Election Grief: The Roads Were The Same

An English teacher reminds us how "A Road Less Traveled" is an allegory for our time

Jan 10, 2025

As this drops into your inbox, we are four days removed from the certification of the 2024 Presidential Election and 10 days away from the inauguration. Grief will parallel reality. Maybe you’re like me and have begrudgingly accepted that we’re going to relive four years of domestic chaos. Maybe you’re still caught in denial.

Election Grief @ Dirt Nap

Maybe you’re like the reader who submitted this week’s entry. My call for contributions on Election Grief brought together a chorus of voices. We’ll finish the series next week with input from mental health professionals, but today we turn to a Dirt Nap reader — an English teacher, fervent Democrat and Harris voter, and Catholic — who submitted the following piece.

“The population never fully wakes up.”

This can’t be happening again.

That’s what I kept thinking as I watched returns come in on Election Night 2024. I started watching the returns at peace. I was feeling confident and optimistic — for the week leading up to it, momentum had felt like it was on our side. We had the Selzer poll. We had my faith in the United States of America and its people. I knew we had the better, more qualified candidate on our side. I knew that we had the facts and the better plans for the economy, for foreign policy, etc. on our side. I knew we were offering hope, a new way forward, a chance to turn the page on Donald Trump once and for all. I had just taken a walk, I had just prayed my Rosary, and I was calm. I was looking forward to making history, once and for all.

The first sign I was reliving the 2016 nightmare was when the returns in Virginia were closer than expected — that’s EXACTLY when I knew Hillary was in trouble, too. By the time I went to bed, I was getting texts that things weren’t looking good. Optimistic person that I am, I still went to bed feeling like this would be more like 2020, where on Election Night things looked redder at first but then when more ballots from Democratic strongholds were counted. The narrows would margin. We’d be okay. We only needed the Blue Wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. We would be okay. It would be a narrower win than I had hoped for, but a win was still within reach.

I woke up at 2 a.m. and checked Twitter. It was looking worse.

Again at 4 a.m. Worse still.

Finally, it was clear I had to once again face the inevitable: Donald Trump was going to win. Once again, the American people were going to pass over an overqualified woman for a grossly underqualified man. Once again, I had allowed myself to get excited, to hope for the history we could make with a candidate I was truly excited to see be President. The nausea in my stomach that I carried around for three days after Hillary lost was back. This time, though, it felt heavier. The sense of foreboding and frustration was more intense for me this time. Whereas 2016 was shellshock and felt like a fluke, this felt more like a choice — a clearly wrongheaded choice based on lies and false information about the economy, about President Biden’s accomplishments, about Vice President Harris’s plans and record.

It felt like nothing mattered: she had the better debate, she had the better and more detailed policies, she drew the bigger crowds, she did more of the work, etc. and absolutely none of it mattered. The country (or at least 49% of it) CHOSE him despite his lies, his threats of violence and retribution, his open racism, his crimes, his lack of fitness for the office…they chose him anyway.

That hurt worse and made me angrier.

So, the question is, what exactly is it that I’m grieving? Is it just that the candidate I wanted to win lost? Sure, that’s a huge part of it. I remember having heard of the newly-minted California Senator Kamala Harris as someone to watch out for after 2016 as a new “rising star in the Democratic Party.” I didn’t know much about her. Shortly before the 2020 election cycle started, however, I watched her be interviewed live on The View and I was INSTANTLY enamored. She was smart, funny, and had an infectious laugh that made me feel good. I just knew I needed to know more about her. I watched her grill Trump Cabinet officials like Jeff Sessions and Supreme Court nominees like Brett Kavanaugh with a spine of steel. I saw the joy with which she danced down the street in a Pride parade or with a marching band.

A leader who is smart, fun, AND tough? And she’s someone who could be our first female President of the United States? Sign me up!

I read her book and researched more of her record. She was one of the first to support same-sex marriages and perform them in California. She created a Back on Track program in California to help low-level offenders have a more successful reentry into society—a program that was so successful it became a model for a national one. My favorite story was the one where, as Attorney General of California, she walked away from the negotiating table when she felt homeowners weren’t being given enough of a financial package to make up for all they had lost in the 2008 housing crisis, only to end up earning billions more for them.

What spoke to me most, however, was that as a Black woman, she chose to go into prosecution, a field dominated by White men (at least in her state at the time). When she got flak from progressives and from people in her own community for going into prosecution in a system that inequitably disenfranchises people like them, she said (and I’m paraphrasing) that you can either have a seat at the table or stay on the outside looking in. She worked to make change from within. She earned a seat at the table. As someone who is an LGBTQ+ Catholic who sometimes gets asked, “How can you still belong to a Church that’s doctrine rejects you?” this spoke to my heart and to my core. I love my faith, and I can’t give up on it — the Church might be wrong about some things, but I have a seat at the table. Kamala Harris inspired me.

I had already started picturing her as President. I thought of what it would represent to people of color and to young girls. I imagined watching her take the oath of office on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, the ultimate symbol that his dreams are so much closer to being realized. I was looking forward to watching her represent us on the world stage at events like the G7 summit or at the United Nations, a reminder to the world that America is better and smarter and more moral than what Trump was offering. That while we may not be perfect, we still break barriers, we still make history, and now this smart, empathetic, qualified, joyful, and tough woman of color was going to lead the United States into a new chapter of our history.

None of it mattered. Not the facts. Not the morals. Nothing. The American people knew better (or should have, the facts were all easily accessible) and chose him anyway. And now we wait for the disaster to unfold. A lot of people are going to be hurt.

So am I mourning the loss of those images? Am I grieving my candidate’s loss? Of course I am.

But anyone who claims that I’m just being a poor sport and need to just “get over it” clearly doesn’t know me and also clearly doesn’t understand what I, and so many other millions of Americans, felt were the true stakes of this election. (And as far as being a poor sport goes, unlike some others, I have zero plans to storm the Capitol because I’m upset at how the election turned out. Just saying).

To me, this election was about our country — and my faith in it. To me, Trump and his movement (not all of the people within the movement, just the bulk of the MAGA movement’s ideas) are as close to evil as anything we have seen, especially in recent American history.

As someone who is a news and politics junkie, I am typically very well read and well informed on what’s going on—probably too much so. I found the first four years of Trump to be rather stressful, as I was following everything: every scandal, every tell-all book, etc. with an increasing sense of alarm that this man had been given the nuclear codes. Most of us know the list: the corruption as he installed loyalists and tried to overturn an election he fairly lost; tear gassing peaceful protesters so he could walk outside and hold a Bible upside down; the constant stream of lies that just kept getting dumber and more obvious as time went on; and I think worst of all, his moral ineptitude at handling the COVID pandemic, focusing on how it would hurt his reelection chances instead of doing what he needed to do to save as many lives as possible—indeed, railing against things like masking and vaccines, statements and policies that legitimately cost people lives.

I couldn’t believe he was nominated again, and I couldn’t fathom the possibility that America would actually choose him again. After everything we knew in 2024 about his incompetence, his moral vacuum, his lies, his crimes…surely we’re better than this. Right? Right?

I wanted to believe that we were. I tried so hard to believe that we were. In my heart, I love and believe in this country. I love history and love seeing how despite all our problems and all our terrible periods, the arc of our story truly does bend towards justice and progress. The American people saw Trump for who he was and threw him out in 2020. Even with concerns about inflation, voters rejected MAGA in the 2022 midterms. This is a country of good, smart, decent people; we are not this loud MAGA minority. We still believe in equality and justice for all. We may not all agree on everything, but when push comes to shove we will stand up for our country and reject the candidate who openly threatens immigrants, women, the Constitution and our norms and practices.

And yet, the people chose him. People didn’t “feel” like the economy was good, the recovery wasn’t quick enough for their liking, so they gave the keys of the government back to someone who tried to overthrow it, someone who even Republicans weren’t sure in January 2021 was safe to leave behind the wheel for even 12 more days, and who drove us into the ditch Biden had to get us out of in the first place. His racism didn’t matter. His crimes didn’t matter; they were even excused away. His sexual assault (both bragging about and committing it) didn’t matter. His lying didn’t matter. His costing us lives the last time he faced a national emergency didn’t matter. His bullying didn’t matter. His opting to skip debates and town halls so he could sway to “YMCA” while Kamala Harris still worked the campaign trail didn’t matter.

That’s what I’m grieving the most: that this is going to be a disaster, that this was easily foreseeable and preventable, and that the American people are not who I thought they were. Racism, sexism, lying, and incompetence were all not just ignored, but rubber stamped by the American people who pledge allegiance to a Constitution that demanded better from them. He will be held accountable for nothing. All of his antics and behavior were condoned. Facts were disregarded, if not ignored completely. Benjamin Franklin famously said we have a republic, as long as we can keep it. Have we just given it up by voluntarily turning over the keys to an amoral, selfish madman? Is this not the country I thought and hoped it was? Can it ever be again?

I teach high school English. George Orwell’s Animal Farm has been one of my staples for a while, and though it feels dated, in many ways it has never felt more relevant.

Orwell is well known for his stories about futuristic societies where corrupt leaders and governments take advantage of their populations. What I like about teaching Animal Farm is that while, yes, he is highly critical of the hypocrisy and blatant hypocrisy of the pigs, he does not let the general population off the hook.

Early in the novel, one of the pigs offers reading and writing classes to the other animals. One animal, Boxer, an allegory of the working class, really struggles to learn, but damn it he’s going to try his best. He learns A, B, C, and D with a lot of difficulty, and by the time he has learned E, F, G, and H, he has forgotten A, B, C, and D. So, he decides to just focus on what he can do (learn A, B, C, and D), and put his trust in his leaders, in the vision of equality for all, and uses his muscles and work ethic to help the farm be an economic success. Another one of the horses, Mollie, decides that most of the alphabet isn’t worth her time; she chooses instead to only learn the letters that are most interesting to her: the letters that spell her own name.

Orwell's Animal Farm' Sticks a Bit Too Close to the Source Material | WIRED

She writes them with sticks and twigs on the ground, and adds flowers for good measure—got to make sure your name looks pretty, after all. The last one, a donkey named Benjamin, can already read and write perfectly, but he feels there is nothing worth reading or writing, that life pretty much stays the same no matter what (you’ve got to work, you eat a little, you struggle, and then eventually you die). As a result, when the pigs alter the commandments on their barn wall, Benjamin can see what they’re doing, but he doesn’t speak up. He just shakes his head and walks away.

The populace, then, plays a role in its own downfall. Yes, the pigs are horrible, hypocritical, and corrupt leaders. Yes, they take advantage of the working, less educated class. But the animals also own some of this. Boxer is the one I always have the most sympathy for: he really, really tried, but reading is just not his skill set. He works insanely hard and has a huge heart, and he tried his best…it doesn’t change the fact that the pigs used more than just the first four letters of the alphabet to lie to and exploit the workers, and Boxer’s blind faith in his leaders and in the “promise of his country,” if you will, leads to his ultimate betrayal and demise in the end.

Now, are there people in our country who are misinformed through little to no fault of their own and who are genuinely good who voted for Trump because they legitimately feel the economic hardships after the economy was sent reeling by a global pandemic? Of course. But that doesn’t mean they’re not ultimately going to be lied to, exploited, and taken advantage of by the very people they just put their blind faith and trust in.

Mollie is any one of us who only wants to learn and pay attention to what we want to learn and pay attention to. Only want to watch Fox News? Okay. Only want to read vampire romance novels because they’re fun but can’t be bothered to read an occasional news article from a reliable source? Fine. In the end, Mollie gets what she wants, which is to be given sugar and ribbons from the humans — all while tied to a cart as a cart horse for the rest of her life.

Benjamin, in my view, is the worst one of all. He knows better. He knows exactly how corrupt the pigs are becoming, he knows that they’re lying to the people, he knows the depths of the hypocrisy and even violence they are sinking to in order to maintain their grip on power—but he feels like it’s not his problem, so he says and does nothing. Until, of course, it affects him.

The story doesn’t end well. The population never fully wakes up — they just live in this new reality and don’t know any differently and can’t really remember how things were before. They missed their chance to say “no.” They missed the boat on “stop,” and now the leaders have corralled so much power that they’re unstoppable. Of course. Orwell’s vision is not optimistic.

And I think that cuts right to the heart of my election grief. My vision right now is not all that optimistic, either. And I am, at my core, an optimistic person, so this has been a hard stance to adapt to. Part of it just my nature, part of it is my Catholic faith that is literally rooted in hope and forward thinking for the future, for resurrection, for new life, for a new day to come.

There was so much hope before this election. More than any election in my lifetime, or that I’ve learned about as the political junkie that I am, this election of 2024 really felt like we were at a crossroads with two very different paths, like “The Road Not Taken” in Robert Frost’s famous poem. One road led to a reminder of everything that is possible in America; we had the chance to show ourselves and show the world that in 2024, America is still the great, big, inclusive melting pot where diversity and multiculturalism is celebrated as our biggest strength, where bigotry and hatred is ultimately rejected. It’s still the place where barriers are broken, where history is made (for good reasons). Or there was the path of anger, of division, of retribution. The path where lies and violence end up getting their way as the larger population, more ignorant of the facts than we hoped they would be, choose a hateful, racist, lying demagogue over a more qualified woman of color.

We took the harder, darker, harsher road, and for someone who really, really wanted to believe in America, that’s a tough pill to swallow. Very rarely have I ever felt more naïve.

Unlike most readers think, though, in Frost’s poem there IS no harder road. There IS no “road less traveled.” Three times in the poem he says that the roads are the same. It’s not until the end, when he’s telling the story with “a sigh” years and years later that he took the harder road — it’s the benefit of nostalgia and the absurdity that life’s crossroads are that simple that Frost is poking at there. The larger point is that once you choose one road, you may think you can go back and try the other one, but this road is going to lead to another one, and then that one will lead to another one—it’s about choices. And as we move forward, we will never be back at this spot again.

This election changed me, and in a way I’m grieving that, too. I’ve had moments in this past month where my attitude when I hear the latest Trump absurdity is to shrug and go, “Well, that’s what you voted for, so enjoy it.” That kind of shrug of the shoulders, nasty cynicism is not me. I like to be empathetic, I like to try to understand someone else’s point of view—I don’t like being a, “Well, tough luck, this is what you’re going to get for what you voted for, should have known better” kind of person. In the immediate aftermath of the election I said that anyone who voted for Trump is going to own every racist, sexist, and incompetent thing he does, and while I stand by the sentiment of that, it reflects an anger I have trouble harboring. It’s not good for me, and I know that.

I haven’t watched the news since Kamala Harris conceded the race on November 6. I’m much less interested now in doing things for a national campaign—instead, I’m starting to think about ways I can take care of myself and the people in my circle and in my community; watching out for my friends, my neighbors, my students who will be most directly impacted by the incoming administration. I’m not looking outward as much anymore….I’m checking out more than I used to and I’m looking more inward.

I recognize that not all of this is completely healthy. I can’t stay checked out or disengaged (although some disengagement is necessary for my mental health). Learning to look out more for my local community and the people in my circle and letting the national chips fall where they may could ultimately be a positive thing for me. We’ll see.

Acceptance is coming. I’ve been through sadness and anger and denial, all in waves. But acceptance is coming. I know I come from a really privileged place where I have a secure job I love (until he trashes the Department of Education, but that’s a bridge for another day), I have my house, and I live in a blue state that will insulate me from some of the damage.

And I realize that I do still fundamentally believe in America. We’re more broken than I hoped, and we have a lot of work to do on multiple fronts, but I still believe that even if it takes longer than we hoped a month ago, the American people will ultimately reject actions that go too far in marginalizing people.

I think the reality will hit differently than it did on the campaign trail when they were only concerned about the price of eggs. It will be loud, it will likely be messy, and a lot of damage could potentially be done in the process. The American people rose up against Trump and MAGA before, and I believe they will again.

New elections WILL come. Hopefully those millions of us won’t have to grieve. In the meantime, take care of yourselves, your families, and your communities. Ultimately, hopefully, and for those of us who believe, prayerfully, we will be okay.