Don’t Assume

~ Clarissa

Liberals, I am begging you to realize that even in coastal areas large minorities of the people you meet voted for the other guy. You cannot within minutes after meeting a total stranger and with no knowledge of their life or worldview make political statements that assume a liberal audience. It is so completely bizarre and narcissistic that you guys do this and betrays a very weak theory of other minds, besides.

https://x.com/wanyeburkett/status/1854714559895933235?t=MXPXtYVyhjF4T-yA65qihQ&s=19

And on campus! I don’t come up to colleagues who walk around with tragic faces and go, “Hey, so we won, cool, huh? Let’s par-tay, my friend!” No, I’m being sensitive and not assuming that anybody has to share my joy. Why can’t people do me the same courtesy and not approach me with, “So. How are you preparing for life in these fascist United States?” or “you must be so devastated. I can’t imagine how I would feel if I were a woman having to live in Trump’s kingdom.” I don’t want to know what was meant by the latter expression of support but eww, people. Many assumptions there, and they are all distasteful.

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Published by Clarissa

31 thoughts on “Don’t Assume”

  1. I absolutely did this as a liberal in certain environments and in retrospect, how embarrassing. As karma, now liberals do this to me. Oddly enough, conservatives do this too sometimes, even though it’s a statistically unlikely assumption where I live (though they happen to be correct.)

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        2. This. I am liberal and voted accordingly, and I’m disappointed by the outcome, but now the election is over, life goes on. Among the people who major in what I teach, there are a lot of conservatives (based on published statistics), so it makes sense that probably a lot of the students in my class voted for GOP. I didn’t address the election at all in my Wednesday lecture; first, I’m not stupid enough to assume all students are liberal, and, second, we had a review session for upcoming midterm, and that’s what I was there for.

          I also haven’t posted about the election on social media because my social media is about fiction writing, and, yes, art is political, but it’s not something I seek or enjoy discussing on socials, and I doubt that me sloganeering will help me move any books.

          However, I see a lot of authors who keep writing about the election. I’m sure some might assume I’m voted for GOP because I don’t beat my chest on socials after an election loss. In reality, I just don’t want to spend a lot of emotional energy on politics; I have limited time and energy, and prefer to focus both on what can affect.

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  2. OMG. I’m one of those heartless people who can’t really empathize. If somebody said any of those things to me, randomly, I would have a very, very hard time not laughing. I mean, I’d try. But… I’m not very good at the whole poker-face thing.

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  3. In all my meetings since election, people are showing up as if someone has died. One of my female colleagues rushed towards me and gave me an unsolicited long hug given that I am an immigrant non-white women and she was probably worried about my fate (so condescending and uncomfortable!).

    In a recent zoom a fully grown man with a greying beard showed up with an emotional support stuff toy which he kept clutching to control his stress.
    Cannot make this up — people have lost all sense of balance and propriety. Even if it’s a personal setback, since people can clearly get really invested into these things emotionally (not logically), get a grip! Please.

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    2. I made sure to consider the possibility of a Harris victory in advance, even though I thought Trump was going to win, partially so I wouldn’t be hysterical if things didn’t go my way. But even without that emotional preparation, I don’t think I’d find myself clutching an emotional support toy in a work setting lol.

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      1. I’m going to a large conference next week. A thousand people in the Humanities, all broken by the Trump win. I’m not anticipating having a good time around them but at least there will be many stories to tell here.

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      1. –My sister sent me that one. She works in a majority-male industrial workplace full of Guatemalan dudes who tell her she’s pretty (she’s over fifty), and nerdy engineers. So, basically her dream job: no drama, everybody’s nice to her, and she never has to waste a minute managing other people’s *feelings*.

        Pretty sure the atmosphere at “the office” (if you can call a mostly-outdoor site where everybody has to wear hardhats and boots an office) was unabashedly celebratory, after the election results.

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      1. Our students are eminently normal. It’s such a blessing. Yesterday we had a visit from local high schoolers. These are mostly black kids from difficult backgrounds. And again, wonderful, polite, quiet kids, very respectful, so sweet, overawed to be at a real college.

        It’s only the spoiled brats from wealthy families who are obnoxious, and we have zero of those at our school.

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  6. OT: Did anyone catch Harris’s concession speech? I heard a couple of a minutes on a Polish channel (but didn’t want to deal with the voice-over translation).

    Was it okay? The couple of minutes I heard were okay and I really hope she did a traditional speech in which she congratulated Trump and wished him and his family well as well as the country as a whole.

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    2. She uttered her typical Hallmark card banalities and platitudes but was more coherent than usual. I suspect that Harris may be secretly relieved of not getting elected and landing head first into a position she is scarcely prepared for. She maybe thanking Trump in her head for this narrow escape from making a serious fool of herself on the world stage, especially in such critical geopolitical times.

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        1. I read a long Twitter thread yesterday where liberals discussed if they’d run her again in 4 years. It was the funniest thing because they were torn between wanting to convince themselves that she was a phenomenal candidate and simultaneously being scared of losing big again.

          I, for one, think they should be running her for decades to come.

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          2. “I, for one, think they should be running her for decades to come”

            I bear her no ill will now that the election’s over and hope she finds a better career than elected office, which is…. not a good fit for her.

            If she runs again then the ill will… will return (only in the aim of her not being elected).

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        1. Didn’t Jill Biden show up to vote in the exact shade or red that the GOP use? There is no way it was just an accidental choice of color.

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