On November 10th, we awakened from the pleasant American dream and into the reality of our collective consciousness. The veil dropped, allowing us to see ourselves as we truly are, not as the mask we wear.
As a black woman born in the late sixties, I've always been aware of our country’s race, class, and gender issues. What we experienced on November 9th was not a shock to me and to many Americans who’ve lived in poverty or are conscious of the experience of being "other." I was not surprised in the least as I sat in a room with friends who are white and watched their faces and illusions of America shatter. As I caught eyes with each of them throughout the night, I could see not only the shock but the embarrassment, even the shame, by what we were experiencing collectively as a nation. "How did we not know?" each of them asked. Centuries ago, America was founded and built on the backs of "others." A system of racism and classism was born that still exists today and is pervasive in the lives of a great portion of our population. This system has allowed some to thrive while most struggle to live with dignity and freedom. The privileged have willingly turned a blind eye--they have been conditioned to "get theirs" while others get none. Of course, we all aspire to partake in the great American dream; to mitigate our suffering by joining the winner’s circle. What has resulted from centuries of protecting our own interests, while ignoring those of others, is Donald Trump. He is our mirror, our shadow reflection of all we cannot own within ourselves. Trump is our projection of what we desire to be in order to survive in an insane world where only a few reach the top, standing on the backs of others.
Never have I felt such a profusion of confusion and fear in our country. There is a deep-running agreement among citizens that the future has never been so unknowable, nor so frightening. What will a Donald Trump presidency mean for us? Has any president-elect generated so much angst, or even so much discussion? I'm not here to predict anything. We can only wait and see what he will do. What we must do is our part as individuals. That means going within to search out how we have participated in the distrust of others that has been revealed as so prevalent in this country. Each of us must encounter a dark night of the soul. These times ask that we go deep into our shadow selves to lay calm and love over all that we have rejected within ourselves. It asks us to engage in a deep soul excavation to gather the broken and disenfranchised parts. America has officially entered her dark night.
Since the founding of this nation, we have never united as a people to heal or even address our collective illness, which is "otherness" in the forms of racism, classism, and sexism. We are operating as if we are healthy, but we actually have a life-threatening disease. Obama’s presidency acted as an X-ray, showing how compromised our structure is.
In my opinion, the most exquisite result of Obama's presidency is that we have been forced to see our shadow. The parts we reject, even deny and put aside hoping they will never come out to bite us. The parts American optimism or excellence refuses to acknowledge and be accountable for. The last eight years between Trump and Obama have played across our televisions like a Marvel comic book, a battle between good and evil. But they are not the story but rather the projection, and the real battle rages within each of us. The questions we are being invited to ask ourselves now are “Who are we really? Who do we want to be? What must we do to get there?” This may seem hard to accept, but I would declare that what we are experiencing in our nation’s history is just what we need. Donald Trump is a composite of the white aristocracy that has always controlled this nation. Men who take what is not theirs and are never held accountable for their impact on others. Men who are celebrated for having, even if what they have is stolen. Men who bully those around them to gain their compliance. Men who take no one other than themselves into consideration when moving through the world. To this group, everyone else is expendable. The mirror is showing us the deeper aspects of our rejected selves; the aspect that believes in scarcity and otherness. We disassociate from our biases, and deny that deep in our hearts we believe that somehow we are the more deserving. Not until we can find and lay claim to our inner Donald Trump can we truly move forward. The American dream has been transformed into a nightmare (which is not new for many of our citizens), and we will not wake up until we clearly see how this self-serving monster lives within us.