Honestly I think you should be more forgiving of yourself for just… like having normal human emotional reactions to an incredibly stressful situation. Emotions are useful and important. For you it must have looked like a bunch of agitators making trouble with their emotions and that’s fair enough. It was enough to upset you at the time and that is also fair enough. That’s what it means to be a living breathing human animal.
Right now what is giving me hope is the fact that more and more people are recognizing these protests as protected speech at their core which means a majority of people in this country have not completely abandoned the idea of democracy even as some are actively fighting against it. Even if things get worse, people are looking for a way forward together. Currently the actual US military has refused to attack it’s own citizens. That gives me hope. I don’t know if we are out of the woods yet but it’s a precarious situation. On one hand our institutions are failing us in a very real way, on the other hand if we abandon all faith in their capacity to do better we will dissolve into chaos. If people can still come together and protest injustice to pressure our leaders to do better though, then at the very least all hope is not lost.
