You Can’t Always Get What You Want

The day has come. The evil one we know as 45 has finally fallen. After a historic tooth and nail battle at the polls, Democracy won…or so they say. I however, am not convinced. Like most, I celebrated the relief of having a bigoted, misogynistic, narcissistic, and volatile man-child removed from the highest office in the land. I just can’t shake that pervasive feeling of disillusionment.

“What I’ve seen, I can’t unsee.”

The year is 2008. My brothers and my 16 year old self sit glued to the television as we watch the election results come in. To our triumphant surprise, Barack Obama wins the presidency. We run out into the streets and and yell for joy. “Obamaaaaa,” we scream at the top of our lungs!

Flash forward, four years to the first election I could vote in. I’m now a student at the illustrious Howard University. Me and my classmates sit in Blackburn as we all watch in anticipation. The count closes Obama takes the win. Gleefully we march the streets of DC, chanting “We don’t have to strip, Obama won this sh*t. What occured in that eight year period, is what I like to think of as the glory days. Obama was not a perfect president and he made many decisions that adversely affected many groups of people, as presidents must do. But in general, I felt good about the country and the direction we were going. I felt safe and truly believe I experienced a better quality of life.

Flash forward to 2016. Like all good things, Obama’s presidency came to an end and the race for the presidential seat was open. I like many mourned the Obama era. As a Black person, I can’t quite put into words what it meant to see a a biracial man and his Black wife lead our country. The symbolic and historical significance was quite literally unprecedented and I started to believe that this country was actually changing. That was until the 2016 election came.

“Many are called but few are chosen.”

The races were off and I knew the republicans would fight hard for their position and turn our country red. I just didn’t know the wild ride we would go on. Donald Trump is running for president they said, yeah right I though. When he did officially join the ballot, I paid it no mind. There was no way our country would elect a morally and financially bankrupt reality star to run our union…WRONG. So wrong was I.

To my horror, Trump was elected president of the United States and the optimistic and hopeful part of me died. Having to face the reality of the country that I truly lived in. I realized that while I was happy for the progress we made under Obama, many were not. Many were enraged, toiling and ruminating. But to sink as low as to vote an unqualified, privileged, bigoted criminal into office and support all his loud, wrong, and antiquated policy…I was appalled. I felt quite literally insulted to hear him speak, so I avoided the television and news to the best of my ability. Getting my information from headlines or second hand sources. I felt like a stranger in my house, behind enemy lines. I avoided and dissociated as much as I could for my own mental health, but then came a thing called 2020. A flaming zenith of karma coming at our planet full speed ahead. We were all forced to sit down, tap in, and pay attention.

On the border of dictatorship, it seemed like all the people with sense banded together against the common enemy, the manifestation of whiteness, masculinity, wealth, and privilege that is Donald Trump. But what ensued over this election season was alarming in new ways. So jaded with American politics, many gave in to Trump ideals. Respectable legends in the Black community like Ice Cube and peons like “Lil Pimp” came out endorsing Trump. Kanye West ran for president further dividing the attention of pivotal voters and many began to believe that a Biden Harris ticket was somehow worse than Donald Trump.

Here’s what I know. You can’t always get what you want. In a perfect world, Bernie would be the president. We would have world peace, universal health care, three-day weekends, and free ice cream on Fridays. But we don’t live in a perfect world, we live in America, and still waters run deep. This country was built on Black bodies, genocide, racism, and greed. Our history for bad outweighs our track record for good, but that shouldn’t discourage you. Despite how it looks, things ARE changing for the better and that is precisely why hateful people are having the universal tantrum they’re currently displaying. They know their time is up and the clock keeps on ticking. That’s exactly what we the people need to do, keep on ticking and keep on moving the needle for progress and that includes small victories like removing the second coming of Hitler from office. Were Biden and Harris my first choice, no, do I agree with their policy and histories in office, No, do I think that they are the answers to our problems hell NO. But if you ask me if I’d rather have them than the sham of a presidential cabinet we currently have, I say HYFR!

“Imma need you to go ahead and clock out for me.”

The moral of the story is, you can’t always get what you want…but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.

Respectfully,

xDotCom