The night the UK voted to leave the European Union, those of us Brits who opposed the idea started out watching with a sick mixture of hope and fear. As results began to come in, there was the sinking sensation that something we wholeheartedly believed was wrong and damaging could come to pass. We asked ourselves: How could our fellow humans—people we live side-by-side with, people we respect—want this?
The night America elected Donald Trump as its 45th president felt like it had some parallels: a
desperate hope that a country wouldn’t be swayed by fear, isolationism, and the rhetoric of “them
against us.” The nagging terror that it would.
The next morning, these are some of the people who are looking at America’s choice, aghast:
people who have experienced misogyny, racism, discrimination, harassment or bullying of any
kind. People who have witnessed it. People who think one of the roles of government is to protect
us from those things. Excerpt from Cassie Werber’s article in Quartz- Read more.