My Rage Against Trump Supporters Is Killing Me

Sarena Neyman

(11/19) We have just elected a cruel and ruthless monster who represents the worst of humanity and I feel my blood vessels pulsing with rage. I’m boiling with fury at the misguided electorate who were duped into thinking that a billionaire criminal had their interests at heart. Most of them don’t even know what a tariff is (or a fascist).

I also disdain the tech moguls who profit from our hatred, using algorithms to keep us divided and misinformed. I too have grown to crave the titillating dopamine my rage-scrolling releases. You know the media has failed, says essayist Rebecca Solnit, when people are more concerned that a trans girl might play on a softball team than that the climate crisis will destroy our planet. Media owners have everything to gain from our ignorance and hate.

Given our broken media, there’s a part of me that hopes the people who supported Trump get what they voted for — because I don’t think anything will change until that happens. Not until they or a loved one can’t get critical care because it’s illegal or unaffordable or they have a pre-existing condition. Not until their Social Security is slashed or they drown in debt while the super-rich get even richer. Not till their home is flooded in a climate disaster or they choke on the smoke of the burning earth. Too bad it will affect all of us, and not just those fools who believed they were voting for a better life.

When I was little, my grandmother used to tell me that she thought it would be better if the whole world blew up in an atomic bomb. It terrified me even though I understood her anger. Her husband had died in the camps and she watched SS officers tear her five-year-old daughter from the arms of her older child, my mother. The little girl was gassed in Auschwitz.

Maybe my grandmother was right. Maybe it’s better for humanity to die out sooner rather than continue to do irreparable damage to everything around us. Humans have already forced nearly 1000 species into extinction. With Trump in power, thousands more will vanish. And millions of humans will suffer from his heartless and reckless agenda.

I know people are not inherently evil. We’re capable of great love, compassion, and courage. But I’m convinced our flaws are too deeply embedded to allow us to thrive in the long term. Homo sapiens evolved in small, isolated groups, and our evolution was shaped by environments that differ greatly from modern global society that is interconnected and depends on cooperation for survival. I fear our tribalistic nature combined with our unquenchable thirst for money and power has doomed us. But maybe that’s okay and I need to come to peace with that reality.

I worry, though, that before some disaster wipes us out, my rage will kill me first. At 68, I’m not sure my body can withstand another four years of the anxiety, stress, and sleep deprivation like I experienced during Trump’s first term. Just hearing his voice makes my head pound, reminding me that my mother and grandmother were both felled by strokes. Wishing his supporters a slow painful death will have no effect on them and will only raise my blood pressure. Besides, this kind of useless outrage only breeds despair and apathy — and that’s what our enemies are counting on.

My mother, who survived five concentration camps and two death marches, told me that the hardest thing to forgive the Nazis was the anger they planted in her heart. "It's like a cancer," she would say. She’d often speak at local schools, determined to share the cautionary tale of how hate destroys. After she came to this country, she went on to become a pediatrician, one of only three women in her graduating class. I should work on my rage to honor her legacy.

The words of historian Howard Zinn have been of comfort: "The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." The best I can do right now is to live as I would want other humans to behave. And that includes not hating others. But it’s so hard.

I used to be a news junkie. Now, I only allow myself to quickly scroll the headlines. Just enough to stay aware of the horrors we are about to experience from a political system gutted by the wealthy. I’m going to try to stop ranting on my husband’s Facebook feed, which is filled with MAGA family members and schoolmates from the deep South. I’ll focus on the things that give me joy: my family, my friends, writing, reading, eating. I’ll try to be a kinder person.

But what I really need to do is weep because sometimes I think I get angry to avoid feeling sad. What happened on Election Day was a tragedy and I need to mourn it. I must cry for who we’ve become, for what we’ve lost, and for the devastation we’re leaving the next generation.

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