I am so, so exhausted. I'm so tired and deeply sad. America is so filled with sorrow and hatred, and my heart aches at the pain in the world right now. California and Princeton and Massachusetts have all "shielded" me from the intolerance that only seems to spread as the days go on.
I want to believe bigotry and racism and sexism and xenophobia are not the norm. I believe they aren't. Yet it's so hard to see so many instances of them, so, so many more in such a short span than I ever thought would happen. We have managed to go from our first African-American president to one who has regularly expressed hateful, inflammatory, dangerous views of those different from himself.
And speaking of differences, we all live in massive echo chambers. I live in a massive, blue with streaks of well-educated, upper-middle-class red echo chamber. Why is listening so hard? I want more than anything to understand. I want to talk to those who have different views, to smash down these walls, but I'm also so tired. I've never wanted to be involved in politics, and I realize now how naive it was of me to think I could be involved socially and not politically.
How do we move forward?
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