As if we didn't have enough Irony this year and election cycle, Castro's death now invites disturbing parallels.

It's like Cuba went into a deep sleep, and woke up not to the revolution, but to Batista's government back in power - with the new/old values led from Washington - more 5-star hotels, "beautiful women", rigged mafia ties, military/security force backing and a callous disregard for poverty or those disconnected from this wealth.

Yes, America's voted in the Batista of the 50's to be its new Godfather-in-Chief.

Apocryphal Chinese curse - May you live in interesting times.

Voltaire - We must tend to our garden.

As the omnipresent sounds and sights of progressives rending cloth and gnashing teeth over the past fortnight powerfully demonstrates, an ignorant, anti-democratic, immigrant-bashing, climate change denying demagogue won the Presidential election two weeks ago. With both houses of Congress in Republican hands, an open seat on the Supreme Court, and 33 states governed by Republicans, Trump's power seems nearly unfettered. How should we respond? One is reminded of the old baseball manager riddle: Question: What's your strategy when you're down 13 runs in the top of the 4th? Answer: Pray for rain.

It's interesting, if not disconcerting, watching the right co-opt the plaints and the postures of the left, in a thoroughly cynical but formulaic pattern.

Sure I see some problems with Politically Correct speech on campus shutting down debate. But the irony is palpable - "Yet today free speech is blatantly under attack on multiple fronts, in all of our institutions, especially in the very place where it was supposed to be most enshrined: the universities", one article in the Federalist writes.

Bernie's hit the trail again to talk about what he thinks is important, and to clue us in that voting for someone just because they're a woman is a dead-end, while blacks should be more concerned about social repression than racial.

Since we had a whole season to get irritated with Bern-splaynin', and we just lost an important election over something we still don't understand, we should take his words for what they are - a cry for help.

You may have heard this story. I hadn't. Or at least not beyond the punch line, the cruelty part.

There was a man, a black man. He was angry a lot and one night when a friend couldn't afford $3 cover charge to get into a dance hall, he pulled out a gun and shot 3 people, I presume also black, but maybe not. One died. All over a $3 cover charge. He then drove away and stayed with different people for 3 days until his sister got him to agree to surrender to an old acquaintance, a cop. The cop was sitting in his mother's kitchen, said hi to him, and then turned back to speak to the mother, at which point the man fired 2 deadly shots into his neck and head.

He then walked outside, and fired a shot into his own head, leaving him partially lobotomized.

Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think, that a reality TV host got elected leader of the free world? That the corporate media mocked his rants about a rigged system and yet he won anyway? It’s like Zuckerberg making billions publishing fake right wing news but lowly media minnow Breitbart is the villain. It’s like a buffoonish misogynist defeating a highly qualified woman. It’s like that woman spending eight (twelve? thirty?) years locking up the Establishment’s support and then it turns out the electorate doesn’t trust the establishment. It’s a hundred crass celebrity ads when all you needed was a rust-belt listening tour. Isn’t it just so Ironic, don’t you think?

This year's election brought women's anatomy into play with some of the crudest language ever. We all remember that quote that kicked it all in:

"I don't vote with my vagina"

(or at least that's the one I remember).

But worse, the cat was out of the bag (or Pandora's "Box", so to speak) - women's privies are fair game for contemptuous political comments. A woman, Susan Sarandon, told us so. And she's a liberal political activist, a feminist, so it must be okay.

Just in case that wasn't clear enough, in endorsing Bernie she clarified "I don’t vote with my vagina…It’s so insulting to women to think that [we] would follow a candidate just because she’s a woman."

I think I read somewhere or came to the expectation that values would converge - maybe because of the speed of communication, our increased mobility, our common tongue...

I was wrong.

Society doesn't move backwards or forwards - it moves sideways like a crab. Buckminster Fuller used to hope for that day we could move directly towards our needs, but a man embedded in tetrahedrons and spin should have realized we're always in orbit orthogonal to something we're zipping past.

As Democrats sadly and nostalgically wave goodbye to Obama and Biden, a small upsurge of the "why didn't we elect Uncle Joe" has popped up.

Coincidentally, researching another topic, I was surprised to discover that Biden had been a Republican in 1968, making the irony complete - no "Goldwater Girl" (at 16) for Joe at 26. 

The next two to four weeks will be busy! Scratch that, the next two years are going to be busy. I am lucky enough to be advised by a former HRC Staff member in Georgia. I think I can make social media work to my advantage. And there is a dagger or two with special skills who have also offered to advise me.

I haven't run for any office since Student Council, and that was a really long time ago. And I am out of practice. I've been raising children and going to work, and doing all the mundane things families do. I have no more excuses; our youngest is almost 26, and my oldest is almost 31.  So I do hate that Trump won.  I only know one way to deal with my disappointment, which means I have to do something, and I can't just sit around and bitch and moan about what went wrong.  So much has gone wrong and to assess all that went wrong in the last election and recover from it is going to take some planning and openness.

Reality check on that "next woman candidate" thing. Women tend to rise to positions of power 10 or more years later than their male counterparts - if they're not being pulled up by some family connection slightly earlier.

Something's happened to America and the underdog, the underclass, the victim.

My father who died this year grew up in the Great Depression, so passed on the stories of his youth - Horatio Alger rags-to-riches stories, people who survived by their wits and hard work. This included his father who lost more than one fortune but when times were tough could always return to farming, the land.

Trump has blocked traditional press access normal for a President-elect.

Trump has not responded to congratulations from foreign leaders, often cautious in nature, like Angela Merkels:

“Germany and America are connected by values of democracy, freedom and respect for the law and the dignity of man, independent of origin, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political views,” she said in a statement, adding: “I offer the next President of the United States close cooperation on the basis of these values.”

Trumps problem is a very serious one.