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It is even more difficult to face the way things are. It pains me to think about what could have been. I am increasingly concerned with accountability because our country is being led by a man who believes he is accountable only to himself and enriching his coffers rather than the more than 300 million people he was so narrowly elected to lead and serve. I don’t think that I, as an individual, could have swayed the election in a meaningful way but I know I could have done so much more and I did not. Nothing should be taken for granted in a democracy. And of course, there was that overconfidence, which, in hindsight, I am ashamed of. In part, I was trying to understand the popularity of Bernie Sanders because so many people I respect supported him and his ideas. In part, I did not have the energy to deal with the inevitable backlash, from corners right and left. I wanted to write about her and engage rigorously with her ideas far more than I did. Of all the men and women running for president, I found her to be the most qualified, comprehensive in her understanding of domestic and foreign policy, progressive and charismatic. I contributed money to the campaign, but I didn’t volunteer or try to get out the vote. Throughout the 2016 election, I did not do as much as I could have done to support Mrs. It is 2017 and we are having a national conversation about the resurgence of white supremacy, American Nazism and fascism, or perhaps more accurately, we are being reminded that this hatred has been here all along. I am a black woman and I live in a country where the president does not disavow racism. Instead, it is 2017 and white supremacists no longer feel the need to wear hoods to hide their racism and anti-Semitism. Her presidency was a certainty in my mind and in my heart. I was, like so many of us, wildly overconfident about her chances. And I keep thinking about how different things would be if Hillary Clinton had been elected president. Bodies flying.įor the past week, I have seen hate thriving in plain sight. A slate-gray car barreling into people standing up to racism. Nazi flags, Confederate flags, American flags, “Make America Great Again” hats. Angry white men playing soldier, heavily armed in public. Angry white men, arms outstretched in the Nazi salute. Angry white men holding tiki torches and shouting their throats raw chanting “blood and soil,” spittle hanging from their lips.