Annus Horribilis

As many of you may know I'm prone to fits of melodrama and exaggeration. And, like the Queen of England I'm prone to employ latin to magnify the importance of my feelings.  But, that this has been an exceptionally bad year is, unfortunately, not a controversial statement.

The defining theme for me this year has been grief.

In the spring of this year I lost my aunt Thelma. She had suffered health issues for many years but she passed away suddenly one day. I was unable to attend the funeral. Missing the opportunity to complete the mourning process and, especially, the chance to console my family members most affected by the loss cast the year in a shadow of loss and impotence.

A week ago, I lost my Grandmother. She had become increasing infirm over the past year and was repeatedly hospitalized.  Since an accident placed her in the hospital about a year ago, I had dreaded any overseas phone call. I sleep poorly enough as it is but the additional anxiety of awaiting news of an impending death further set an underlying tone of dread.

And finally, the Presidential election. Living abroad I didn't have the experience of being in touch with the reality of life in America or talking, hanging out, and commiserating with friends in New York or those few who live in red states. I did follow everything perhaps a bit too avariciously online. I watched in amusement, bemusement and then horror as Trump ascended to the republican party nomination. All the while I declared to my German colleagues, or any one within earshot, no, there's no way this guy will get far in the primaries. No, there's no way this guy can get the republican nomination - Americans are dumb but we're actually very kind. No, there's no way this asshole can beat Hilary - his narcissistic, bigoted, fact-free ramblings won't fly with the general electorate. And then early Wednesday morning in Germany I stayed up to watch the election returns.

I like to believe that I'm a rational person. I try to be rational. I do believe that there is an objective reality. Having been a underachieving, shitty philosophy student I'm aware of the rules of inference, logical form, coherence, consistency and essentially the assumptions that underlie most constructive human endeavors. I firmly believe in these things.

Despite this though, I'm a skeptic and a bit of a pessimist. Perhaps it's because I'm black and I have historical contact with the shitty things that people do and that other people must endure. Perhaps because I've been a spectator to my own weakness and stupidity over the years - I'm also amenable to the notion that humans are not principally rational. I've always thought the e e cummings poem title kind of sums up the human condition - "since feeling is first". I think a more nuanced representation of my view is that we're principally "feeling" things whose actions are reasonable probably because our languages condition the way we think and they have rational inference baked into them. So, I guess you can say I'm in the camp of those who think that humans are rational after the fact. This may seem like a dark view of life but I'm, or at least was, essentially ok with this.

Then came the returns for Florida and a feeling of nausea and disorientation start to sink in. Not happy about that. Wait, Pennsylvania is too close to call. She's ahead in Ohio. OK, she'll take Ohio in place of Florida and then with Wisconsin and Michigan locked up everything should be fine. And then, it wasn't.

I went to my bed sometime around 6. I muttered to my startled wife that "I think that asshole's actually going to win." I collapsed on the bed and I began to weep and moan like I hadn't since I was a child.

I emailed work that I wouldn't be in the office. My wife stayed at home as well and we kept the kids home from school.

The next day my cellphone rang at my desk while I was in a meeting. Later, while I was at lunch with co-workers whom I'd asked not to discuss the election, I received a text message from my mother that my grandmother had died.

Everyday since that Wednesday, I'd awoken suddenly as if it was a nightmare only to find out the nightmare continues. Every morning the same feeling of nausea permeated the day until I could get enough wine into my system to dull my senses.  The nausea has receded a bit since I've returned to America for the funeral. I think this is due to relief that my grandmother is no longer in that state and that my mother's burden of caring for her has been lifted. After the funeral, I can retreat back into my fortress of self-absorption.

The lesson of the election, though, is what fills me with the most profound sense of dread. Americans are prepared to burn down their own house because they're unhappy. Worse than that they're very far from recognizing that that's what they might have done.