One of the things I have worried about during the past few days is the absolute shitstorm the intelligence community must be weathering right now, because if Trump has been getting security briefings since he became the candidate, it is clearly evident that he is not getting any smarter despite the education. President Obama should not even have to offer a president-elect more tutoring because he doesn’t understand what the president actually does. The president-elect shouldn’t be surprised that this is not a 9-5 job. I don’t think I’ve ever applied for a job in which I didn’t read the description first to see if I was qualified… or actually had interest in doing said job if it was offered. Not only that, if I didn’t have the qualifications for a job and it was offered to me, anyway, I would try to soak up as much information as I possibly could so that if I seemed unprepared on the first day, I would undertake the learning curve no matter how steep.
I would come in on Saturdays.
I also wouldn’t try to figure out how to commute four hours each way, even if I could fly. The fact that Trump is actually considering only being in Washington half the time says to me that he’s trying to avoid actually doing the job… and leaving it to the Vice President is even scarier. The VP is considerably more conservative than the basic Republican platform. It was announced today that he wants to fund federal gay conversion therapy, which has been proven over and over not to work even for people that actually wanted to try such a thing. What, is he just going to herd us up en masse? Maybe I shouldn’t say that too loudly, because Pence might take it as a personal challenge. Why should he care how I eat my cake by the ocean? As Keith Olbermann said, “Why does it matter to you? What is it to you?”
However, I will not be one to say #NotMyPresident, because it’s just not true. The president is the president whether I’m with him or not. President Obama has to lead conservatives as well as his own base, and a Republican has to do the same in reverse. I do think it’s a practical joke that Trump became president in the first place, and to vote for someone who’s never held any government office is ridiculous. One government job does not establishment make, but it would have at least given him a working idea of what being employed by it might mean. Getting Trump up to speed is something that never should have happened… because again, he doesn’t even know what the president does. None of this would have happened if, at the convention, the Republican base hadn’t been bodyslammed by crazy so that the more moderate candidates were ridden out on a rail. To Trump’s credit, at least he spent some time trying to figure out how to get out of putting Pence on the ticket. I don’t know whose idea it was to put him on in the first place, and can’t imagine saying “yes” to it without doing so and backpedaling, but at the very least, I can applaud “buyer’s remorse.”
I am also condemning the Democrats who are Monday-morning quarterbacking the entire campaign, because it is so useless. What’s done is done. Our only hope is that perhaps the electors in the Electoral College will watch Trump flounder and respond, but even that is a longshot. There’s only so many times a hail Mary pass works, no matter how much it might be needed.
I do believe that it is needed, but not because my candidate lost. Because your candidate is inept and you won’t admit it. Won’t sit in your wrongness and acknowledge that not only did you vote for a candidate in favor of the Establishment as far as our entrenched racism and homophobia goes, you voted for a candidate that cannot tell shit from Shinola.™ The fact that you are not bothered by this is frightening. For all of you that still believe in the “trickle-down theory,” please take in the words of Pope Francis, that the cup does not overflow but gets bigger. The working class of both parties is about to be on the receiving end of the largest fuck you in history. Giving rich people more money by cutting their taxes does not create more jobs in turn. It creates more of a reason to be justified in greediness, and that has been proven over and over. It doesn’t make more job creators, it increases the disparity between rich and poor so that even less of the country owns more of it. You screwed the pooch on this one, because you didn’t listen to the Republicans in your midst telling you what would happen if you elected someone so woefully unprepared. The worse he behaved, the more you cheered.
I also agree with Bill Maher that this election proved the Religious Right to be neither. Jesus’ message was always about widening the net, whether it came to immigration or people already in your country with different views. Don’t believe me? See every sermon he’s ever preached. Off of the top of my head, the parable that comes to mind first is The Good Samaritan. The Religious Right has been all the priests who’ve just walked by.
I believe in the right to disagree, but not when it comes to taking away civil rights that have already been achieved, and I include government subsidized health insurance in that bundle. The cost of subsidy is infinitely cheaper than the cost of war, but when you’ve been deceived into thinking that it is, you will equate the two when there is no comparison. We are at risk of the entire safety net Franklin Roosevelt tried to create going up in a burst of flame. Start your funeral preparations now, because unless the Democrats gain enough power to fight that legislation before it’s put to a vote, the least of us may become the majority of us.
I am planning on protesting peacefully with my friends at the Women’s March in January. I invite all people to protest peacefully. Violence is not the answer and never will be. However, our voices do need to be heard as we sing for our lives.
The people, united, will never be defeated.
Stories That Are All True 