This Uninspiring Election

I’ve never felt so uninspired in my life.

Every white girl friend of mines and her mother is posting inspiring reasons to support Hillary Clinton. Every news outlet is trying to scare me but poking fun of a giant that I am convinced is a figment of the media’s imagination. I barely watched the first presidential debate. If it weren’t for twitter I would know very little about the consistent media gaffes being made by Donald Trump.

I don’t know if I’m mourning the eventual loss of the fabulousness that is Michelle Obama too soon or if I am trying to preserve my sanity. It’s all just happening too fast. I’m still shocked that Donald Trump went to the US/Mexico boarder after saying such egregious things about our largest immigrant group. But it seems the world has moved on to the new thing. The next big racist, classist, sexist, xenophobic thing he has said. As if this is…normal. 

I’m inundated everyday with humanizing stories of Hillary Clinton and accusations of internalized sexism, and downright hateration if I’m not signing every Facebook post with an #Imwithher.

I mean, listen. The only her we acknowledging in DC right now is Michelle.

I used to believe in something. I used to believe that politics could harness a power in a people so deep that it could shake the very fabric of a nation. I believe in that still. I used to believe that representative government has the power to shift a landscape for generations of people. Like the Voting Rights Act. Like the Civil Rights Act. Like the Good Deal and Obamacare. I used to believe in good government done well and with the people, mainly  with marginalized, underresourced people in mind. I used to be moved by elections. I used to feel fire in my bones that would call forth the grand ancestors in my spirit. I used to feel compelled to walk miles for the dream. For hope. For the possibility of freedom. For a better tomorrow.  

Now? I feel nothing.  

Perhaps it’s the ill address of my people’s slow genocide played out on national television. Perhaps it’s the lack of awareness that as women, some of us are brown and black, and all of the thee above. Perhaps I don’t see any in’s for me. I don’t hear anyone speaking to my concerns. Perhaps I haven’t heard about how we will fix the judicial system, ensuring police officers be tried by juries and not police union controlled judges. Perhaps I want to hear what these candidates haven’t done to make it easier to live in this skin in this country in THIS time.

I don’t ever feel scared. And I want to feel scared. But the truth is, I feel mainly let down and uninspired. I’ll vote on November 8. Because I vote in every election as a matter of principal. But I’ll do so much different than I have before. In a space somewhere between uninspired and unimpressed.  Because if this is all we have, we don’t have much.