet.

I am a woman. I am a lesbian. I am the daughter of an immigrant. I am the daughter of a Jew.

And my manager — who knew at least the first three parts — had just tossed a Nazi helmet at me.

Was this who he was? Was that what he was telling me? That now that Trump had been officially declared “das winner” that it was okay to take off the mask, the hood, the veneer of politeness and show who he — and what I and so many others rightfully expected — our many fellow Americans were?

I refused to touch it. I refused to look at it.

“Better get used to that,” he said. “Because that’s what everyone’s going to be doing, it’s where we’re all going.”

I nodded my head, trying to be as noncommittal as possible, because I still didn’t know: was he one of them? Was he revealing the monster within? Or was he warning me? And as a woman, alone with a person who was way bigger than me, in a building by ourselves, on a street that at that time in the morning was pretty empty, I needed to be careful.

“Uh huh.”

Careful. Neutral. Non-committal. Show no fear. Make no sudden moves.

“That fucking orange prick — that entire fucking generation should just die — they’re the ones who voted him in!”

I nodded, relieved.

He wasn’t a Nazi — he was scared for everyone.

“Where’d you get the helmet?” I asked instead. I still refused to touch it.

He picked it up and tossed it around a bit.

“My dad used to collect this stuff — I took it and painted it lacquer black one year for a Darth Vader costume.”

He began walking back to his office — with the helmet.

“I wish that entire generation would die already — the Nazi fuckers.”

I spent the next hour getting my heart rate back to normal while focusing on my work.

In the moment that my boss walked in with that helmet and displayed it, in those eternal lasting seconds of “oh my God, is he showing me this is who he is?” I lived the reality of the fear that so many had had — myself included — that the election and confirmation of this bad, bad, man, would give the underbelly, the monsters, the evil, and the gleeful hangers-on, who aren’t necessarily evil in and of themselves, but love going along for the ride, not just permission, but actual free reign, to let their base desires fly free.

And frankly, I spent the next four years watching that come true in bigger and bolder ways day by day.

With this election, I was doing my best to steel myself to the possibility that the ugliness revealed in the last four years stood the potential to become an even larger evil, that the fight such as it has been, was about to become even larger, require even more sacrifice — I didn’t know what it would take, but I was trying to prepare myself, down to having potential escape routes — to where? I was still semi-working that out — but not just myself, but for everyone who might suffer under the encroaching ideological autocracy. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

I was holding my breath.

I was holding the line.

I was ready to fight and fire.

But today…I saw the first post, a “Yahoo!” and then another, “Did they call PA?” And the hope that I had began to climb out of the safe little cage I had it in.

I found the AP news — and it was confirmed:

I don’t have to worry that my marriage will be threatened.

I don’t have to worry that my right to exist as an LGBQT person will be threatened.

I don’t have to worry that my rights as a woman, nor my mother’s nor my sisters, nor my friends, nor my nieces — are in danger. And I include within that the right to vote, to own property, to be educated, to have a job, to have a bank account or savings, or any of that.

I don’t have to worry that my family with accents, and mixed ethnicities, will be harmed.

Do we have problems as a nation? Yes. And I am still here, sleeves rolled up, and digging in — but today, I am not afraid that our government will actively harm me, or those I love, or even those I don’t know but it doesn’t matter because every human being has rights just by the virtue of existing.

I get it, now. I get what people mean by intergenerational trauma — I felt it.

Today, I know that I stand not just side by side, but arm and arm with millions of others who know that the promises of our country, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, belongs to all of us, and that as of today, once again, we can and will unite to ensure them, for all.