It’s hard to articulate how I feel about this presidential election. So much of it has already been said. Part of me is still unable to comprehend how this outcome is even possible. I’m forced to realize that America is not the place that I was brought up to believe it was: a land of opportunity and idealism–a place where anyone can make it. A new culture has taken hold, decades in the making, and it’s repulsive. And together “we” have elevated a vain, ill-tempered, ignorant, racist, sexist, xenophobe with no professional qualifications to the most important office in the land–the so-called leader of the free world.

I am grateful in this moment for the company of my daughter, who is cheerfully unaware of current events. I don’t look forward to the day I have to explain to her how feminism died in 2016. I hope I never have to tell her how democracy’s promise of freedom and peace died too.