Post-Inauguration 2025
It finally happened. I cracked.
Things have been wildly hectic and covertly emotional since 2025 started. I flew to Hawaii for one week (happy birthday to my amazing mother) starting January 1st, followed by my final 10 jam-packed days in Melbourne, thus completing my one year in Australia. I then flew to New Zealand, which is where I am for three months.
I moved out of Australia, a country that I have come to love and that feels like home, on the presidential inauguration day in the United States, January 20th, an unintentional coincidence. I didn’t follow the U.S. inauguration; however, I did read about the slew of executive orders that immediately followed. Although I read about them, I didn’t process anything; simply chugged along, catching up on work and preparing to be on the road for the next few weeks while working. And then the Wi-Fi went out.
I think that’s how newer horror stories probably start: And Then, The Wi-Fi Went Out. Dun dun dun. And because I’m on limited international data, I quickly blew through what remaining data I had and am now on the “slow” data. For context, it can barely load the weather app. And because I was waiting for a package to be delivered (a charger for my laptop, because when it rains it pours), and I get on a plane tomorrow, I couldn’t leave to find another source of internet access.
The silence that was forced upon me by the lack of internet was deafening and horrible. There was no more drowning out the interminable noise of my thoughts. I eventually succeeded in getting a podcast to load and was listening to a post-inauguration interview with Brittney Cooper, author and Professor of Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University, who said:
“The 20th century project is dead. […] and one of the things that’s going to be really hard for those of us who are over the age of 25 is that we have lived in a world where that project, and particularly the more progressive parts of it, have shaped our idea of the possible. And now, all of it is gone away and so we have to have some new idea of the possible. And we don’t have a 21st century version of the possible […] These folks have killed, effectively, the parts of the 20th century that those of us who were progressive-minded are proud of.”
And that broke me. Because she’s right. It feels like everything we were and could have been proud of about the U.S. is gone or nearly gone. Everything I have worked for during my 13-year career is regressing at a horrifying pace: international development and USAID-funding (both of which were already problematic, but still), international collaboration and cooperation through treaties and organizations, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion space, reproductive rights, environmental protections, and human rights in general, including LGBTQ+ rights, immigrant and refugee rights, and more.
To say that this is all devastating is not an overstatement. It is also unsurprising and expected. This is not the first time that we, as humans, have lost rights. There is always pushback to progress. For more history on this, see the 2020 article by Lawrence Glickman: How White Backlash Controls American Progress: Backlash dynamics are one of the defining patterns of the country’s history.
I know that we will fight and are already fighting; I know that we have to cling to any bits of hope we find and that, to paraphrase Professor Cooper, we have to create a new idea of what’s possible. For now, I will grieve the loss of the advances made during the 20th century.