Struggling To Stay Hopeful: Life After Trump
Ella Alpert
WESTPORT, CT—The 2016 Presidential Election is what really woke me up to politics. I was in 7th grade and enraged with the possibility of Donald Trump becoming president. I didn’t understand how a sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, Islamaphobic, and someone so hateful in so many other ways could be elected into the most powerful position in the world. Growing up in an affluent, predominantly white suburb of Connecticut, my parents have always made sure my sister and I were informed citizens, aware of events happening in the world around us. They feared we would become absorbed in the privilege of what we call in my town, the “Westport Bubble.” My mom, a biracial black and white, Jewish woman, and my father, a Jewish man, had experienced the hatefulness that society can create and they wanted to raise empathetic daughters who weren’t afraid to stand up for what’s right. Donald Trump was everything I was taught not to be. I couldn’t comprehend the idea of how anyone could support him. Even at the young age of twelve and a half, I thought I had more common sense than most adults in America.
I also couldn’t understand the indifference some people had towards the election. I thought this was unexplainable for adults, but I somewhat understood when it came to kids my age who weren’t interested in the complexities of politics. After all, we were middle schoolers who were more concerned about dating gossip and friend group drama. But we were living through a significant event in our country’s history, and there was still part of me that didn’t understand the excuse of “I’m not interested in politics.” Even four years ago, we could predict that electing Trump as a president would have catastrophic repercussions. However, for some, their race, socioeconomic status, or religion could make them immune to his damage. It seemed that was the case for many of my peers, but it was hard for me to understand how they simply didn't care. Again, I understand we were immature middle schoolers, and some weren’t having the political conversations that I had at home, but we talked about the election in school, and even had a project where we had to research each candidate’s platform. It baffled me that I was one of the few kids at my school who felt the importance of the election.
On election night, I wanted to stay up late to watch election results come in, but my mom told me to go to sleep and promised she would wake me up to watch Clinton’s acceptance speech. Like most people throughout the country, I went to bed soundly with great confidence that Hillary Clinton would be the first female president in our nation’s history. When my mom woke me up at 7:15 the next morning I knew something was wrong. I asked if Clinton won and my mom shook her head with great sorrow and told me that Donald Trump would be our new president. I was in utter shock and disbelief. When I arrived at school that day, finally, everyone was buzzing about the election. But by that point, it was too late. In my social studies class my teacher explained the results of the election and how although Clinton won the popular vote, it was ultimately up to the electoral college who declared Trump victorious. We had assigned seats in that class, and I sat next to a Trump supporter. We had debated the entire fall on who should win the presidency and he gloated the entire class. “Just wait,” I told him. “He’ll be impeached soon.” Four years later and Trump was the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice.
Although the Trump presidency has been a curse to our country, it has motivated many people, like me, to become more involved with politics. Throughout the last four years, I have attended the Women’s March on Washington in 2017, the day after Trump’s inauguration, the second annual Women’s March which I attended in New York City, the March for Our Lives in D.C., and most recently, I have joined the Black Lives Matter movement in my town. During the 2020 Election, I volunteered for my state senator, organized phone banks, wrote postcards to encourage Georgia voters to flip the state in the runoff election, joined my school newspaper to write articles ranging from gun control to the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and recorded podcasts about the dangers of Amy Coney Barrett as a supreme court justice. I have also become co-president of my school’s Young Democrats club. However, it has become so hard to be passionate about the issues that are important to me. I value racial and gender equality, climate change, abortion rights, and much more, but it takes a tremendous amount of emotional strength for me to not cry or rage out of anger every time I have conversations about politics or see the most recent treasonous act Trump has committed. Although it makes me hopeful, it’s hard to watch my peers finally becoming civically engaged and passionate about the same issues as me. Sometimes I get angry and wonder where they were a few years ago. Other times, I have no energy left to debate or even have these discussions. I still have these passions and do everything I can to fight the good fight, but it’s becoming very hard. It feels like the world falls apart in a different way every minute. I become less and less hopeful than I can ever make a difference, or that these issues will ever be solved.
On January 6, 2021, when neo-nazi, white supremacist, Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol building and incited a violent insurrection, I was speechless. The rage and sadness seemed to leave my body and I was left in utter disappointment and disbelief. However, unlike previous years, during which there seemed to be no light at the end of the tunnel, I was given hope by reminding myself of what is yet to come with the Biden Administration. It will surely take a lot more than a new president to fix the damage that Trump has caused, but I believe we are on the right path to healing our nation; perhaps, we can make the world’s problems seem slightly more manageable for those of us who aim to make a genuine difference.