Ramona,
It helps me knowing there are like minded people in the world. I live in a conservative city where when I venture out in the world, often I am slapped in the face by thinking so backwards I could convince myself I fell through a black hole and ended up back in the 1960’s. Or maybe Archie Bunker’s living room.
I went to bed early on election night, feeling sick over the early results I was seeing. Like a bad dream. Horribly scary. My husband woke me up when he came to bed a bit later and told me that Trump was our new president. It’s been surreal but the sad thing is, after the first year we have actually quit being incredulous. Sure, we still marvel at the man’s endless stupidity and cluelessness (the latest 4th of July speech where he mentions there were airports during Revolutionary War times- palm hits forehead) The man’s ignorance has been repeated so many times now it’s like hitting ourselves in the head with a hammer to let ourselves feel alarmed about it.
I walk out to get my mail and someone drives by wearing a MAGA hat or with their Trump fo President stickers still on the bumper of their Ford F-150 and then I remind myself, yes, we do live in a place where the confederate flag still flies. And since I’ve lived in this particular town I’ve heard Black Americans being referred to as colored (cullerd) and I’ve had a guy installing a new toilet ask me if I was aware that muslims have no place in this county. Unsolicited. And this was well before the 2016 election.
It’s not Trump. It’s my fellow Americans who voted for him. What is going on here? It feels to me a bit like roaches crawling out of the woodwork after a nuclear apocalypse. Was everyone just playing nice back when I felt so positive that Trump could never be elected? I wasn’t expecting anything different from my neighbors but the rest of America? Living here in the south where people have always felt a bit more secure to wear their politics and prejudices on their sleeves and being southern and knowing how it is behind closed doors I wasn’t expecting more than their support of him. Other states though. We were counting on you.
The Trump voters from our last election still exist. They will vote again. They haven’t changed their mind about him. I don’t understand this but Yeah, that is how it is. People who didn’t vote last time will have to take up the slack. And whoever runs will have to take care not to repeat the mistakes that Hillary made. Left thinking voters will have to take up the slack created by the electoral college. Anyone who thinks that Trump figured out how to win…ahem. But someone, someplace in the world, (AHEM), ran the metrics and figured it out and for some reason he listened to them. Someone who can actually advise Trump successfully? That is just plain scary.
So, I’m scared for 2020’s outcome. Another four years of this is just plain unacceptable.
No longer so naive!
