Checking in for a flight to Charlotte at my home airport in Cleveland earlier in the summer, I fumbled with the kiosk that struggled to print out my bag tag. In a moment of frustration, I caught a glimpse of the other people around me. Most seemed friendly, perhaps a little travel-weary or stressed themselves.

They were fellow Ohioans heading out on some kind of adventure. Others were just trying to make their way home. My wishes for them were benevolent, as I hoped theirs would be towards me. Then, a line came to me that I hadn’t thought of in years— “mankind is inherently evil.”

That was a favorite saying of my Pentecostal, Evangelical father. I first heard it from him in the early 1990s, long before conspiracy theories, talks about the so-called “Deep State” and Christian nationalist ideologies became so mainstream.

With more people like my father and the minds who shaped him getting louder, more vocal, and more powerful, I sometimes wonder if he was right all along.

Sure, he would now see someone like me— a queer feminist who gets loud about abuses of institutional power as evil. But I see so much of what he has supported as evil. These include denying addicted people treatment and necessary health care, letting people go hungry to teach them a lesson, or waging unchecked wars where innocent people suffer.

Debating who is right and wrong is not of interest to me because defining evil is shaped by our personal worldview. I simply know that my dread was at an all-time high as I wondered if the nice ticketing agent who helped me figure out the problem with the kiosk would be with or against me in an American Civil War. 

If they knew I was queer, would they want to deport me to the colonies, like in Margaret Atwood’s fictional classic “The Handmaid’s Tale?” Her dystopian tale feels like it has become more real as Donald Trump’s supporters and proponents of Christian nationalism get louder.

Sure, the presumptive nomination of Kamala Harris and the enthusiasm she has generated fills me with some hope. But I am also reminded of the toxic misogyny that defines our American climate. When I hear people disparage the vice president with sexist judgments, I feel the pain in my bones again, as I did when Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016.

I know in the visceral fibers of my being how many people who walk in my midst hate who I am, what I stand for and who I support. I also know the kind of violence many of them intend to muster if they don’t get their way. 

I played Anne Frank on stage during my freshman year of high school. There, I proclaimed her storied teaching, “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are good at heart.”

After the play, my father wanted me to know that the line was garbage. “Mankind is inherently evil,” he said again.

While studying the people in that airport with me, I wondered, “Why is this thought coming up now?” 

Dad raised me to see the rest of the world as an enemy. Even his wife, my mother who remained a Roman Catholic when he converted to Evangelical Christianity, was the enemy.

As I began my recovery from addiction and unaddressed trauma-based mental health struggles in my early twenties, I had to release what he made me believe about myself, God, and the world. This was necessary for me to heal and eventually, thrive.

During my recovery awakening, I began to not automatically assume people were going to hell. 

Of course, I know there is evil in the world. It exists as oppression, greed, power, control and unchecked dynamics that harm people. Those who are hurt are just trying to do their best to stay afloat, love their families, and pursue the happiness to which we are all entitled.

Perhaps becoming a therapist further opened my eyes to people’s inherent goodness. For so long, I have had a front-row seat to the depth and immensity of their struggles. I root for people and my vocation teaches me that most have the capacity for lasting and meaningful change. 

I wonder if this is how my friends who live in bodies that aren’t immediately seen as white feel all the time. Maybe this is how Kamala Harris feels constantly.

Yes, I have white privilege. And I also, as a female inhabiting a body that many see as too fat, know what it is like to feel unsafe. In addition to being queer, I live with a chronic mental health condition and have experienced discrimination as a result.

Even considering all these realities, I have never felt quite as disheartened as I did in the airport. Not because I believe that humankind is inherently evil but because it seems that evil is winning.

I feel that what I learned in history books about families and neighbors who were once friends turned against each other during the first American Civil War. It also feels like this time next year, we may be in another. This feeling gets worse daily as we head towards the 2024 election.

I do not have easy answers. Of course, I will fight like hell to ensure that the people who most closely represent the country I want to live in are elected in November. And even if (hopefully when) that happens, we will still find ourselves surrounded by a whole lot of hate and likely, violence and yes, evil.

So perhaps this is my lamentation— my crying out to the God of my understanding in anger and frustration, asking them why the world has to be this way. How are we supposed to still believe in miracles now? Like my spiritual ancestors— I am feeling very low and yet, not totally hopeless. 

I keep taking those deep spirit-filled breaths, knowing that the holding of my breath will not make any of this easier.