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.
I am doing more practice in learning japanese. It’s going pretty well, now all I need to do is figure out how to japanese sentences and I’ll be able to read and write japanese.
<3 from novorossiysk to all you folk in the US.
I can only hope that trumps incompetance results in a uneffective presidency that changes little and causes little damage. Maybe the good left by obama can help protect for four years more.
nnnnnnnnnnnnngggghhhhhhhhhhhhh
Donald Trump has selected one of the best-known climate skeptics to lead his U.S. EPA transition team, according to two sources close to the campaign.
@Scildfreja Unnýðnes
*Inhales This is like staring at a bus that’s going to ram into you.
Is he going to kill the EPA?
@joekster:
Oh wow, that’s terrifying. I hope nothing bad ever happened to him there. It so easily could, especially considering how many anti-government weirdos there are out west…
And yeah. OKC was a real kick in the head. I remember watching coverage of it on TV while I was at journalism school. It was absolutely ASTOUNDING how much the media hyped the idea that it was “islamic” terrorists. And then, when it turned out to be a home-grown white guy who’d been in Gulf War I, and who’d had some help from known “militia” types, poof! They just seemed to lose all interest in inquiring into what the hell was going through the mofo’s head. With Muslims from out of country, it would have been “Why do they hate us?” for DAYS. But this? Oh no, tabooooooooo. And they’ve been sweeping it under the rug ever since. Well, lift that damn rug, media people — this is YOUR doing as much as anyone else’s, for ignoring and downplaying the worst element in US politics. Drumpf was right about ONE thing, the media DID lie. It lied in his fucking FAVOR.
Anyhow: Kellie Leitch. Yeah. Fuck that noise. She’s going on my wankapedia for this. We do NOT need any more rabid right-wing bastards up here. We already have too many for my liking.
Kevin O’Leary can kiss my ass, too.
maybe this needs a TW for MI, … but anyone else worried this might trigger a depressive episode or a similar condition? :/
I resist “rallying” so hard. I mean, it just… feels fake. I cant believe in it right now. I cant feel it… and that is the exact mindset that hinders me resisting a depressive episode, that whole “no, it is accurate that the universe is a random cruel place” feeling. Its hard to paste on a smile.
edit: I posted this and realized I hadnt read all the threads so apologies if redundant.
Christ. Leitch is my MP. She’s never won a majority; the Liberals, NDP and Greens always split the vote allowing her in.
I skimmed through the Republican platform last night and it mentioned major changes to the EPA and FDA. So, yes.
I’d like to mention he and Pence aren’t in yet and they might not.
We just need to vote from down ballot and hope that while we work our way up, Trump manages to get himself impeached.
We are so fucked.
https://mobile.twitter.com/absurdistwords/status/796301496698671104
Everyone who hasn’t read this yet, please do so now.
This thread had inspired me to write something similar. I don’t have a twitter for personal reasons, but I want to say this to someone, so please bear with me.
A feeling of disgust has been washing over me all day. Is it the fear? That’s part of it. Markets are tanking, environmental protections are going to be either stripped wholly or weakened to the point they might as well have been, that I paint my nails might get me killed now, many of my friends and coworkers will probably end up threatened directly and their legal and health protections stripped, and my dream of being an english teacher abroad may be undoable now if all that money I keep giving to progressive activism under my real name doesn’t get me destroyed anyway. Yeah, a big part of it, but that’s not all. There’s a special knot in my stomach because what I have done to make the Trump victory possible. Let me explain.
I was born a white boy I the suburbs of Memphis, Tennessee. When I was 1, we moved to a suburb of Nashville. I grew up with conservative parents. My dad was (is) a staunch economic republican who thinks black people are inherently lazy and listens to every notable right wing radio host, and my mom was a business woman who blamed feminism for the plights of modern women and bemoaned those who got abortions as irresponsible. Antifeminist, antitrans, antigay, antiblack, anti-Middle Eastern people, anti-immigrant, pro-war, pro-fossil fuel, I got it all. And that’s not everything. I went to a private school K-12 because they were afraid of what the schools in our district would do to me. Only recently have I realized how coded that language was. I think I met less than 20 black people total in those years. Less than 50 POC overall.
And I internalized all of it. When a teacher asked me if I was a republican in 8th grade, I told her I was proudly because it’s what my parents were. When a black teacher at my school spoke out against the racist uniform restrictions that made it easier for POC girls to get in trouble and got fired for it, I rationalized it as him getting fired for rablerousing over something that was obviously not a real problem since I didn’t notice it with any of my white female friends. When a classmate made a speech about the dangers of climate change, I scoffed at her evidence despite having no contrary evidence because she supported the bad idea and was therefore wrong by default. When one of the few pro-choice students at my roman catholic school asked me what I honestly thought of abortion rights, I told him bold faced that they didn’t matter to me because they would never affect me, and I meant it. All of those things were within me. They still are I will always be the person who did those thing and had those thoughts.
I’ve slowly started to mute those feelings. Environmental activism showed me the reality of climate damage, and I’ve written letters and donated money. A gender communication class taught me the concepts of coded language and the meaning of slurs and what our white, male society does to everyone not in that group. Finding this blog taught me the reality of the anti-progress movement and showed it in no uncertain terms so I couldn’t hide from it. Slowly I have begun to grow.
And yet, I still haven’t muted those old feelings entirely. They are still within me, and through them, I contributed to this catastrophe. When my dad told me he thinks black people will be supplanted in the workforce by hard working Latino people and I didn’t challenge him, I contributed to this catastrophe. When my mom expressed her disappointment in my brother for being in an interracial relationship and I didn’t challenge her, I contributed to this catastrophe. When I didn’t stand up to rape jokes, when I didn’t stand up to ablest slurs, when I took solace in my other progressive actions but didn’t fight bigotry as it happened in front of my face, I contributed to this catastrophe. Yes, I didn’t fight back out of awkward, anxious fear. I have a hard time talking even in this space for for those fears, but that didn’t matter then and it doesn’t matter now.
I have helped make the Trump presidency possible. I am so sorry. I don’t say that to seek forgiveness, as I don’t say any of this to seek pity. Not that this should evoke pity. I say this to reach out to every white progressive looking for a way to say this wasn’t our fault, like that “notmypresident” hashtag. Cut the shit. Trump is as much our president as he is the president of the people who voted for him, and we’re going to see how much our half-assed nods to progressivism gets us. Everything that happens next is on our heads too.
I don’t say that to discourage you. Your feelings of fear are all too valid and real. I say that so you understand what the fight we’re in for really is. No more illusions, no more lies to ourselves. Steel yourselves.
This isn’t really for the people who comment here. I don’t even know what you’d get out of it other than some random people laying out some of their sins. I have a message of thanks for everyone here, but I need a minute to process how I want to say it.
Thanks for bearing with me.
You know, I thought of this song on Sept. 12, 2001– pretty much the last time I felt this degree of stunned bewilderment and sadness– and it made me feel a tad better. Maybe it will make some folks here feel better too?
@kale, you have no obligation to feel bad, or good. You have no obligation to smile or pretend, or rally, or anything. You’re allowed to feel unhappy. And maybe more important, your unhappiness does not define you. It will move through you, and when it’s done it’ll be gone again. Don’t dwell on it, but if you find that you do dwell on it? That’s okay. Stop dwelling when you can.
Depression is a difficult thing to deal with. It doesn’t define you, but it can feel like it’s overwhelming at times. Feel free to talk about whatever you like, whenever you like. We want to hear it, and we want you to feel better when you’re ready to.
@Jack, authorialAlchemy … yeah. Gutted EPA, Sarah Palin is Minister of the Interior. More fracking, the destruction of America’s national parks to get at oil and coal reserves; more poisonous waterways and a faster slide into the ocean.
There’s a huge protest going on outside of Trump Tower, blocking Trump’s access to his parking garage. I hope it doesn’t stop.
@leftwingfox, Leitch just spoke at the Conservative ‘primary’ in Saskatoon. All about denying “PC culture (politically correct)” and ensuring that immigrants have “Canadian Values”.
… then the moderator shut her microphone off mid-sentence ’cause she was over-time 😀 I love the CBC sometimes.
….This is all just fucking disgusting.
I know what’s wrong with our nation, roughly. I have an idea why.
And I hate it.
Oh no no no no no. Please, no. He’s going to take away what little protection we have that’s keeping our air and water from being even more poisoned than it is and then he’s going to make it so companies don’t have to tell me what’s in my food so I can’t even know what’s safe to eat any more if I don’t want my body to attack itself. Fuck. I hate this reality. Fuck fuck fuck.
The anti-environmentalist campaign has been very successful. People think that there’s no danger of flammable rivers, noxious air, and tropical climates at the poles. They’ll (we’ll) find out the hard way — except in the case of nuclear winter that President T.H.O. Groper brought on because the Mexican ambassador to the USA looked at him funny.
Cancer rates will go up if there is more pollution. I live in Michigan and I love the lakes and wetlands (I feel like nature is the only thing worth living here for sometimes) and I would be so sad if they are endangered again. They were doing so well.
@number sequence, <3
We all have flaws. They're inherent to us, and to a degree they are undefeatable. We need to apply conscious, explicit pressure to damp them down, and there's a very limited supply of that.
You are aware of the problem in yourself and in society. You're aware that you don't have a perfect view of yourself or of society.
Be better. But don't break yourself down for the times you slip. Just keep goin'. You're on the right side, and you're goin the right way <3 The potholes are to be expected.
Thank you Scildfreja that helps <3
Two transgender people have committed suicide since the election, but it could be as high as 8.
Step 1: Survive. You matter, you’re loved, you’re not alone
Step 2: Speak. Don’t let anyone forget or confuse how/why this happened
Step 3: Help. Make the next 4 years less shit for someone. Anyone
Step 4: Interstate Compact. Never again
In 2 gifs, my current feels towards everyone who made this in any way possible and are regretting it now or will be soon (not you, @Number Sequence):
http://i.imgur.com/do9RLzO.gif
and
http://66.media.tumblr.com/0b67450fcee654e0552d0fcf5dc6402c/tumblr_n41ugyZN7f1qln00mo4_400.gif
OK, that’s it. That’s all I have
@kale, dat’s why I’m here :3
@kupo, if it comes to that, we can set up a care package system for you to get your staples from up here. I’d be pleased as pie to help out however I can.
@authorialAlchemy, that’s what blows my mind about Hillary’s loss in Michigan. The Republicans there might as well have been signing the death certificates of the children in Flint. Ugh, it makes my heart hurt to think of it.
*cries*
CN: transphobia
http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/crime/2016/11/07/cookeville-transgender-womans-truck-painted-trump-lit-fire/93452240/
@Scild
You’re so sweet. I’m not too far from the border if it comes to that. And I can order online, too. Australia has really good regulations around food labeling, so their food is safe for sure.