Because Allison and I are traveling more, I recently applied for Global Entry. You have to do an in-person interview with a Customs and Border Protection agent to get that, and my interview was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. The closest interview location is Dayton for some reason so I took a late afternoon road trip to get that sorted.

I was lost in an audiobook for the first half hour but I was taken out of it when I passed by Springfield, Ohio and was reminded that, somehow, a presidential campaign chose to spend a couple of weeks defaming, demonizing, and endangering some of the most vulnerable people among us in the worst ways imaginable and were greatly rewarded for doing so.

Not long after that a minivan with multiple Trump stickers passed me. I looked at the driver. It was a woman about my age or perhaps a little younger. She wasn’t some MAGA stereotype or anything. If I hadn’t seen the stickers I wouldn’t have thought twice. But I did see them and I couldn’t stop wondering about her. What her life is all about, how she spends her time, and who in her life, be it family members, friends, or coworkers, cannot trust her anymore because, even if she’s not overtly bigoted, cruel, or otherwise awful in any obvious way, she doesn’t consider those things to be dealbreakers so it really doesn’t matter.

I was ahead of schedule for my interview so I stopped at a Flying-J station just off the exit to get a soda and kill some time. There was nothing or no one unusual in there but I couldn’t shake the feeling that my shoes, shirt, glasses, or vibe outed me as some obviously liberal type who, per our incoming president, is the enemy within. It’s a pretty stupid thought for a guy like me to have — fifty-something Cisgender white guys have never had to fear anyone in public spaces in this country and we are the last people who will find ourselves in the crosshairs of the incoming regime — but the feeling hit me all the same.

I pulled up to the weird building at the remote back end of the Dayton Airport where my appointment was scheduled. Once inside I was called up to the desk where a Border Protection agent was stationed. I gave him my passport and my driver’s license. Since my license still has my old address on it I brought a bank statement to verify where I lived. We bank with USAA. While that bank is mostly for members of the military, you can use it if you’re a veteran or if you have family members who are veterans, as both Allison and I do. It’s occasionally awkward because sometimes when I use my debit card a clerk will see it, assume I am a veteran and say “thank you for your service,” but that kind of awkwardness is worth never having to pay ATM fees. It also happened with the Border Protection agent, whose haircut and demeanor screamed ex-military:

Agent: “USAA. Did you serve?”

Me: “Um, no. My dad did. Brother too.”

I don’t know why I mentioned my brother. I’d never say that in that situation otherwise because it’s irrelevant. But the weird mind space I was in that afternoon and have been in all week makes me feel like a spy in my own country. Like I have to pass for something or someone I’m not lest I come under unwanted scrutiny. Again, it’s childish for someone like me to say that when millions of actually vulnerable people have been forced by bigotry and hatred to do that for centuries, but it’s a feeling I can’t shake this week and don’t feel like I will be able to shake for some time.

Finally, last night Allison and I ran some errands that took us out to the suburbs. While walking around the store I looked at people and wondered which of them lacked the object permanence to remember the first Trump administration. Or who remembered it well and thought, “you know what, let’s do that again!” Which of them saw those horrifying transphobic ads a couple hundred times and said “yep, he has a point, he’s my man!” Which of them think that putting people in concentration camps is a fine and just thing for our country to do.

I’m finding over the past couple of days that I don’t feel at ease around people I don’t know or whom I can’t at least roughly clock. Unlike in 2016 and 2020, when Trump lost the popular vote, I cannot comfort myself by thinking that the balance of probabilities favored them being on the side of the angels. Especially in this state, especially outside of my little urban enclave.

I understand, intellectually, that voters are more complicated — and in some ways less complicated — than all of that. I have a political science degree and I worked in elections when I was younger so I get that there is all manner of cognitive dissonance and ignorance and emotion and weird siloing and a bunch of other things that go into what makes people cast their vote for someone. I’m not saying any of this is rational or, in some cases even fair. But this is not simply about America voting for someone I didn’t vote for and didn’t care for. That’s happened many times and I just roll with it. It’s about how, this time around, Trump was not pretending to be something he wasn’t. His cruelty and horribleness were not just on full display, they were the alpha and omega of over a year’s worth of odious campaigning the likes of which this country has not seen in anyone’s living memory. And America saw that and said, “we want that.”

I still cannot get over the fact that basic human decency didn’t count for anything. I still cannot get over the fact that the American electorate didn’t simply refuse to punish literal criminality, abject cruelty, and unequivocal immorality but, rather, happily rewarded it. Rewarded it with its eyes wide open and with full knowledge of who and what it was voting for. It’s anathema to everything I was taught to believe. It runs counter to everything I thought I understood about how politics work. It runs counter to everything I thought I understood how people work. At least most of them. But it’s real. It happened. And it has really thrown me for a loop. I feel like I don’t know my own country anymore. I feel like I’m not welcome in vast swaths of it and that a hell of a lot of people are in actual danger in vast swaths of it in a way people haven’t been in danger for some time.

This feeling is awful and I worry that it’s never going to go away. But I’m not sure I want it to go away because, if it does, it means I gave in and accepted it and that would be even worse.