In the 1980s I was a proud American. I no longer am. I was a registered Republican who voted for George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole. I believed in socially progressive policies and fiscal responsibility. I still do for the most part, but since the days of Newt Gingrich I've watched the party of Lincoln go insane, and become an obstructionist cult with no sense of honor that cynically panders to the ignorant, the bigots and racists, hypocritical Bible thumpers, and nascent fascists among us. The fact that these groups apparently comprise about 40-plus per cent of the citizenry is just too depressing for words. Combine that with Republican gerrymandering, the idiocy of the Electoral College, voter suppression in Red states, and lying propaganda masquerading as "Fair and Balanced" news, and you have the current state of our country.
I posted the following to Facebook the night of the 2016 election. Nothing that has transpired in the 4 months since has changed my mind.
It's a little after 2 in the morning as I write this and I am sick beyond words. The people have spoken and I accept the result but I grieve for the future of this nation. I feel like it's 1933 in Germany. We now have a one party state and I am witnessing the suicide of America. You think your economic problems are over? The stock market is going to crash tomorrow, and that's only the start. Kiss your 401-Ks goodbye. To my evangelical friends, you have elevated an immoral pig to the highest office in the nation, a Pharisee, and you should hang your heads in shame because of your hypocrisy. Because of your anger, you decided to ignore the character of your leader and elected a racist xenophobe. Hitler targeted Jews; Trump did the same thing with Mexicans and Muslims. You have made a deal with the devil. You have sown the wind, now we will all reap the whirlwind.
To my progressive friends and relatives, particularly you younger people, I would encourage you to consider moving close to a border. The possibility of a nuclear holocaust has become more real than any time since 1962. If we somehow survive the next 4 years, my advice is to not get angry, but think about getting even in 2020. This is no longer a game. If you voted for a third party, I hate to tell you this, but you didn't take a principled stand, you were an idiot who contributed to the election of an American fascist. Don't make the same mistake twice. Grow up and recognize the realities of this world. There are bigger issues at stake than your parochial interests. Trump will now succeed in shaping the Supreme Court with a majority of Bible-thumping xenophobes for generation to come. Thank you to all you jackasses who voted for Johnson and Stein.
Without a doubt, Trump tapped into a number of inherent characteristics of American culture. Anti-intellectualism. Xenophobia. Racism. Fear. To be truthful, Bernie Sanders identified some of the same fears, but at least he identified the proper source of these problems, and the Democrats would have been far wiser to have thrown their lot in with him. I would encourage everyone to make the best of a terrible situation, and hold Trump's feet to the fire and force him to deliver on issues of trade policy, H1B abuse , and tax reform. You can bet the Republican Congress will hope you all forget about those campaign promises. Don't let them.
I'm an Agnostic, but God help us all.In the months since the election, things have only become more bleak. I've started limiting my TV news intake and shifted more to print media because the constant broadcast narrative is making me physically ill. TV journalism, except for PBS and the BBC, has become worthless. Fox News is the Izvestia of the Republican party. MSNBC focuses exclusively on the Trump outrage du jour to the exclusion of anything else of importance. The networks (CBS, NBC, ABC) have reduced news coverage to about 20 minutes, and half of that is devoted to celebrity and "feel good" pieces. No wonder as a nation we are so incredibly uninformed. Spend 10 minutes on Facebook and you will think you are living in the world of the movie "Idiocracy".
I look at America today and I despair for my grandchildren. I don't recognize my country anymore and I like its citizens less and less. We are rapidly becoming a pariah nation, and I for one would be afraid to take a trip overseas in the years to come. I believe the rest of the world will be welcoming us with the same level of enthusiasm that was afforded South Africa in the days of Apartheid. I sincerely hope I am wrong. I pray that Americans who still have a brain in their head and who maintain a belief in truth and democratic ideals, will get off their lazy fat asses in 2018 and 2020 and take this country back. That being said, I am not optimistic and for me the poem "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats has taken on a new meaning and appropriateness:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
#RESIST
