FDR: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Congressman 1: “And spiders!” “Well, yes. And spiders. That goes without saying.” Congressman 2: “And snakes!” “Yes. Snakes, too.” Congressman 3: “Don’t forget werewolves!” “There is no such thing as werewolves!” ~ Robot Chicken

I worked as a polling assistant all day yesterday, the day America renewed its faith in Barack Hussein Obama. This morning my feet feel exactly as if yesterday they stood in heels for 14 straight hours on a cold, linoleum floor, so I would like to take a moment to sit down and try to explain my views about the election and what it means to me. (If that ‘moment’ happens to evolve into several hours and a foot massage, so much the better.)

Let me explain to you why last night’s Democratic victory makes me feel good.

In order for me to do that, I need to explain to you what kind of person I am. Perhaps some of you are similarly wired. Or, maybe you will think I need to seek psychological treatment, (up to,  but not limited to, pharmacological remedies and/or electric shock therapy), as quickly as possible. I don’t know. However, I want to explain how I tick on the off-chance you will see that, while I am a product of my culture and society, (just like you), I am not a mindless drone for the Democratic Party. (For one thing, I’m not a member of the Democratic Party.)

“Okay, Laurie. Stop talking to us like we’re fucking idiots. We get it. Come on. I don’t have all day to read your blog. I have laundry to fold and guns to clean. Let’s go.”

(For starters, I’m the kind of person that has continual conversations with you in my head. And in my head you curse. A LOT. You should really work on that.)

Okay. Here we go.

I am a fearful person.

I have dealt with fear my entire life. As many of you know, by the age of five I was being molested/raped with routine regularity by a family friend. Holding in that anxiety and fear from such an early age undoubtedly helped shape the fear-riddled person I became. I stare at perpetual optimists with fascination, (and more than a little suspicion), because I have no idea what it feels like to be that happy. (To this day, nothing makes me quite as uncomfortable as an excessively sunny personality.) I cannot remember what it feels like to not be worried about what lurks around unfamiliar corners, or in the hearts of people who claim that they love you. There are other reasons why I am a fearful person, of course: I never received a lot of praise as a child; I grew up in a strict, sometimes physically abusive household. I watched all of my older siblings get the crap knocked out of them on a regular basis. As the youngest, I tried very hard to do everything right to avoid the same fate, but I wasn’t always successful. When I entered high school, I tried to overcome some of my fear by relying on my brother for support. He rewarded me by begging me to fuck him so that he could lose his virginity. (Since I had already lost my virginity to the man who raped me as a child, he helpfully pointed out, it would be no big deal for me, as I had “done it before.”) Needless to say, that took me back to square one in the C’mon, Laurie! Conquer Your Fear! Category. I was afraid to make close friends because I was afraid of revealing secrets about my family. And, as if all those emotional triggers weren’t bad enough, I had your basic fear of heights, fear of enclosed spaces, fear of choking, etc, to deal with, too.

In short, by the time I left home for college, I basically lived in fear of everyone and everything.

I explain all of this to you as a way of saying I understand the power of the politics of fear. Fear, in my mind, is little more than a feeling of weakness, of helplessness. You’re trapped by forces outside of your control that are going to hurt you. Those forces are trying to humiliate you, use you, discard you, degrade you, or even kill you.

I understand fear.

Fear leads to anger. It leads to short fuses and red hot tempers. Fear can make you view complete strangers as potential enemies. It can make you view loved ones as potential enemies, too. Fear can cause you to repress emotions that make you feel vulnerable, such as unadulterated joy. Fear builds walls and breaks down relationships. One way to avoid being hurt by others is for you to hurt yourself first, so fear can lead to substance abuse and self-destructive behavior. Fear can prevent you from listening to differing points of view, because if all that you have in world is the worldview that you have shaped through your experiences, the last thing you want is someone to come along and try to change it.

I understand fear. And the Republican Party’s platform is based on little else.

Oh, the Republican Party’s entire reason for existence is to create a political avenue for the aristocracy and Corporate America to create favorable laws and tax rates which will increase their wealth and their stockprices. But, once you get past the “We’ll lower your taxes” mantra, all the Republican Party tries to do is scare the shit out of people. Immigrants are taking your jobs! (I studied for years to be able to harvest that lettuce, and that goddamn Guatamalan woman with four kids took it from me!) Gays are ruining your marriage! Barack Obama is going to take your guns! Lazy (black) people are going to sit on their asses all day playing XBox and collecting unemployment while you bust your hump pulling down two full-time jobs! (I would have had a third job, but that damn Guatamalan! Grrr! <fist shake>) Barack Obama is gutting the military! Iran is going to invade us and impose Shar’ia Law! ABORTION! ABORTION! ABORTION! We’re going extinct because we’re killing unborn children!

From massing in large numbers at political rallies with AK-47’s strapped to their backs to claiming that Obamacare was going to intentionally kill senior citizens, the Republican Party has made sure that this country has been filled with uncertainty and dread for the past four years.

Now that this election has been decided, though, I would like to just say I wish the Republican Party would try a new tack. I spent the past two years having my fear receptors rubbed raw by the likes of Roger Ailes, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Mitch McConnell, Michele Bachmann, Ann Coulter, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and I would just like to express how thoroughly fucking sick of it I am.

Since I have lived with fear my entire life, and because I am white, and because I grew up in a conservative household that idolized Ronald Reagan, I should, by many metrics, make an ideal recruit for the Republican Party. I should simply embrace the fears that they stoke and have faith that they will protect me from that which terrifies me the most.

But, life didn’t really work out that way.

Maybe it’s exactly because I have lived with fear for so long that I so violently reject the messages the Republican Party perpetuates.

It is HARD to live life as a fearful person. The self-destructive behavior. The inability to sustain long-lasting, trusting relationships. The anger. The flashes of rage. The distrust. It all takes an enormous toll. Essentially, I’ve spent my entire adult life working to reduce fear’s controlling grip over me. Luckily, I’ve made a lot of progress. (I would not be here in this frame of mind if I hadn’t.) I wish very much that others would do the same. I wish that others would work hard to free themselves from the destructive vice grip of not only republican ideals, but their own personal fears as well. Because an individual’s emotional fears, the ones that constantly control their personal life, can easily metastisize into a political worldview in which every new concept or unfamiliar group is a threat.

Here’s another thing that exhausts me about Republican fear and hate: The way they point fingers at “others.” The way they call people outside their clique “takers” or “victims” or “incapable of fostering a sense of personal responsibility.” I can only speak for myself, but that offends me because I know the challenges I have had to overcome on my way to becoming a better person. I know the inner demons I’ve battled, the anxiety I fought to keep from spiralling out of control. I know how I used alcohol to blur my perspective so that my detachment from reality wasn’t as obvious to myself or others. I spent all of my twenties in a quasi-fugue state, being so emotionally detached that the only person I related to was the literary figure Holden Caufield. Remember him? From “Catcher in the Rye”? (Please don’t ask me about that book. I cannot for the life of me remember the plot, nor do I wish to. All I know is Holden Caufield felt like he was constantly on the outside looking in, which is exactly how I felt in my twenties. That and I am supposed to kill Ronald Reagan for Jodie Foster someday.) In my mind, I can see the rocky paths I traveled down and the horrible choices that I made. I can see where I failed to make connections with people because I didn’t have the skills necessary to do so. I know what it feels like to live in dread in the closet, terrified that those tiny relationships I did manage to build would be destroyed if those people knew I was gay. I can trace changes in my life to critical moments of connection when, through the inifinite patience, my friends and lovers stuck by me despite the fact that I was an emotional challenge. I know how delicate it felt, re-wiring my brain to feel new emotions. I can remember what it felt like to mentally force myself to not freak out about intimacy.  In other words, I know what it feels like to take personal responsibility, to improve oneself. And so, yes, it pisses me off when Republicans so callously refer to people like me as “victims” and “takers.” It pisses me off when they have such a reckless disregard for, and a complete lack of appreciation of, the struggles that define all of us. It annoys me to no end when they act as if they are the only group of people who are familiar with personal responsiblity. But it REALLY pisses me off when ordinary people nod in agreement at the words being spoken by those heartless millionaires. I wish those ordinary people would stop being trapped by their own fear, would stop allowing themselves to be manipulated and realize that when their leaders point the finger at the “others,” and speak about them with such revulsion and disgust they are actually pointing their fingers at EVERYONE. Including them.

As I struggled to become a more secure, less terrified, well-rounded individual, it would have been easy for me to allow that journey to make me MORE selfish. (Fearful people, are incredibly selfish. They don’t intend to be–it’s just the nature of their state of mind. They’re panicked, you see. Constantly. And living on that edge of anxiety and uncertainty makes a person react to most of what life throws at them from a perspective of self-preservation. “Fuck all of you all, I am dying over here–I have to do what’s right for ME” is the typical mindset of a fearful person.) But the beautiful thing about letting go of fear is that it leaves more room in your heart for more positive emotions. When you do not have to confront your fear every single minute of every single day, you have time to feel empathy for other people where before you wouldn’t allow yourself to. As the fear lessens, you feel a softness inside of you that, (if you’re not afraid of it), allows you to embrace compassion. And you realize that compassion is not a weakness to be feared. When you have gone decades of your life without it, when you are flooded with compassion you realize that it’s a gift to be cherished, not something to be mocked and scorned. Compassion is not weakness. It takes a tremendous amount of strength to have compassion for others.

I understand fear. I understand that it cannot be conquered alone.

As I have bumbled through my life, making mistakes left and right, dealing with the violent, unintended, lonely consequences of living an angry, fear-filled life, I have come to appreciate how important the connections are that we make in this world. There is no way that I could have made myself a better person alone. The friends that loved me unconditionally. The strangers who, on the way to becoming lifelong friends, appreciated me almost instantaneously, making me feel valuable and special. Yes, I’ve taken personal responsibility seriously as I’ve aged–but that doesn’t mean I made my improvements solely by sheer force of will. I’ve needed a community of people to help me, to have patience with me. They’ve forgiven me when I’ve made mistakes. They’ve accepted my apologies when I’ve treated them rudely or selfishly. They’ve helped me see that I don’t need to be perfect and smudge-free in order to be a better person.

Through it all, as I’ve become less fearful, kinder, more understanding, and more appreciative of my community, my country, my planet as a whole, the Republican party has congealed into this tight, dense ball of hatred and fear. Maybe that is why the starkness of their positions hits me hard. They have spent the past fifteen years tapping into the very same emotions that I am trying to reduce and eliminate on a personal level!

They’ve made “liberal” out to be a pejorative. “Feminazis.” “The gay agenda.” “Illegals.” “Welfare queens.” “Urban youth.” “Ragheads.” “Muslims are terrorists.” “We don’t want to become like Europe.” (That one I’ve never understood. Really? Happy? Healthcare? Rule of law? Relative peace and properity? Yeah. Fucking Europeans! Fuck those guys!) Republicans treat EVERY group with contempt and disdain. And it is SO stressful.

So, as this election cycles revved up, that undercurrent of disgust towards all the subcategories that make America “America, Fuck Yeah!” started to get churned up a bit faster and thicker by the Republicans. And when it does you sit there, a person who has struggled her whole life to overcome fear, a person who has fought to be brave enough to proactively engage with society and humanity, and you listen to that white noise, (unintentional pun), and you grow…fearful.

Ever since the Republicans started gunning for the White House in 2010, the fear has grown in me.

“Fox News is so pervasive, and so dominant and so biased–they are feeding people this fear 24/7! There is no way they are not changing people’s opinions!”

“I mean, if Coca-Cola can remain the world’s top beverage supplier simply through it’s effective use of advertising, you cannot tell me that Fox News isn’t branding millions of its viewers with its message of fear and contempt.”

“The Republicans show no remorse whatsoever when they say such disrespectful things about gays, about Muslims, about women–their confidence is surely powerful enough to convince millions of people that their views must be right.”

“Everyone who needs to feed their family is afraid on some level of not having enough money to survive. Maybe that fear of being unable to provide for one’s family is enough to panic millions of Americans to vote for a man who will only succeed in making the aristocracy richer.”

“Maybe human beings are incapable of being truly compassionate towards each other. Maybe we have to fear and hate people that are different from us. Maybe we’re genetically hardwired to hate. Maybe that is how humanity has functioned for hundreds of thousands of years. (Or 6,000 years, depending on whether or not you think the Bible is real.) Maybe conservatives just use that Jesus guy as a convenient cover to allow them to tap into their biases and fears without guilt.”

Those are just some of the worried, uncertain thoughts that have flitted through my mind over the past two years.

It didn’t help that the Republican candidates running for office throughout the country in numerous state races have been even more anti- than their supposedly moderate presidential ticket. When you sat back and looked at the big picture, and saw the extent to which their insidious fear had stretched across the country, it was enough to make your stomach lurch.

Of course, if you ever got a chance to talk with ordinary Republicans who were going to vote for Mitt Romney, they swore up and down that the Republican message is not about fear or hate. “It’s about lower taxes and freedom for businesses to succeed,” they would say. Right. And the Civil War was about “states’ rights.” We get it.

Of course, the illogic of that is that EVERY American wants effective tax policy. Everyone wants to pay just enough in taxes to keep our society running smoothly. No one wants the little man to get crushed under the burdens of an unfair government. No one wants our country to resemble some feudal society where the king spends money on lavish castles and unnecessary wars, raising taxes whimsically on his subjects while disregarding basic human rights and watching his serfs in the fields suffer. No one wants that, not even Democrats. Not even SOCIALISTS. So, I think it’s quite possible that, if all you wanted in life was for small businesses to thrive, you would be perfectly comfortable voting for Democratic candidates because THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT, TOO.

But, no.

You don’t vote Democrat, do you, Mr. Average Random Republican? You side with the party that wants to outlaw mosques and make it mandatory for women who want abortions to undergo additional painful, invasive, unnecessary medical procedures. You want to live in world in which medical care is controlled exclusively by private insurance companies. You want to spend billions on electric fences at the border and you want to give our border patrol the authority to shoot anyone entering our nation illegally. Even though you say you are for gay rights, you choose to vote for a party that openly advocates bigotry of gays, that wants to prevent people who have loved each other for decades the right to get married in our secular, non-theocratic society. You want to vote for a party that thinks the best way to deal with the issue of immigration is to treat people who have lived in this country their whole lives as second-class citizens. Actually, you don’t want to treat them as citizens at all. You want to deport them. Even if they’re 19 and have lived here since they were 2. Even if they’re valedictorian of their school. Even if they live right next door to you. You would rather their families be torn apart than work to address how to fix the problem of immigration humanely. You want to lock every prisoner away and throw away the key. And you don’t want to eliminate the death penalty, you want to speed up the process. You want to make it easier for our government to murder citizens. And you want to support ALL OF THAT and then look me in the eye and tell me, “You’re crazy, Laurie. The Republican Party platform isn’t based on fear.”

(Another way to ratchet up the fear in my gut is to make it obvious that the fear is being ratcheted up in this society while at the same time vociferously denying that the fear is being ratcheted up. Which, I think, was essentially the plot of the classic Ingrid Bergman film “Gaslight.”)

Needless to say, by the time Election Day rolled around, my nerve endings were raw. I was convinced that the billions of dollars being spent by outside interest groups, the non-stop brainwashing on Fox News, and the somewhat stagnanting economy were going to bring an overwhelming number of people to the polls with pitchforks and torches to figuratively run the Obamonster out of town. The prospect of watching a state like Missouri elect a rape-friendly Skeletor like Todd Akin to the Senate made me sick to my stomach. I was expecting the worst, and despairing of what it meant.

And what it would have meant is that you can never get rid of fear, Laurie. It will always exist. It will always be primal. It is too powerful for the majority of people to defeat it. You might be proud of yourself for having conquered some of the fear in your life, but you will never truly conquer it. Not here in America.

When the results started coming in, and they were generally in favor of the Democrats, I didn’t want to gloat about it to Republicans. I simply felt…joy. Unadulterated joy. Happy that this country, the one that tweets with me and argues on Facebook with me, and that hears the same messages from the same politicians as I do, collectively came together and said, “Yeah, haters. I don’t think so.” In individual races across the land, we voted for marriage equality. We refused to elect Tea Party politicians who glibly referred to rape pregnancies as God’s gift. We faced the fear and uncertainty of a foundering economy and did not panic by throwing out the man who is trying to steer us out of this. We did not let Mitt Romney become president simply because he said “I’ll create 12 million jobs!” during the first presidential debate.

In other words, we faced down our fear. As someone who knows how strong it can make a person to do that, all I can say is that I’m excited about what that means might be in store for our nation.

And that is what makes me feel good about last night’s election.