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    TRYING To Wrap My Head Around This Election

    By stillidealistic on Mon, 12/05/2016 - 12:56pm |

    It's taken me awhile to even be able to write much about the situation we find ourselves in. Wrapping my head around it is proving to be a difficult, if not impossible task.

    I was in Havana, Cuba election night, in a hotel room at the Nationale, surrounded by like-minded Americans. We thought it would be a close election, but there was not a one of us who thought for moment donald would pull it off.

    We'd been telling frightened Cubans for a week that Hillary would win. They wanted to make sure we voted before coming over, and we assured them we had. 

    And we sat there in stunned silence as we watched the horror of the returns. By midnight we'd all decided to return to our own rooms, hoping against hope that by morning we'd be seeing something other than what we appeared to be witnessing. 

    Although I went to bed, I turned on the tv every hour or so, just to check. By the time the alarm went off, it was apparent the worst had happened, and the tears started. Just a trickle at first, then a full-fledged ugly cry. I went to breakfast with swollen eyes, and as each one of our party of 18 walked by, we hugged and cried some more.

    The happy-faced Cubans who worked in the hotel restaurant, weren't so happy faced. The whole mood of the country had changed. And all I could say was, "I'm so sorry. We tried."

    We still had 4 days left of our trip, and I was grateful for the distraction. I tried to avoid thinking about it, but I couldn't. I wondered if the Cuban government would give us political asylum. I wouldn't really do it - I have kids and grandkids to think of - but I admit I was tempted. The thought of "going home" had never been so abhorrent to me. I cried every day. Multiple times a day.

    My husband came down with the flu, and on the way home, I followed suit. More distraction. It's hard to concern yourself with affairs of state while you're coughing 'til you pee and sleeping most of the day. To be honest, I wished it would last a long, long time.

    But it didn't, and when I returned to the land of the living, nothing had changed. donald (my new name for the creature) was still the Presidnt-elect (which I will NEVER call him.) It was new all over again The tears wouldn't stop for any length of time.

    Life demanded that I get back into it. Watching the grandkids was far more important than my need to grieve. I tried as best as I could to avoid reading or seeing much of the autopsy. I knew seeing it was not going to aid in my recovery. What I didn't know was that there would BE no recovery. That the more time went by, the more upset I would become.

    And here I am, nearly a month later, and there is no relief from the anger. I can't look at a donald supporter or 3rd party voter without feeling...I don't want to say hatred, but in reality, that is what it is. I guess I don't really hate THEM, but I hate what they've done to this country. Bernie Sanders? Robert Reich? You're dead to me. Kellyanne Conway thanked Bernie for softening up Hillary for them. 

    They can rationalize it all they want, but they have put our country, the whole world, in jeopardy because they were pissed. And James Comey? There aren't words.

    I'm sorry (no, I'm not,) I just don't buy the whole "you ignored me" bullshit. Anyone who isn't smart enough to realize that the repubs are NOT the party for the marginalized people of the country isn't smart enough to listen to anything the candidates have to say and vote for the one who obviously has their best interests at heart. Anyone stupid enough to think that donald is the "blue-collared billionaire," deserves what they get. And I don't feel sorry for them. AT ALL. When I hear them wonder if donald is REALLY going to take away their insurance or their Medicaid, all I can think is what the hell did you THINK he was going to do? When I hear people wonder if the repubs will REALLY try to do away with Medicare or privatize SS, I think what the hell did you THINK they would do if you didn't put in place some kind of a back-stop to keep them from doing it? When they begin to wonder if the money going into infrastructure will really end up in more toll roads and bridges, I think what did you think the wealthy would do? Seriously? Did you really think they would be looking out for you? They look at you as their servants. The people that make it possible for them to live the lives of luxury they live. Did you REALLY think that they want you to join their ranks? They want to trickle down on you, just like they've done ever since Reagan told you that if they do well, you'll do well. Did you never realize the liquid was pee?

    But I DO feel sorry for the rest of us. We ALL get to suffer for their stupidity. Their gullibility. And every day donald gives me more reason to believe that every bad thing I ever thought about him is true.

    I am so sick of hearing "just give him a chance." You don't give an alligator a chance to not bite you. They bite. It's what they do. And donald will do what donald does. He will use you. He will use all of us. He will pillage and plunder the whole country as best he can. He will use his new found power to advance the trump name all over the world. He will spend every waking moment (when he isn't tweeting about how how so and so is being mean to him) figuring out how to take financial advantage of every situation he finds himself in.

    And all you have to do is watch what he's doing. Not what he says, because he changes his story more frequently than most of us change our underwear. But what he does. The people he surrounds himself with.

    I'm a fairly rational person. I like things to make a certain kind of sense, even if I disagree with them. But this whole donald thing has me flummoxed. We have 60M+ people who voted for him. Or for change, or for whatever the hell they were voting for. Many of them voted against their own economic best interests, so it must have been VERY important to them. And here we are. The repubs are chomping at the bit to repeal Obamacare (but not really, because they know they can't ACTUALLY get rid of it before they have a replacement plan, and any replacement plan would need to look like...well, Obamacare. But at least it will be called something else. And the people who don't care about facts won't care, because, well, they don't care about facts. As long as it's not called Obamacare, they're cool with it.)

    Ryan is charging ahead with his plans to destroy Medicare (one of the most popular, effective programs EVER, and even though donald said he wouldn't do it during the campaign) and privatize SS (imagine if your entire retirement plan had been at risk during the stock market crash of 2007?) Oh, well...

    We've been asked to take a chill pill and give him a chance, while we are watching him put in place cabinet choices who despise the very agency they are being put in charge of, and talking to world leaders without having any clue what damage just the PERCEPTION of a change in our foreign policy means for the whole planet. It's shocking to the people who are paying attention, and it's pretty obvious that the people who elected him are not. Or they are and they don't understand the implications, or they just don't care. They got their change. Only their change is filling the swamp with even worse characters than it was filled with before instead of actually "draining" it. Every single thing we hold dear in this country is at risk. If he has his way, there will be trump tower on the banks of the Grand Canyon, and one dwarfing Old Faithful in Yellowstone.

    Meanwhile, the rest of us are not only mourning "our" loss, but even more deeply, the country's loss, at having elevated the very worst behavior of humans to a position of prominence. Whether they ARE the things they've voted for, or just are accepting of it, the bad treatment of women, non-Christians, and minorities is being normalized.

    Hate crimes are on the rise. The new administration is gloating about how facts no longer matter, just perception. Lying has been elevated to an art form. donald is going on an "adore me" tour because he misses the screaming throngs worshipping him. And behind the scenes, the repubs are frothing at the mouth at the cookie jar they're going to get their hands into. Yeah, it's like a pirate ship has pulled up on our shores, and the plundering is about to begin.

    You thought the repubs were fiscally responsible? Really? Well, you're about to get a rude awakening when you realize that all of a sudden, deficits aren't really all that bad. Just when Democrats are doing the spending. When repubs are lowering taxes on the wealthy (who, for God's sake don't NEED the tax cuts!) increasing military spending, and going back to pork-barrel politics (YES, they ARE!) you'll see deficits rising again, but they'll find a way to blame it on the Democrats. Just watch.

    As for the recounts? I'm under no illusion that they will change anything (although in my heart of hearts, I'm still hoping) but I have no choice but to refuse to admit defeat until it is absolutely necessary.

    So. No. I'm not getting over it. I will not get over it. Ever. I am pissed. I don't know yet what I'm going to do with the anger, but I am not going to just accept this. donald is not now, nor will he ever be my president. Hillary will be my President-in-exile. There. I said it. 

    Comments

    You express my feelings. Thanks. You can't fix stupid and that is the main characteristic of the Trump voter. Even before he enters office, we see financial conflicts of interest. He contacts the Brexit guy before he contacts the British PM.He tweets insults about China. His supporters are not bright enough to see what is coming. When things go south, they will double down on Trump support rather than admitting an error.

    Edit to add:

    Trump pays Carrier $7 million to send 1300 jobs overseas. Obama bailed out the auto industry and the government made a profit. Trump is hailed as a fiscal genius.


    by rmrd0000 on Mon, 12/05/2016 - 2:32pm

    I don't know if it's stupidity or willful ignorance. I know too many otherwise intelligent people who either voted for him or voted 3rd party (same bottom line.) It is shocking to me. I can't write all of them out of my life - some are family. I am getting a glimmer of what it must have been like for families during the civil war when some were on each side of the divide. I'm sad to say, it HAS affected how I feel about them. There will always be a part of me that won't completely trust them with my well-being, because I see their judgment as having been compromised by a person who NEVER should have had their trust. How we're going to get through the next 4-8 years is beyond me. I take some solace in knowing that less than 15% of the population elected this fool. But the fact that so many leave it up to so few to make the decision is distressing. So MANY whirling thoughts and emotions still in my head...


    by stillidealistic on Mon, 12/05/2016 - 4:03pm

    Willful ignorance = tactical stupidity

    http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Willful_ignorance


    by rmrd0000 on Mon, 12/05/2016 - 3:22pm

    With the raving lunatics as top advisors (excepting Mattis at DOD?) there is a high likelihood of war/conflict with either Iran or North Korea, likely timed for our bombing to be heaviest November 2018.

    As to the media, this from nevdem at Kos:

    Trump is going to not have press conferences, unless they are at a rally. He will get his message out via his sales medium… Twitter.  Speeches will be just that, no questions.  The give and take of the news conference is a thing of the past.  Interviews will be granted only to allies, subject matter restricted.

    Mass media will be stunned at the colossus of the shutout.  ‘News’ (propaganda, really) will only come from news ‘organizations’ supportive and friendly to the administration.

    The only media that will survive will be the ones who investigate despite the roadblocks of the administration to root out the coming corruption.  For the media, it is a time opportunity to become great again by investigations peeling back the layers of the onion from the outside, getting accurate information from inside sources (which will be very, very  hard), and bluntly putting forward the facts and how they are abhorrent to our American Values.

    They will need to do this hard work to inform the public, that is the path to survival. 

    There is no middle path anymore, we have elected an anti-media radical.

    Or, they can just knuckle under and become part of the propaganda machine. 

    Make no mistake, this is war.  Conducted by the Trump administration, its goal and intention to subjugate the Mass Media. If not subjugated, destroyed.

    Sidebar:  As a thinking commoner, not a sheepish lemming.  I have no sadness at the coming demise of the media. They have put on blinders, hobbled in a delusion to be fair and reject principles, only to have a rogue (Fox) colleague advocate for one side and stampede them all to defeat.  Funny thing they may also be defeated by a more radical player, Breitbart


    by NCD on Mon, 12/05/2016 - 5:32pm

    I can't disagree. The media literally brought this upon themselves by allowing him to get as far as he did in the primaries without beginning to vet him. They loved the ratings that they got from covering him, and WANTED it to be a horse race. And at the same time they perpetuated the false equivalence crap, and continued to hammer Hillary, thus hobbling the last defense against him. 

    Now we are going to have a much less free press, and those who still watch/listen to what they are writing/saying will believe less and less of what they see/hear. We are at a time in our history where there is no such thing as lies, because there are no facts, so you just believe whatever it is you want to believe. 

    I don't even know how we come back from this. 


    by stillidealistic on Mon, 12/05/2016 - 5:46pm

    Trumps top National Security advisor, General Flynn, son is still tweeting that the alleged Hillary child prostitution/satanic ring run out of DC's Comet Pizza is still active,.

    This is the day after an equally delusional right wing nutjob was arrested yesterday firing an assault rifle in the establishment.

    The article says General Flynn was teeting this stuff before the election. The son and the father are very close business wise and ideologically.


    by NCD on Mon, 12/05/2016 - 6:33pm

    Thanks. Good piece.

    Not national news, just the way things are now: here in New York a Muslim subway employee , a woman, fell down some steps when  pushed from behind this morning.By some fool shouting  about ISIS. 

    And in various other places  around the world ,including here, you can be sure that ten young men will join ISIS as a result.

    But the foolish pusher should be provided with a good defense attorney.I'll contribute. Provided he first meets his victim and apologizes.

    We're not going to win by racing them to the bottom.

    Hang in there.

     

     


    by Flavius on Tue, 12/06/2016 - 12:07am

    Thanks, Flavius, I'm trying. I am scared for the country, and every time I hear one of these hateful stories, I get more scared. donald has ignited a hatred that goes beyond anything I ever thought existed in this country. I mean, I knew there was some. But not like this. 


    by stillidealistic on Tue, 12/06/2016 - 1:09am

     

     

    "They all stood still by the big stone.....A sudden impulse seemed to come into his soul

    and he  suddenly said to them:........soon...we shall part. Let us never forget Ilusha and one another. ...if we don’t meet for twenty years….let us always remember how we buried the poor boy at whom we once threw stones, do you remember, by the bridge?

    And so in the first place we will remember him, boys, all our lives. And even if we are occupied with most important things,if we attain to honour or fall into great misfortune- still let us remember how good it was once here, when we were all together,united by a good and kind feeling which made us, for the time we were loving that poor boy, better perhaps than we are.

    ……        perhaps you won’t understand what I am saying to you, because I often speak

    unintelligibly ,but you’ll remember it all the same and agree with my words  sometimes. …..

    …..some good memory ...is perhaps the best education. If a man carries  many such memories  with him… he is safe to the end of his days,and if one has only one good memory left in one’s heart even that may sometimes be the means of saving us.

    Perhaps  we may even grow wicked later on , may be unable to refrain from a bad action..But however bad we may become…..the cruellest and most mocking of us - will not dare to laugh inwardly at having been kind and good at this moment!....and he will reflect and say “Yes I was good and brave and honest then! Let him laugh at himself, that’s no matter …...But I assure you that as he laughs he will say at once in his heart “No, I do wrong…..that’s not a thing to laugh at.”

    “Karamazov , we love you!” a voice cried impulsively.

    “Well now we will finish talking and go to his funeral dinner .Don’t be put out at our eating pancakes- it’s a very old custom and there’s something  nice in that” laughed Alyosha.

    “Hurrah for Karamazov !  Kolya cried once more  rapturously and the boys took up the  exclamation:“Hurrah for Karamazov!"

    The Brothers Karamazov

    Flavi   Fyodor Dostoyevsky..

    Or just keep on keeping on.      Fyodor

     


    by Flavius on Tue, 12/06/2016 - 2:20pm

    Michael Cohen, Boston Globe:

    In May, President Obama pushed through a Labor Department rule that would help more than four million workers who make less than $47,476 a year receive overtime pay. A federal judge has temporarily stayed the rule, and Republicans in the House have made clear they intend to scrap it once Trump takes office. So all those angry working-class voters who backed Trump because Democrats are allegedly indifferent to their plight just cost themselves a raise.

    He goes on to detail union protections they'll lose.

    But no, "Hillary didn't come talk to us enough"? The American white voter under so much pressure is really Veruca Salt without the trust fund?


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 12/06/2016 - 1:45am

    It's just insane, PP! There is just no way the repubs have their best interests at heart, but somehow they keep getting them to vote for them. It's starting to sound like an abusive relationship!


    by stillidealistic on Tue, 12/06/2016 - 10:53am

    Both sides base much of their opposition to the other on the perspective that the other side is operating outside of any kind of reality principle. In addition to policies that attract one strong interest or another, our two party system has also created a kind of default dichotomy machine that serves as a GPS of one's location.

    From this point of view, the GOP does not have to deliver a product but keep a story going. There are a huge number of people in their big tent who know very little about what is happening while being flattered that they know all they need to know.

    The Democratic Party has been assigned the role of the Bad Parent in their story. We forced them to share with the other kids. We keep talking about this "environment" that has to be acknowledged as a very real thing if our species is not going to disappear. These bad adults are crazy self indulgent ideologues who have no grasp on the real world.....

    So it goes.


    by moat on Tue, 12/06/2016 - 8:40pm

    It comes down to this.

    "During the run-up to the presidential election, fake news really took off. "It was just anybody with a blog can get on there and find a big, huge Facebook group of kind of rabid Trump supporters just waiting to eat up this red meat that they're about to get served," Coler says. "It caused an explosion in the number of sites. I mean, my gosh, the number of just fake accounts on Facebook exploded during the Trump election."

    Coler says his writers have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait."

    I'm not trying to pat myself, and liberals, on the back but it's simply a reality. There's a fringe of crazies on the far right that will eat any lie or conspiracy theory Alex Jones, Limbaugh, or the republicans will feed them. There's nothing like that on the far left.


    by ocean-kat on Tue, 12/06/2016 - 9:00pm

    He went even further in saying that people on the left did fact checks and knew almost immediately the stories were fake. People on the right are far more willing to believe whatever fits with their preconceived idea of what is true, and pass it along.

    I have let numerous right wing folks know that the stories they were passing along were fake, and although it does happen to the best of us from time to time, it much, much less frequent on the left. For me, if it just sounds too good to be true (even if I WANT to believe it!) I try to remember to check it out before I pass it along.

    But, now the donald surrogates are saying that there is no such thing as facts. You just hear stuff and decide if you believe it or not. Makes it nice, because then there are no lies, just repeating stuff that sounded true. WTF?


    by stillidealistic on Tue, 12/06/2016 - 9:55pm

    Yes, it's not just about opinions or priorities. Those we could debate with the right. There's at least a significant minority of republicans who believe things that are factually untrue. I don't know how we deal with that or convince them other wise.


    by ocean-kat on Tue, 12/06/2016 - 11:05pm

    You really can't. I've seen studies that show when people are confronted with facts that show their "beliefs" are inaccurate, they just dig in and refuse to accept the facts. The human mind is a crazy thing.


    by stillidealistic on Wed, 12/07/2016 - 9:52am

    And yet all our strategies are based around "persuading people to vote our way" or persuading them about the logic and rightness of our views.

    It's like the guy who approaches the chained dog smiling a lot and not getting too close so as not to threaten, while the dog sees it as this creature baring its teeth and intentional circling on the edge of its territory.

    We see our messaging how we want to see it or how we interpret it, not whether it's actually communicating with the other party. We think of free education as a good thing, but if you're not planning on going to school, you largely see it as someone else's benefit that you're paying for. We think Trump's acting like an unprepared jerk when dealing with Taiwan, but his base can easily convince themselves that he's standing up to China and not bowing down "like Obama did with the head of Saudi Arabia".

    Funny, but once upon a time Bill Clinton tweaked some of these "Nixon goes to China" moments by taking on balancing the budget, reforming welfare, doing a big North American trade agreement, taking on exploding crime - and the left still can't forgive him for it. Hillary spearheaded his healthcare effort, and she ran into more problems with the Democrats on the left than with Republicans who she didn't expect to rely on. And they still blame her for not getting healthcare passed as if it was super easy to do.


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 12/07/2016 - 11:01am

    When homophobes create an issue with transgender restrooms, any opposition is identity politics

    When a jury fails to convict a police officer who shoots an unarmed man in the back, criticism is playing the race card

    Objecting when abortion clinics are threatened is playing the woman card.

    The Trump supporters just want us to shut up. The truth this that at this point in time, nothing we say can win them back.

    We are gearing up to send troops back to the Middle East. Those who object will be labeled unpatriotic.


    by rmrd0000 on Wed, 12/07/2016 - 11:26am

    Yes, that's exactly what they want! Just like they will do if the recounts show that Hillary won, and the presidency is given to her, right?


    by stillidealistic on Wed, 12/07/2016 - 5:30pm

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