By Cody Yarbrough, Contributor
For the second time in my life, it feels like the world might end over an election. For the second time in my life, I’ve had to join the national fight against fascism. For the second time in my life, I’ve had to watch Donald Trump rise to the highest office in the United States of America.
I was a sophomore in high school when Trump won in 2016. When I went to bed that night certain that Hillary Clinton was going to be the first woman President. I mean how could she not? Trump was a liar, a crooked businessman, a womanizer, and cartoonishly racist. I felt no anxiety in my chest watching what I could of the CNN coverage of the election that night. And when I went to sleep that night in preparation for school the next day, I was convinced that the US had just elected its first female president. But then I woke up. The voice I heard over my radio alarm was stunned and somber. The host announced that the election had been called by multiple news outlets, and Donald Trump had won while I was sleeping.
The next four years were an era of imperialistic nationalism and unchecked racism. To white middle America, Trump’s presidency was the best thing that could’ve happened second only to the coming of Jesus. But to a Black teenager from the east side of Detroit, it was like the coming of the Anti-Christ. The kind of man that Trump is was supposed to be extinct in this country. The Obama era of politics that I grew up in was supposed to usher in a post-racial society where Nazis aren’t considered “good people” and places where Black and Brown folks are the majority aren’t known as “sh*thole counties”. However, Trump’s ascension to the Oval Office showed me different. I couldn’t vote in the first place, yet somehow, I felt like I missed the opportunity to help stop this. Like the protagonist of a story who arrives too late to foil the villain. As illogical as it sounds, a small part of me felt like if I had a say in the election, things would be different.
I remember going to my church the next day for Wednesday night service. The way that the other teens talked about what had happened, you would’ve thought that Martians had landed on Belle Isle. We were too young to vote but old enough to recognize that things had gone terribly wrong. A week ago, the idea of a Trump Presidency was literally a joke. Something so outlandish in our minds that it had to be comedy. It’s easy to scoff at our naivete now and dismiss our misjudgment of the situation as kids talking about things they know nothing about, but honestly, how could you blame us? We were raised to think that way.
For those voters my age and younger, Obama is the first president we ever really knew. The days of his presidency occupy the same part of our brain as childhood innocence. A good part of early life that we enjoyed but never fully appreciated. For all its faults, his administration brought us up in a stable political culture. Sure, there were fierce debates in Congress and mudslinging competitions in the media, but Obama’s presence in the Oval Office made us feel optimistic. As if no matter how messy things got on Capitol Hill, sensible men and women would always come out on top. The intelligent and strong persona we saw on the POTUS podium for eight years straight created the mental standard we had for a president. So, when a bumbling egomaniac like Trump threw in his bid for the executive seat, it was literally inconceivable to my generation that he even had a chance.
Fast forward eight years, and once again I feel like that 16-year-old who thought that America was better than this. I had learned from the two previous elections that white supremacy and the apathy to it were alive and well, but somehow, I had convinced myself that maybe things had changed over the last near-decade. So much had happened since then. My generation had grown old enough to vote. We joined campaign efforts. Funded grassroots movements. Educated the masses through Tweets and political TikTok. Joined nationwide protest. And in 2020, helped vote Donald Trump out of office. Perhaps that childhood naivete then crept back into our psyche. Perhaps Kamala’s intelligent and strong deminer made us feel at ease like Obama did. Perhaps the 8-year-long political struggle was getting to us, and we took our foot off the gas. Whatever the case may be, the effort we put forward over the past year wasn’t enough. Because once again Donald Trump has up-ended our image of what the president should be.
My generation remembers this feeling all too well, but this time we did have a say in what happened. Yet despite all our efforts, the outcome was the same as in 2016. But before the voters and organizers of Generation Z hang their heads in despair, I would invite them to also remember 2020. I want them to remember that despite being in the middle of planetary pestilence, natural disasters of biblical proportion, and widespread unrest, we were able to come together and do our part to eject Trump from the executive seat. We’ve taken a loss for now, but we can’t let that stall us. In order to combat and stop issues like Project 2025, statewide abortion bans, and the rewriting of history in our schools, this country is going to need our efforts.
We need to bounce back regardless of how dumb and naïve we feel right now. After all, it’s that same childhood feeling that caused us to fight to return American politics to a place of stability. And it’s that same naivete from our youth that made us believe that we could make a difference in our country. When you think about it, maybe those old feelings from back when we were kids aren’t as bad as some might make them out to be. Maybe the thing we need at this moment is a little childhood naivete to keep us going.
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