When I finally went to bed late last night, there was a small part of me that hoped I would wake up this morning to find that Donald Trump’s improbable victory had been nothing more than a very bad dream.
Barring that, which I knew was a bit of a long shot, I hoped that I would at least wake up with the inklings of a plan for what to do about this catastrophe. I hoped I could write a rousing blog post sketching out my thoughts on the road ahead– for this blog and for the anti-Trump movement as a whole.
Alas, that didn’t happen either. I’m still processing the bad news, emotionally and intellectually. And I know a lot of you are doing the same.
And that’s ok. Trump will not take office until the end of January. There will be plenty of time to come up with ways to fight back against the orange one.
Right now the important thing is to take care of ourselves and those around us. Give yourself however much time you need. Avoid stress. Don’t beat yourself up for what happened, and don’t take out your anger on others on our side. Turn off the news if need be. Do whatever you need to do to clear your head and keep yourself safe.
In the comments here, feel free to continue the discussion that started in the “VOTE” post yesterday. And please share any self-help and self-care strategies you have — even if all you’ve got at the moment is pictures of cats and videos of hedgehogs.
If trolls show up, or if there is anything else that pops up in the thread that I should know about, please send me an email about it.
We can fight this thing. We can beat this thing. But first we need to get ourselves centered.
ACLU’s statement on the election:
https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-statement-donald-trumps-election
@Hugseverycat:
I’m sorry if this sounds uncharitable to the ordinary hard-working racist and his “economic anxieties” – but this was a contest between good people and deplorables. Unfortunately, deplorables always fight harder and use more effective methods. After all, they utterly lack self-doubt.
I woke up this morning in a very (Heath Ledger’s) Joker mindset: all these people are clearly rabid beasts, so screw them, I’m out. I began, with apologies to Canada’s poor abused immigration website, looking at my prospects to leave a country which, as I suddenly saw it, was no longer worth helping because its population had collectively decided to forego basic human decency.
One of my friends on Plurk, a trans woman who has imminent reason to fear for her physical safety due to developments like this, inadvertently calmed me down by point out something else important in the context of another discussion:
The system is fucking broken.
Remember that we have a first-past-the-post voting system dominated by two entrenched parties which manipulate the system itself to keep third parties from having a comparable voice. Remember that our President is elected by the Electoral College, an unwieldy and absurd leftover from when we had a differently-structured government intended by its framers to be something more along the lines of the EU or UN. Remember that gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement are rampant and have been aggressively and skillfully used by the Republican party over the last two decades, virtually without opposition, to silence all who would oppose them.
Shit’s broken, y’all.
But it’s broken because the system is corrupt, not because the people are. We all know there are truly vile people out there; we hear from them all the time. But this election does not mean a quorum of Americans chose hate and stupidity. It mostly means that a huge number of Americans are destitute and desperate, that huge numbers have had their votes rendered useless by redistricting and rigging of the system.
Now is not the time to give up. Now is the time to fight harder. Things look grim, yes–but they do so because people are being silenced, not because the people have all lost their minds. And that, to me, makes all the difference. I can stand up against a corrupt, rigged, broken system, as long as there are people worth standing for who will stand with me.
There still are. Don’t let the bastards running this horror show convince you otherwise. They need you silenced, too, and we need to not give them anything else they want.
Office mate won’t shut up about her issues with a friend. I have been her therapist in issues with family and friends for months now and it’s starting to physically affect me. I really don’t want to give up my office that I’ve had for longer than her. I’ve made this my academic “home” and I can’t deal with this right now.
Any tips you guys?
@Victorious Parasol Thinking good thoughts for you. Of course you will continue to make progress in rehab. Just not today, and that’s okay. (This is the lecture I give myself, too)
@Troubelle
Absolutely. Not necessarily before the next set of exams, however. Also, I query, “conventionally intelligent”; I suspect some modesty there.
@Hugseverycat
Most people are good, or at least try to be. Don’t give up.
re: strategies
I’m landscaping. I planted an apricot tree last week, and now I’m building the low retaining wall around what will be a surrounding garden. Landscaping and gardening are profoundly optimistic activities. I go get bricks. I think maybe I will have some fruit next summer. I think about how leafy and fruitful my tree will be in a few years. I place the bricks. I think about planting lemon thyme and purple sage around the edge, and chamomile in the middle. I go get more bricks. I think about lying on a chamomile lawn on a hot summer afternoon, waiting for a perfectly ripe apricot to drop. I place the bricks… I’m not getting much else done, but I can do this.
To all: Truly, I did not expect to spend this event hanging out with you guys, but there could not have been better company. Thank you.
@Hashtag Ravenclaw
A Republican Congress will almost certainly pass a nationwide blanket abortion ban, and a Republican-controlled Supreme Court will uphold it. The saddest thing is, Republican legislators are utterly — and proudly — ignorant of how pregnancy and termination of pregnancy work. The ban will almost certainly prohibit surgical intervention in cases of miscarriage, incomplete stillbirth and even ectopic pregnancy. Lots of women will die horribly. Republicans will shrug their shoulders and say: Oh well, doctors shouldn’t decide who lives and who dies; even in situations where the “baby” is actually dead and decomposing inside the mother. Best case scenario — women who need a therapeutic D&C will have to bring a lawsuit and get a judge to sign off on it — likely against the mandatory opposition of the state. Good luck with Republican judges being accommodating.
I was also depressed about this. My boyfriend texted me at midnight last night to tell me what happened and then I couldn’t sleep because I was having nightmares about how bad things might be.
All my coworkers were super disappointed with the results and I have a student who will purposely do things to make other people miserable because they’re feeling miserable and they came up to my coworker and they said that Hillary liked a tweet saying that this election proved that stupidity and hate are alive and well in this country and how she’s so awful for saying that and all I could think was well she’s right and you are an idiot and then he goes on and on about how Trump is so great and is going to fix the debt because he’s a millionaire and my coworker who’s a better person than me just goes, I don’t know if he’s going to be able to fix the national debt seeing as he’s indebt himself and that shut him up which is good because if I said something, I might of gotten myself fired
Enjoy some cool music peeps we need it.
https://soundcloud.com/therajakumari/mute
@Nanuqui, re: conventionally intelligent
As stated in another thread, I’m 16 years of age and have managed to worm my way into what’s essentially uni with more limitations. I’m on the campus, I sleep on the campus, and my parents are over a hundred miles away. It was close getting in, but only because I hadn’t done much service work–my academics were fine (as in, weighted 4.0 at my old high school and 33 comp on the ACT) and they seemed to like me. But I don’t consider myself too intelligent–likely as a byproduct of being classed “gifted” as a youngling. I feel like I suck at, say, math, when in reality I’m doing above average–just not as well as I do in everything else.
I expect to begin the execution of my plan at the top of the spring semester.
Virgin Mary
Not true. Most people voted for Clinton. (Just like every election since 1988 had a majority of votes for the Dems, though it doesn’t seem like it.)
The system may not have been “rigged” against her, but it didn’t do her any favours either.
Imma just post this right quick before I say some shit to make anything worse
And take care of yourselves, errybody <3
@Axe
<3<3<3<3
There’s a lot of talk on my feeds about communes; once I feel a little less crushing depair, I’m gonna try to put something together. Anyone with spoons and experience in grantwriting or organizing is welcome to help. We can set up a forum or the like to discuss it on. It won’t really solve anything, and we can’t save everyone, but if we can, it would at least be a little shelter from the storm. I can be reached offsite at my nym at gmx.us. I'm thinking of some kind of crowdfunding or something; There's some places around that would be well suited, and Dems and progressives took the state government, along with a decent city council, so for folks who can't get out of the States, it could be something.
Oh hey, thousands of Russians dancing in celebration at Trump’s win.
Can’t believe we’ve elected an intelligence asset for the Kremlin to be our president.
@The Student
What I do is if the conversation involves more than me and the person I don’t want to talk to, I will quietly turn around and put in my headphones. If it’s just the two of us I’ll wait for a good break or politely interrupt, apologize, and explain I need to get back to my work. Then I put headphones in. Headphones are a really good indicator that you need to focus.
Depending on comfort level and the type of person you’re dealing with, you might even be able to explain that it’s affecting you to help deal with this person’s interpersonal issues and ask them to rely on you less. That kind of thing is scary for me to bring up, so I understand if that’s not possible for you.
Good luck!
Delurking for a minute so say that yesterday I went to the polls with my 19-year-old daughter as she voted in her first-ever presidential election. She was so excited that she might be voting in the historic election of our first woman president. We were both excited to be casting that vote. At 2 a.m. this morning, we shared a good cry. She said, “You know how I am, mom. I always try to find reasons to like people, but I can’t believe so many Americans cast a vote for hate.”
I took the day off to grieve. And at least I can grieve with my family. And then, I guess that, for now, it’s watch and be ready. Protecting what we’ve gained in civil liberties is important. But to me, it is perhaps most vital to ensure we fight with everything we have against losing any more first and fourth amendment protections in the next four years. I don’t think we can recover ground in any arena without those.
@Dalillama
I would happy to join you in you’re commune as long as I’m allowed to be warm
@Sparkalipoo
It’s barely gotten below 60 farenheit this year, and the trend is up, not down.
I’m going to take Scildfreja’s advice and go for a walk before I finish my half-done blog entry on this desmadre…but in the meantime, I want you all to know I love you good folks very much. All of Canada is shaking its collective head and commiserating with you. We know you tried. We know how this feels. We’ve been in this same situation with Stephen Fucking Harper and the odious Rob Fucking Ford. We’ve had to bite back a lot of rage when the triumphalist idiots wanked all over our blogs and forums, knowing that it was only a matter of time before we cleared the bums out again and sent their supporters off with tails between their legs to lick their wounds. We know this isn’t on you who voted and worked hard to fight back the Cheeto-Dusted Nightmare…it’s on THEM, the deplorable idiots who voted for this. Who knew there were so damn many of them? Not even I, and I’ve been watching the steady growth of home-grown ‘winger terrorists (and general willfully stupid people) in the US for over 20 years with increasing alarm. It’s like no one’s learned a goddamn thing from Oklahoma City…
This is the perfect time to point out that the “alt”-right and the toy army “militias” are the worst culprits in all this shitshow. Even the FBI would have to agree, though its BushCo appointee director is still busy chasing his tail over some stupid e-mails on a private server. If they have any sense in Quantico, they will be dropping the Hillary server nonsense and going after the ‘chans and Stormfront. They’ll find a hell of a lot more nefarious shit over there. These people terrorized voters both on and off the internet, contributing to the disaster.
And I do so hope that any dude who still has the nerve to sport a Drumpf t-shirt or red hat with that odious slogan on it will find himself Forever Alone. This is on YOU, channers and alt-right turds. You deserve all the pain that’s coming to you, and it’s gonna be one helluva hangover. And if you whine about that, I’m gonna borrow the slogan I saw on one older couple at a Drumpf rally, and just say it out loud: FUCK YOUR FEELINGS. You voted on the basis of an illusion of what you only thought was great? You deserve a hard, cold, long come-down.
And that’s me being charitable about it.
Today’s mood:
I used a sick day and have been laying under a pile of cats.
Oh hell, I just saw a photo of Bernie Sanders breaking down in tears while watching the returns last night and lost control for a moment.
He asked and he begged and he pleaded for people not to throw away their votes on him or third party or Harambe, after pushing the Democratic Party to the left, and this is how they repaid him.
I work in social services and today has been probably the worst day of my career, possibly my life. I’ve had to console crying clients all day who fear that they’ll be homeless again. All of my clients were chronically homeless before I started working with them, some of them for 10, 20, even 30 years. The worst part is, I can’t even tell them they’re wrong anymore.
This should have been an amazing day. I just got an e-mail that I was accepted into one of the best mental health centers in my county. Instead I can’t stop thinking about what kind of hell my clients and future clients will have to endure for the next four years.
My heart breaks for Bernie, too. He didn’t want this, and didn’t work for this. I know he’s going to keep fighting, but I can’t imagine the exhaustion he and Hillary must both feel right now – the mountain of work left to be done.
Today’s mood
@ Falconer
I think my rage just broke. “Fellow brothers and sisters”, they are no brother/sister of mine, maybe they never were.
@Bina Kellie Leitch is already trying to ramp up Drumpfism here in Canada. 😛
http://www.theglobeandmail.com//news/politics/trump-message-needs-to-come-to-canada-leitch-says-in-tory-leadership-bid/article32760294/?click=sf_globefb
OH HELL NO!! >:(
@Amused, can I share your first comment on my facebook page?