To me, an honest question is worth answering. I was asked this question, and if one person asked then probably several are thinking it : “I’m not political at all. This is legit a curiosity question: How have your lives been made worse under {t}his presidency? I’m talking your personal lives not anyone else’s. How are YOUR lives worse because of Trump?”
Following my freshman year of high school, I left the concrete mazes and shopping malls of North Dallas for the mountains and wide open spaces of Durango, Colorado for two weeks of summer camp. Campers like me, suburban kids who spent our free time playing team sports and trying to beat the blistering Texas summers in enormous, frigid movie theaters, got to play and live outside for two glorious weeks of archery, campfires, white water rafting, kayaking, fly fishing, rock climbing, tent camping, hiking, and making new friends from all over the country, all under wide blue skies.
This particular summer, parts of Colorado were experiencing fast moving, deadly wildfires. At the point I hopped on a plane to Colorado, however, Durango was still considered safe. Over the first few days of camp, I tried out fly fishing and archery. I particularly enjoyed the thrill of rolling my body over and over in a small kayak on the lake. One afternoon, we noticed the counselors seemed a bit anxious, whispering in corners and staring hard out the windows. Over the past few days the air had begun to smell smokier, although the fires were still considered a safe distance away. Our camp was situated at the bottom of a valley, mountains rising high on all sides. Even if the fires made their way towards us, we would surely be safe.
One night in the mess hall, as a few hundred campers sat finishing our dinners, replaying our adventures of the day, exhausted and still somehow buzzing from the excitement of it all, the camp director whirled in urgent, serious. We had to leave right away. There was no time. The fires were right on top of us, and picking up speed. We were instructed to return to our bunks, grab only what we needed for one night, throw a toothbrush in our backpacks, and board the buses that were quickly lining up to drive us away. “What about our trunks?” No time. “What about rock climbing tomorrow?” No idea. “What about, what about, what about?” No answers. We were told simply to go, right now, and grab enough for one night and no more.
We walked out of the mess hall into air now thick with ash. Dusty sheets of white and grey fell all around us, stinging our eyes and lacing every breath with smoke. The distant, ever present threat was suddenly barreling towards us and we could no longer assume everything would be fine. What felt far away was now visible in the black smoke and orange flames cresting the mountains, the evidence of danger collecting in our hair and clothes as we ran to our bunks to decide what was most important to save and what we would leave behind.
I think often, after four years of what has felt like a butane flame of social chaos, hatred, mistrust, suspicion, and confusion, of those moments leaving the mess hall at camp the night we evacuated. I think of the smoke and ash falling on my outstretched hands. Now, though, I also think about the people in the mountains all around me. They had been battling those fires, losing their homes, running for their lives, living with the danger for weeks before I arrived. My lack of awareness didn’t make their fires less real.
For people like me, people with white skin, a college degree, generations of home ownership behind me, financial stability in front of me, and multiple social safety nets ready to catch me if I fall, living in America has felt full of promise and possibility. It has not been difficult for me to travel the world, try out different jobs, and move through early adulthood with relative ease. This is not to say I have not also had the universal human experiences of staggering grief, lost loved ones, financial stress, complicated and even manipulative interpersonal relationships, and anxiety. This is not to say I have not been an asshole. This is not to say it has always been easy. But I have been lucky enough to pass through hard times without losing everything. I’ve been in a relatively safe valley, systemic protection on all sides. Hard things happen in the valley, too, but there is an assumption of safety. There is an assumption that we will ultimately be alright.
What I didn’t consider as a high school student at summer camp, and what I haven’t had to consider as a white American living in the lap of privilege, is how much has been on fire all around me all along. Until the smoke and ash fell into the air I was breathing, I didn’t think I needed to worry about the fires. I didn’t see it. I didn’t feel it. Not my fire. Not my problem. In the center of my story, while homes and lives turned to ash on all sides, I have been at camp.
This camera flash of American history, if you are paying attention, is illuminating fires that have burned steadily all around us for generations. Too many of us have been in the valley, enjoying the relative safety afforded by the surrounding mountains, while just on the other side our Native and Indigenous brothers and sisters, our Black brothers and sisters, our poor, our marginalized, our LGBT, our immigrant brothers and sisters have been battling deadly, raging wildfires for generations. That is not to say we have not experienced our own pain, so it is easy to think “My life is also hard.” Our brothers and sisters have experienced universal human joys, new babies, art, creativity, and deep meaning, too. We are resilient. We are human. It is what we do. The difference is that too many have experienced those same universal human hardships and celebrations with flames licking the door.
The fire has only now shown up at my house, but countless millions have lost everything, have been fighting, have been living in it for longer than I have been alive. Just because I am only now aware that I’m breathing in the smoke doesn’t mean the air hasn’t been thick with it for decades, for generations.
When I read the original question asking how my individual, personal life has gotten worse because of Trump’s presidency, I felt a little bit like the kid leaving the mess hall. “Holy shit, are you serious? What do you mean how has my life gotten worse? Do you not see the flames? Are you not breathing in the smoke? Do you not see the ash in your own hair? Do your eyes not sting? Are you not also trying to decide what will you save and what will you leave behind?” All of the normal life stuff continues, all the big and little daily tragedies and victories because that’s what lives do, but, holy shit, we’re on fire.
Then, I think about our brothers and sisters who have been fighting these fires far longer than I have even known they existed. I think about how their lives have mattered all along, even when I wasn’t paying attention. I think about The Talk that Black American families have with their children about how unsafe the outside world is for them, about how to stay alive if you get pulled over by the police or if a white woman looks sideways at your hoodie. I think about corporations invading and stripping the lands Indigenous people have called home for hundreds, thousands of years, relocating entire populations into poverty. I think about tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, folks who have lined their pockets as the gap between themselves and the backs of those upon which their wealth is built grows. I think about my friend who was turned away from private insurance because they considered her anxiety a pre-existing condition and refused to cover her. I think about the experiences I have had traveling with my closest friends, many of whom are Black and Brown, and how their movements through airports is full of consideration and prevention that I never have to make. I think of my trans friends who face assaults on their right to even exist. I think of my friends in same sex marriages who are securing lawyers so they can make sure their legal affairs are air tight in case this administration comes for their families. I think of parents I know who have had to bury their kids, kids who were gunned down in school, because some powerful men are more loyal to gun lobbies and the mythology of individual rights than to their own children in this country. I think about women and children on our borders, raped, sick and thrown in cages for having the nerve to flee violence in their home countries in the pursuit of happiness. I think of how Trump paid less in taxes than the honest, hard working people he deports. I think of how he manipulates everything he touches to enrich his own name, to secure his own power, how he has thrown the well being of the people he is meant to- but never intended to- serve to the flames to protect his own wealth and position. How he thrives in the chaos, how he undermines the very government and processes we the people are supposed to be able to trust. How he distorts what is meant to protect us and uphold justice. How it feels, even within individual lives, like everything around us is on fucking fire.
The truth is this: As long as I am willing to breathe the ash and soot of white supremacy, racism, and misogyny, as long as I am willing to remain within the systems that kept me silent and concerned only with my individual life, I could continue living with an assumption of relative safety in the valley while the world burns.
The thing is I’m not willing to do that. I can’t consider only my individual life. I can only answer your question from a place of integration with my brothers and sisters. Because Black Lives matter. Because protecting our planet matters. Because justice and equity and the dignity of our shared humanity matters. My individual life- with all it’s daily struggles and breakthroughs- is part of something bigger, and yours is, too. I am knitted to you. We are knitted to our brothers and sisters. We belong to one another, each of our individual lives and futures tied together.
Now that I see the fires, I won’t ignore them. When I’m gone I don’t want my individual life to have been lived in the relative comfort of the valley. I want to have been one of the ones fighting the flames.