Shock

I haven't written in some time, but I am in massive pain after this year's election day.

I was so excited... unlike the people who cynically described Clinton as a crook, I embraced the energy of changes she wanted to make (even though I knew Republicans would block all actual legislation) and was over the moon with the opportunity in front of us that the U.S. was about to finally elect the first president woman of the United States.

9 year old ND was just as excited as I was. We believed in the power of women to envision the world in ways that men don't and we knew it was impossible -- IMPOSSIBLE -- for a racist, sexist, egotistical bully who can't even formulate an educated sentence about the state of our country to win.

We stayed up together, with the radio on and U watching the numbers, recording each of the states as the vote count came in.

Gradually, it started to feel like the night would be longer than we'd hoped before we could jump up and cheer, and go to bed.

We waited... and we waited... waited while the wrong numbers went up, while the good numbers didn't come. We were just too tired to stay up much longer...

and U... the political junkie in our house told us, "It's already over."

***

I went to bed and caught short naps between envisioning children and the sick having health care taken away, financial depression, nuclear war, Holocausts and red-capped white men leering at and judging my daughter's and my bodies.

Somehow I survived the day until U and I could really sit and talk. Again, he is a political junkie and so wise when it comes to talking about actual ramifications. The conversations we have can't be summarized on a Facebook meme. They take explanation, analysis and thought.

So after I got out of my system all of my feelings and visions, he said, "OK... do you want to know what I'm really scared about now?"

That's when we talked about a day and age in which when politicians did things underhanded the news media criticized and then citizens gave push-back.

Not anymore. For whatever reason, Republicans have discovered now that they don't have to play by the rules. If they don't like a policy they can tantrum. Tantrum tactics include holding the debt ceiling hostage, refusing to consider a supreme court nominee, filibustering and the list goes on. No one stops them.

They have the presidency, the court and the congress. This is not democracy.

And the people who thought that Trump would help them, will not be helped.

One comfort in all of this is that the majority of Americans actually did make the right call. Whether they liked Clinton or not, they knew that they had a responsibility to vote for someone sane, and not to cast a vote as knee-jerk, in-your-face and irresponsible as nearly everything Trump says and does. They knew the right choice was to actually vote her into office. The final tragedy is that, once again, the electoral college silenced the popular vote. Someone has to fix this. No one who cares has the power to do it.