I remember watching President Barack Obama’s Inauguration ceremony. As joyous as it was I was afraid some crazy shit might happen. And we discovered many years later that there was a credible threat to that Inauguration. Because I understood that he was and will always be at physical risk for having the audacity to run and win the presidency twice. When I say that the fear I felt last week was 10 times worse that should give you an idea of how bad things had gotten here. I didn’t trust that things would go off smoothly and held my breath until Joseph Robinette Biden’s old, wrinkled hand was on that massive family Bible. It’s pretty shocking to admit that I was worried that I would see someone murdered on t.v. because I’d seen murders on t.v. before. It just wouldn’t be defenseless people of color minding their business. I didn’t realize how stressed out I was until the end of this week when I finally exhaled at 9:00 pm MTN Wednesday evening. Then, on Thursday and Friday I had a massive headache. As if I had quit something cold turkey. For almost 9 hours on Friday I was physically ill. But, it wasn’t just me. I read comments from other people online that talked about how they were dealing with TMJ from clinching their jaws. Dentists talked about the uptick in fixing broken teeth over the past couple of years. People shared that they were just waiting for the other shoe to drop. In this episode I’m going to share some things that I was afraid to share last week, why personal finance is political and my thoughts about what’s next.
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Show Notes
My mom called to make sure that I was carrying mace on me the other day. What I would find out later is that some crazed construction guy (yes, he was White) had screamed at her that everyone would be getting theirs this week. It was a very clear threat to her safety and yes she did report it. And, I always carry something. Living under an increasingly Fascist government with White Nationalist overtones as a Black woman has been exhausting. There will be people who push back on this statement but what I will say is that you can’t tell me how I experienced the last 4 years.
Something I think about often is that every US President becomes someone else’s war criminal. Yes, even my beloved President Obama. The thing is 45 became my personal war criminal and a threat to me and mine.
My Passport
What I was afraid to mention in last week’s episode was that I was making very real calculations about leaving the US. The biggest issue that I was dealing with was that I had let my passport lapse. This was a HUGE mistake and I felt this keenly as I watched the previous White House resident’s increasingly aggressive efforts to overthrow the election results. I was issued my first passport when I was 2 years old and had almost always had one my entire adult life. During debt repayment I knew that I wouldn’t be traveling overseas as I focused on debt repayment. In fact, my last trip abroad was in 2015 when I visited Australia for 2 months. Now I was freaking out and asking myself, how in the fuck was I going to travel outside of the US?
What if I submitted my application and a new directive was passed down that limited who could get a passport? I worked in immigration before. I knew that this was a very real possibility moving forward. I also knew of people who left. They moved out of the US for the foreseeable future and even though I make money online I was missing the one document that I needed to make that happen. I couldn’t legally leave the US and be a digital nomad without a passport. By the way, this was a completely different conversation than when Al Gore was pissed off about the hanging chads. I didn’t think that George Bush was coming for me. I felt like 45’s administration was.
After this experience I will always look at every country’s administration side-eyed and will always have a passport on hand. I recommend that you do too.
My Business
I work a 10 month year. Basically, I try to hustle hard from January through the end of October/beginning of November. This year I noticed that I was just unable to focus. I needed this huge issue (the Election) that had been hanging over my head taken care of. Because I was going to have to make some different choices if 45 was able to successfully steal the election.
My plan to write new books was on pause because the stress affected my creativity. I had scheduled a staycation/business planning session in January but had to cancel it because I wasn’t able to focus or relax.
Being in an Uncivil War
For awhile now I’ve felt like we were in a war of sorts. And, when President Biden in his Inaugural Address referenced “An Uncivil War” that we’ve been dealing with I thought that it was the perfect way to frame it. I want to share a story about a conversation that I had this fall. I was sitting on a coffee shop patio enjoy the sunshine in my neighborhood. It’s not unusual to have conversations with the different people at the shop. An older couple started talking to me they were probably in their 70’s and the wife was really pissed off and exasperated with her husband. She shared that she was hoping Biden would win. Then, her husband starting talking about the upcoming Civil War.
Now, for those of you outside of the United States, you may not have understood that people thought that we were going to literally be on the streets fighting an actual Civil War. I’ll never forget what I said to the husband. I basically said “We’re a bunch of fat and lazy people with something to lose. Are you wanting to tear up your $1 million dollar home fighting an actual war?” And, as we saw this past week there were a lot of people who were keyboard warriors who had a lot to lose and were watching traitors being rightfully dragged online and on tv by their friends and family and losing everything for a man who only cared about his bottom line.
Americans are F$cked Up
I don’t say this lightly. We’ve experienced a massive trauma. We’ve lost friends and family. We have become uncomfortable being around a number of our previous acquaintances and colleagues. There will be many people who will want to move on like this never happened.
I can’t and you shouldn’t.
It’s my personal view that we must aggressively document this experience. Because it will happen to people in another community sooner than you would think.
I’ve lost overseas friends not because of anything that I did but because after the initial amusement they soon realized that America had massive problems.
We were dealing with people who literally were in a cult. And, if you’ve ever dealt with someone in a cult. They don’t believe that they’re in a cult.
The Cognitive Dissonance was Crazy
What will forever be jarring about what we went through was how normal other aspects of our life seemed to be. We still spoke at conferences, focused on growing our businesses, went to our 9-5s and even went skiing. It was as if we were living two different lives.
The life where we’re pretending everything was ok when the world was actually on fire around us. We would joke and make hilarious TikTok videos and tweets and I would think to myself some of the funniest people out there are the people who are in the most pain.
I Can’t Pretend
And you shouldn’t either. For me, in order to move forward I can’t pretend like this crazy sh$t didn’t happen. I can’t pretend that:
- The US President on a regular basis disrespected and talked down to:
- Black Women
- White Women
- The Media….because he could without impunity.
- That White Nationalism was empowered and that it became a regular thing to watch videos of people telling people that they were white and allowed to do whatever they wanted to. It’s not my problem that you squandered a 400 year lead in a country set up for your success.
- That people didn’t understand that there was a difference between being a Conservative and being a Trumper with the exception of the hundreds of thousands of conservatives who also were sounding the alarm. Thank you.
- That there were babies, people’s babies put in f$cking cages.
- I can’t pretend that people believed in something called Q’anon and that they didn’t sit and think to themselves “Does any of this stuff sound strange to you?” And that these same people were ok with brown babies being put in cages.
- That I regularly saw replays of Black men and women getting shot and killed on t.v.
- That there was a coup attempt and we almost lost our democracy to an Orange a$$hole who owes a lot of money to all the wrong people and was looking at the end of a long Con that was almost over.
- I can’t and won’t forget all of the people who would throw me under the bus for money or holding onto some perceived sense of color related power.
- I won’t forget that people would try to gaslight me with the whole “But, Candice Owens works with Him” lead into an uncomfortable conversation where I have to tell people that “Not all skin folk are kin folk”
- I won’t forget the increasing homeless camps, camps on the streets of Denver in the past 4 years as people fell through the cracks. It’s crazy to listen to people stay aligned with policies that hurt them so that other people that they think are lazy, etc. aren’t helped.
- I think about Germany after the war ended and what that must have been like…
- That personal finance IS political which is why I decided to continue sharing podcast episodes sharing my thoughts on financial policy such as the $15 dollar minimum wage conversation, Universal Basic Income and more.
Moving Forward
I’m working on this episode from one of my favorite coffee shop patios. It’s a beautiful day and I’ve chit chatted with a coffee shop friend, sat in the sunshine and had a beautiful day. People are leaving the gym next door and people are walking their dogs. The little girl sitting at the table across from me keeps waving. Yesterday a man on the lightrail serenaded me. I’ve noticed people putting the American flag out again in my neighborhood. The energy has begun to change. But, deep down I don’t trust this sense of normalcy.
- I’m working on a series of episodes that will I plan on releasing at the end of February about this unfortunate lived experience that I had during Fascism.
- I’m even going to interview a historian in the personal finance space.
- I want to share how other people experienced the last 4 years.
- In my view it’s extremely urgent that we document how we experienced this moment in history. Create podcast episodes, videos, blog posts, write books. By documenting the experience we will be able to validate our experience, work through trauma and help other people recognize the signs of accelerating Fascism.
- It’s not enough to just let historians document this history.
The crazy thing about this episode is that I didn’t even talk about the Pandemic. Americans have a lot to process and it’s going to take us awhile. We literally have gone through a Pandemic, Fascism and coup attempt. We’re going to be working though our issues for awhile because the wolf is still at the door. I share this episode to ultimately to say the following:
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