Fear & Loathing in 2016 - Editorial by Rob O'Sullivan
I will admit that I have the privilege – and it’s the only privilege I seem to have – that I get to read over everything in this paper before I go to write this editorial. To be honest, this week, I’m not sure what to put here, and the temptation to simply copy-and-paste Lauren or Chris’ editorials here is the greatest its been all year, but I will forge on.As I write, a sleepy fucking cat named Loki is, surprise, asleep at my feet, it’s 4am and I’ve just written a page about Professor Mary Ryan. Ryan, if you didn’t know, was an inspirational figure who lived through hard times, purely because she was a woman in turn-of-the-century Ireland. And however inspirational she may be it brings me back to the 8th of November, and the quiet fear that lives inside me. As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Donald J Trump has been elected as President of the United States. This is the cause of my fear; and it’s not a “bleedin-heart liberal” fear, or just a sense of disappointment that Hillary Clinton wasn’t able to follow in the footsteps of Ryan or Robinson, it’s a very real, tangible fear.Around this time, at 4am, 6 days ago, it was guaranteed that Trump had won, though that’s not the part that scares me: with Trump, who in reality likely won’t build his walls or start his wars, came people like Mike Pence, and with them came ‘solemn covenants’ to repeal many things introduced in the last presidency. Things like protections for LGBT workers and citizens, things like the affordable care act (aka Obamacare).And as news came in that morning, at around this time, I looked through Twitter to see friends, colleagues and family members in America talk about how ‘without the Affordable Care Act they will die, as they can no longer afford their cancer treatment’ or how they fear for their lives simply because they are trans, or because a massive proponent of electro-shock conversion therapy is a heartbeat away from the Presidency, and I can do no more than sit. That’s the real fear, for me: knowing that people will suffer and not being able to do anything.