It feels agonizingly painful, like a knife cut to the gut. All things of logic, kindness, sense – tossed out the window. A decade of progress, seemingly evaporated into thin air. Pantsuits burned and forgotten. Swollen eyes, crumpled newspapers, shocked messy-haired children. Us Hillary fans didn’t see this coming, though we stayed up at night worrying about it after Bill Maher countlessly warned us not to vote third party. We feel stymied. Some of us are catatonic. Some of us are angry. Very angry. Don’t tell us to choose love when that orange man has been voted nation of the free world. Defriend, delete, block – do what you need to do to keep your circle of love authentic. There’s no authentic love in someone who votes for banning immigrants, rape culture, xenophobia, mocks the disabled, and votes against our LGBT brothers and sisters. There’s no love lost for us if you voted Trump. He is not my President, and he never will be. He is 1930’s Germany. He is terrified.
So what is helping me today?
- I’m going to protest. They are happening everywhere. Go be around your people. March. Bring your kids. Teach them that this is a democracy where we have the right to disagree. I’m taking my kids here today, but I promise – there is one near you. There will be plenty, all over, for a very long time to come.
- Knowing the young people voted for kindness:
- Signing this petition:
Donald Trump won the presidency after narrowly carrying a few states to put him above 270 electoral votes. But according to the latest numbers, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. The game is rigged. In other words, we have a similar situation as in 2000—where the candidate who more voters picked did not become president. It is unfair, undemocratic & we must eliminate the Electoral College. Eliminating the Electoral College does not even require a constitutional amendment. An effort known as The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is an agreement among several U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their respective electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the overall popular vote. Once states totaling 270 electoral votes join the compact–which only requires passing state laws– then the next presidential election will be determined the the popular vote, not the Electoral College. As of November 9, 2016, ten states and the District of Columbia have signed the compact, totaling 165 electoral votes. So, we are already over 60% of the way there. If we can make this a national issue now, and if Democrats can do well at the state level in the 2018 midterm elections (which could happen under President Trump), then the winner of 2020 presidential election will be determined by popular vote.
Trump even agrees!
3. This breathing exercise:
If you would like to, try breathing in sync with this
4. Knowing nothing lasts forever, including Donald Trump. Optimistically: This is the GOP’s last stand – with a country of women and immigrants growing – he can marginalize them further to keep his dwindling base or choose inclusion.
5. These voices:
I’m not moving to Canada or Switzerland – that’s for entitled people. I’m staying in America, our America, and standing strong for my beliefs. I grew up in the 1950’s in the shadow of HUAC and Joe McCarthy. The FBI tapped our phones and knocked on our door, to be sent away in disgrace by my awesome Mother. I was 15 and followed all over S.F. by agents. My father was hauled off in handcuffs because he defied HUAC. I experienced the panic of the Cuban Missle Crisis – the only time my father couldn’t and wouldn’t reassure me that we were not about to die. I was in college when JFK was murdered. Martin Luther King and RFK – bang, bang, dead. My friend Andy Goodman was murdered by the Klan in Philadelphia, Miss. I marched with other brave people into Montgomery, Ala… and Viola Liuzzo was slain. We survived Nixon and Watergate and George W Bush and Dick Cheney. America remains filled with racial hatred and lust – we didn’t change the world as much as we had thought – but the glory is in the struggle and the fight. The community you keep – the moral standards you live by. Teach your children to be fighters and kind people.
There was no photo with the Obamas welcoming the Trumps to the White House as there usually is between the two presidential couples on days like today. I think… Michelle must have put her foot down and didn’t want to put the imprimatur of approval on Trump’s ascension to the oval office. Her speeches during the end of the campaign made it clear she found him and his vulgar sexism and misogyny a personal affront to her and her children. She didn’t owe the country that photo op today. Indeed, I think what she owed the country was the absence of that photograph. There was more grace in its absence than the tacit approval that would have been on display in its existence.
Jen Hoffman;
And this certainly shouldn’t be a surprise. Ever since he took that first ride down the escalator, it was inc…reasingly obvious that Donald Trump would win the election.
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We have now said as a country:
Black lives don’t matter
Brown lives don’t matter
LGBTQ lives don’t matter…
Native American lives (and their land) don’t matter
Climate change is a hoax
Women’s bodies are objects
Hard work doesn’t pay
Bullies always get what they want
Wealth is king
Diplomacy is dead
Shouting is better than talking
Lying is better than truth
Putin and his policies of oppression
are fine
So is racism, sexism, xenophobia and sexual assault
Did I miss anything?
Sign me up for the fight.
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These lines from Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” come to mind this morning:
“And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashin…g eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.”
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6. This photo and caption from Living Blue In A Red State: