Hillary Campaign Button
Stage One: Denial
A trend is developing in the Tuesday night returns. I get uncomfortable. “Let’s turn it off, come back in an hour. It’ll be different then.”
An hour later: “Let’s go to bed, wake up and it’ll be O.K.”
Three a.m.: “No, no, no, no! This is NOT happening. It isn’t true.”
Stage Two: Anger
Dear God, please damn to hell the following:
The miserable Americans who voted for him, those who voted for third party candidates, and most especially, please damn to hell those who did not vote at all. Those who spread lies about Hillary, those who believed them, those who were too lazy to do their own fact-finding. The media who gleefully joined the Trump circus. And most of all, this lying misogynist we just elected. Give him his own special circle in Dante’s Inferno.
Stage Three: Bargaining
Maybe when he realizes he lost the popular vote and needs to represent all of us, maybe he’ll suddenly, miraculously change into, you know, someone he’s not, a person who isn’t racist or despotic or mainly interested in how much money he can scam out of the government…or maybe the election WAS rigged and they’ll uncover it and Hillary really did win…or maybe he’ll have a heart attack—lord, no—then we’d get Pence. What if he decided to go with Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court? How about if I didn’t fall off my diet? Would that make a difference?
Stage Four: Depression
What’s the use? Calm and professional, Hillary reminds us in her concession speech that you win some and lose some, but good things will always be worth fighting for. I’m fine until the camera pans to a group of young Hispanic students with tears coursing down their cheeks. I lose it, manage to stop crying, then see the photo of Susan B. Anthony’s grave with the line of people waiting to put their “I voted” stickers on it. They cover the gravestone with stickers and I start weeping again. We’re in for four years of backsliding, four years of unraveling hard-fought for progress. What’s the use? Winter is coming. Curl up in a ball.
Stage Five: Acceptance
I’m done sulking, gather trash, throw a load in the washing machine, go out into this too-warm November day to rake leaves on hard, dry ground. These days, one medium-size trash bag, an hour’s effort, is all I can do, but today I’m a raging granny: furiously gather two huge leaf bags packed with yard detritus, finish the laundry, throw the trash, clean the kitchen. When I’m done, I’m sweaty and exhausted and dry-eyed.
Hillary: “Last night, I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country. I hope that he will be a successful president for all Americans.” President Obama invited Trump to the White House tomorrow to begin the transition planning. Gracious and decent, Obama puts the welfare of the country above his own feelings, reminds us that the presidency is a relay race and he wants a smooth handoff of the baton.
What’s Next?
I’ll be running through these stages of grief over and again, for weeks or years. At Reagan’s and Bush the Younger’s elections I grieved: I believe both damaged our country, but nothing like what I fear will happen now. Still, we have a system, checks and balances, and limits on what a president can do. How many defundings has Trump promised which cannot be delivered?
I regret damning Trump voters to hell when I was in the anger stage. I know they aren’t all racists, woman haters, people who won’t be happy until oil pipelines crisscross the country and not a tree is left standing.
Oops, that was anger again. This is going to be hard. Start over. Good people voted for Trump due to their economic woes, their anger at being ignored by both parties for decades. But even in those red states, most people believe in climate change and gay rights. Good people: just really pissed off.
I get emails from Sierra Club, Presente, MoveOn and PEN. (PEN promotes free expression and has a Muslim writer program.) All four groups ask me to join them in standing up to the new regime, which has vowed to oppose the issues they champion. Sierra Club’s email, for example, included this urgent list:
We will not — we cannot — stop fighting. If we do, we will lose everything we’ve fought for. End of Paris Climate deal. End of the EPA. End of Federal Clean Energy. More drilling. More coal. More pipelines. Lives destroyed. Wildlife bulldozed.
Meetings are already happening; organizing has begun. Pick your cause. There’s plenty to go around.
Watch carefully as the new White House takes shape. Unlike Obama, Trump is not a hands-on leader. He leaves nuts and bolts to staff. We need to monitor those people–who they are, what they’re doing. Trying to keep Muslims from entering the country? Building that wall?
We are stronger together. More than half of us voted for Hillary. If enough of us act, we can salvage what we love. You knew that, right? That democracies require an involved, informed citizenry to survive?
Thursday, November 10, 2016
Denial
I wake up feeling disoriented. Wait: that was just a bad dream, wasn’t it?
Oh, such honest, wise words… We HAVE to come to some sort of resolution with this. How can we ever trust Trump, with his sociopathic ways? I understand the anger of the people who voted for him — they feel ignored, betrayed, castigated for their beliefs, etc. Unfortunately, we all feel that way from time to time. After all I’ve been an anti-establishmentarian my whole life. On the fringes, left out, not one of the elect. Just a bastard cripple whose friends are all weirdos. But elect a guy like that? Someone I have to consider as the epitome of the wealthy elite, the lowest form of human, surrounded by money his whole life, moving in circles I will never partake of except as a waiter or bus-boy at some elegant “To-do.” He is not a “man of the people.” He has never struggled to keep a roof over his head or eaten brown rice and smelt for months because that’s all he could afford. He’s nasty, my God, he’s nasty. Two-faced. I could go on, but… I could never consider him a champion of the downtrodden or the leader of the Free World. He will have to do a lot of changing before I’ll ever get over my anger stage when it comes to thinking of him. My acceptance will probably only be an acceptance of anger and mistrust. Sad, but true, right now.
So many of us grieve with you Pat.
Yesterday I went to a music rehearsal for a holiday program I’m in. A lady arriving at the same time and we walked in together. “How are you doing’? ” I asked.
“I feel just terrific!” she replied.
I would have socked her in the jaw, but she’s in her 80’s.
We’re all in it together though, so we’ll support each other and do whatever we can to make a difference.
Meher Baba says to trust God 100%. This is my challenge for the next 4 years.
Brilliant and true and inescapable (the only way to get through is through) and painfully honest. Thanks for speaking for us all, Pat. And by “all” I mean the majority, however small, of Americans who know, as William Stafford put it, that “it is important that awake people be awake.”
Watching the large mass of protesters marching from the Capitol to the 16th Street Mall tonight, chanting, “not my president,” I thought just that: ah, they’re awake now.
Pat, you are my friend and I hope after reading the simple message I’m about to write you will still be my friend. I just want to say that I know exactly how you feel. Exactly. I felt the same way eight years ago. And again four years ago. You and your friends have written explicitly what you think of Donald Trump. I will spare you from my views of Obama and Hillary. There’s little sense in tossing opinions back and forth. Call me redneck, call me deplorable. I am educated and I did my homework. Simply put, this country must get back to work. As Hillary asked, give him a chance to lead. God bless America.
Sue, and I still count you a friend, but I also have been bitterly disappointed, when Reagan was elected, and the Bushes. But I didn’t lose sleep over what would happen to my country because of them. This man is a horse of a different color, and for three nights I couldn’t sleep, hearing stories from my teacher friends about children being harassed on the way to school, a middle school girl being spit on because she had a Hillary sticker on her backpack, and worse. Such things didn’t happen after Reagan or the Bushes won: those Republicans never promoted hate. I have seen the evidence that this man does. I don’t approve of protests getting violent: that accomplishes nothing, in my view. I saw your comments on that. And I know you to be a devout Christian. I just cannot reconcile that with who this man is. As much as I remain appalled by his election, I am more appalled by the abyss that has opened in America, between where you live and where I live. I hope we can continue to try reaching across it.
Thanks, Pat. We’re still in shock here. Years ago I worked as an oil field hand, a concrete form setter, plumber’s helper, painter, odd job man. Most of the folks I knew were honest and hard-working. I still don’t understand how they could’ve been hornswoggled by DT. The mind just won’t go there.