I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.
— James Baldwin, "Notes of a Native Son"
There I was again this morning, like so many of my fellow Americans: yelling at the television. I happened to be watching CNN, but the channel doesn't matter — what matters is the yelling. By which I mean, if James Baldwin is correct: what matters is the pain.
If only for myself, I want to try to understand that pain. Because it's more than pain, really; it's heartbreak. I am, I have realized, heartbroken.
The source of my heartbreak might date back to November 4, 2008 — the night of Obama's election. I was at Half Moon Bay Brewery, watching, with many dozens of others, including my young sons, the election results. And just after the polls closed in California, Wolf Blitzer formally announced what had become, as the evening passed, increasingly obvious: "Barack Obama, 47 years old, will become the President-elect of the United States."
The next day, I spoke to my mother, a lifelong Republican, about Obama's election. She told me, "I have to admit, when they walked out onto that stage in Chicago, the family, him with his wife and their girls, I wept. It was an incredible sight."
Like so many Americans, the image of that family compelled her — allowed her — to see her country differently. Dr. King had said, "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'" The "one day" that Dr. King had dreamed of, my mother might have thought, had finally arrived. And that possibility could certainly move any American — not just my mother — to tears.
Which brings me back to my pain: the beauty of that moment — the sense of wonder and pride that so many of us, including my Republican mother, felt at that moment — now tastes, for many of us, like ash in our mouths.
So we yell at the television. And rage at beloved family members and friends. We ask, How can this be happening? That beauty — where has it gone? What have you — we — become?
Of course, after these many months, we have become our rage. And we have watched rage beget rage; and slowly, inexorably, we have, many of us, become lesser versions of ourselves: enraged, deafened, disgusted, in despair.
But the rage is not the point. The pain is the point. So I am trying to think through my rage, to my pain. The pain has nothing — or little — to do, I believe, with a lost election. Lost elections happen all the time. The pain has to do with who we elected. Who we elected forces us to acknowledge: We are not who we thought we were; we are, instead, that.
So we are in mourning, and our grief has turned into anger, as it often does, because we have lost something beautiful: the America, so wholeheartedly yearned for, that we saw on November 4, 2008, when the Obama family walked onto that Chicago stage and told us: This is who we — Americans — are.
To those of you who have felt my anger, or to whom I have directed my anger, even if only through the television: I ask for your patience. Daily, it seems, I pass through the stages of grief: denial; anger; bargaining; depression. I am not yet to acceptance; I do not accept that that is who we are. Of course it is who we are. Yet I do not accept it; I rage at the thought, which is to say, I weep at the thought. I am heartbroken by the thought. And sometimes, I'm sorry to say, I give in to despair.
I suppose some Americans had the same reaction to Obama's election. They thought, That is not who we are. I must confess, I don't know how to respond to such thinking, which might be a failure of my imagination. The beauty of that moment remains, to my mind, incontrovertible. Not least because my Republican mother saw it, too, and I have learned from long experience that when it comes to matters of beauty and decency, my mother can be unreservedly trusted.
In any case, I reassure myself, now and then, with the belief that this moment will pass, that we will remember ourselves, that the pain — and with it, the rage — will pass. Until then, when you witness my anger, try to see past it, to my pain. I will try to do the same with you. The pain — the heartbreak — is what really matters, what we must deal with, if we hope to look at each other — at ourselves — with wonder and pride again.
