estoy horrorizada!

• 

  Posted by Cecelia Cutler (She/her) on November 9, 2016 at 11:50 am

  I can’t quite comprehend what happened to this country early this morning; A giant hole has been ripped through my heart and I’m lying on the ground gasping for air. Last night, after remaining glued to the news until 3am, I finally slept for a few hours and dreamt of poisonous spiders escaping in my son’s room. I’m trying to find the lessons in this revolution of the ‘forgotten masses’ and now painfully recall a TedTalk a few months ago about the pitchforks coming out as in the French Revolution when inequality between rich and poor becomes to great to bear (Beware fellow plutocrats…). Another warning came in David Brook’s commentary last February when he spoke of the downward cycle of despair which causes voters to lurch to elect outsiders whose incompetence in governing leads to further government failure and the search for a savior or superhero. Trump is this superhero to many Americans who uncomprehendingly cling to his hyperbolic promises and revel in his racist and sexist “diarrhea verbal”. At the same time, in no way do I want to downplay the role of his bigoted rhetoric or of the seething hatred he has tapped into in the psyche of US voters. Branding Muslims and Syrian war refugees as terrorists, Mexicans as criminals and rapists, essentializing African Africans as living only in ghettos and being so desperate to vote for him, and disparaging women have all been a huge part of his appeal to many people. Others conveniently ignored this rhetoric, believing that his “superhero” skills were what they were voting for.

  We must scrutinize the role of Twitter in this election, Trumps preferred means of spreading fear and loathing, to understand how social media can be harnessed by demagogues to upend politics as we know it.

  Please share your stories from FB, Twitter and other sources.

• Luis Bernardo Quesada

  Participant

  November 9, 2016 at 12:48 pm

  Professor, thanks a lot for your post. It has made me feel less a Martian in this new world called After November 8th. Among all the many feelings I’ve experienced since 2 am, one is that of deterritorialization, not-belonging anywhere, as I never experienced it before. And honestly I also feel fear, fear in many types, levels and ways.

  I try to cheer up, but mostly I’m paralyzed, and shocked to have other plan better than face this reality with dignity, unity and strength.

  Wishing you all an as much as possible good day.
  Nancy J Ortega Alvarez

  Participant

  November 9, 2016 at 1:12 pm

  ¡¡¡RESISTENCIA!!!

  “Don’t mourn, organize”. Jill Stein <span class=”_58cl”>#</span><span class=”_58cm”>NoConsent</span>

   
  Rocio Carranza Brito (she/her/ella)

  Member

  November 9, 2016 at 9:15 pm

  I have to say I just cannot believe this result. Trump, @POTUS?

  Yesterday I watched all tv programs about elections. My roommate has been talking about this election since I moved in, last September. He was trusting that Hillary wins, but yesterday, I felt his disappointment, and mine too. This remembered myself that July nights in 2006 and 2012 in my country elections. I believed (I wanted to believe), that the PRI wouldn’t won, but they did, and all Mexicans are living the consequences of corruption, violence, economic fails every day. And I could feel the sadness, the disappointment, the anger because, in Mexico, our “democratic” electoral system didn’t work. Again.

  Last night, while we were zapping and watching TV, I connected to Twitter. It was like unbelievable. Twitter in Mexico was very active about the US elections. I don’t remember that kind of activity, but football World Cup games. So much passion in the tweets and people was getting upset because the results, as well. I read all types of thoughts: from sarcastic to very critical ones.

  In contrast with some Twitter accounts I follow here in the US, Mexican Twitter users saw the consequences for the rest of world. Brexit obviously came out, Colombian referendum as well, and the deeply racism problem of American society.

  Many tweets talked about the wall and the stupidity of American people. Some others were memes refering Trump’s intentions to built a wall in the border to Mexico.

  However, I can’t stop to wonder what will happen now with DACA, with the millions of immigrants that work “to make great” this nation, what about the Dreamers and all Muslim people that believe in this country can pursue a freedom they have been negated in their native countries.

  As a Mexican, I laugh of this absurd reality, but that doesn’t mean I’m not worried of it. I think we, as a society, have to meditate what we need and how we reach it.

  • This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by Rocio Carranza Brito (she/her/ella).
  Milton Läufer

  Participant

  November 10, 2016 at 12:54 pm

  I just want to say that I share the shock with all of you.

  Also, after watching the reactions of American friends, I do feel there is something worth mentioning. One of the things they said was they couldn’t believe that half of their fellow Americans were racist, homophobic, misogynist, etc.

  First of all, I think there is a confusion here: only 200 million Americans are registered to vote, which implies that there are 160M more that didn’t play a role in this election. And then, only about a 50% of that registered people voted. We have then 100 million, of which less than 46% were with Trump: less than 46M. Of course, one could say this is an important statistical sample, but at least we can agree on the fact that that’s not the same; and we have seen very clearly how statistics weren’t very useful lately.

  Second, I do think we can’t be sure about the political ideology of all of them. Many were republicans that will NEVER vote for a democrat, but probably aren’t racist nor any of that. Then there’s a big amount of people that just hate Clinton, for a number of reasons that aren’t important here: they just do hate her. And there are also many people that just think that Trump doesn’t believe anything of that: he was pro-choice, then pro-life; he was pro-trade agreements, then anti; etc. Which means, they just think that Trump said all what he said in order to get votes.

  With all these thoughts (if one can call them like that) I only mean the following: something very similar happened in Argentina (actually, is unbelievable similar –business man, political outsider, right wing, racist, nobody thought he could win, etc) exactly a year ago and after that a feeling a social despair and distrust (everybody were looking to the people in the street and asking themselves “is he/she a Macrist?”) that was very hard to overcome. Maybe is a good idea to realize that this is not necessarily the case. Or, at least, that there are good arguments to set a reasonable doubt.

  • This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by Milton Läufer.
  Milton Läufer

  Participant

  November 10, 2016 at 1:17 pm

  And, well, some humor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEskg0Z-NAQ
  Ernesto Cuba

  Participant

  November 10, 2016 at 9:43 pm

  Thank you for the words and support, Cece.

  Checking the news, I read that someone has created a thread in Twitter titled “Day 1 in Trump’s America”. Warning: It’s scary af.

  Day 1 In Trump's America

   
  Agne Karosaite

  Participant

  November 14, 2016 at 2:25 pm

  Dear Cece and class,

  We all woke up into a nightmare on Wednesday, and, although terrified, I was comforted by your post, as well as by all the subsequent responses. It gave me a feeling of belonging and an immediate outlet for my emotions. I imagine that we may be scared for different reasons, as we not only share our experience in New York but also come from different places. I spoke to my family back in Lithuania, they, of course, are very pessimistic about Trump’s foreign policy and about Russia getting the carte blanche to act in the Baltics. I was telling them about the current events in New York, about people being terrified and about how many feel they are going to be affected by the outcome of this election, but my mom said “It’s probably worse for us than it is for them.” It just made me realise that we are not divided into pro-Trump and against-Trump people. Even the ones that are against him are being divided by thinking that they got the short end of the stick and that it is they who are going to be affected the most. It’s only through dialogue that we can come to an understanding that everybody is affected. My hope is that we do not allow judgement, that we do not see others as being a little better off in this, that we have empathy towards one another and that we continue to work as a community.

  As for CMC and its role in all this, I would like to discuss what has already come up more than once: the fact that due to the customization of our news feeds, they turn into echo chambers and the diversity, which the internet has the affordance to accommodate, becomes a bit of an illusion. This has made me rethink the concept of superdiversity, which made sense at first, but now I see it as part of this illusion. I think that we might have the conditions and the affordances for superdiversity, but when it comes to practice, we end up wrapped up in rather homogeneous discourses online.