Like most liberals, I’m having a really hard time with Hillary Clinton’s loss. I’m feeling shock, horror, dread, anger, and immense disappointment. And most of all I’m very, very sad.
But let’s get back to the anger.
I’m angry that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and that liberals outnumber conservatives in this country, and yet Republicans now control the presidency, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. Every branch of government at the federal level. That doesn’t seem fair.
I’m angry at Susan Sarandon endorsing Jill Stein and saying, “I feel even those in swing states have the opportunity to vote their conscience.” It only took 16 years to completely forget the lessons of the 2000 election. Ms. Sarandon, stop patting yourself on the back for your purity. You aren’t more progressive than Clinton supporters, not one jot more progressive, you’re just less realistic. Your irrational form of idealism may feel good to you but it comes at a steep price. (But I love your acting.)
I’m angry at Huffington Post for claiming Clinton had a 98% chance of winning. Such rosy prognostications from HuffPo and others encouraged liberals to just stay home yesterday or vote for third parties, even in swing states (see above), which really helped Trump. Irresponsible.
I’m angry at evangelical Christians for their cynicism and hypocrisy. Even if you don’t believe he raped that 13 year old girl at Wexner Mansion with his buddy and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the evidence of Trump’s womanizing is hard to refute. Evangelicals, after all your holier-than-thou bullcrap when Bill Clinton stood accused, how can you possibly support a guy like Donald Trump? How can you support a guy who is so cruel to immigrants? You are liars without any genuine decency. I’ve never much agreed with you on policy issues but at least I respected your convictions. You never deserved that respect. Your fine talk about morality was always a farce. I see that now.
I’m angry that Vladimir Putin and Julian Assange meddled in our democracy and we let them get away with it. And I’m angry that the Republican Congress refused to confirm a Supreme Court nominee until after the election and we let them get away with it.
I’m angry at anybody intellectually lazy enough to conclude that Trump and Clinton were equally flawed candidates.
I’m angry that our country, by rejecting Clinton, has rejected the current administration’s economic policies, which have been successful by any reasonable measure and have led to our nation’s recovery, in favor of Trump’s vague promises to make things “great,” especially considering that most of Trump’s ideas are the very sort of ideas that caused the recession in the first place.
I’m angry at people whining about Obamacare and what a disaster it is. They’re wrong and they’ll miss it when it’s gone.
I’m angry that a clearly qualified female candidate lost to a clearly unqualified male one. I don’t believe this election would’ve gone the same way if the democratic candidate were male. I’m angry that so much of our country is so deeply sexist.
I’m angry that I’m going to have to look at Trump’s smug, pampered, ignorant, self-absorbed family on TV, with their obnoxious sense of entitlement. How did we let these creeps bamboozle us? How did our nation’s outrage at the 1% fuel the rise to power of people so emblematic of the 1%?
I’m angry that our next president will be a chauvinist, a sexual assaulter, a racist, a demagogue, an erratic narcissist, a pathological liar, a tax evader, a science denier, an NRA crackpot, and a religious bigot.
All of the progress of the past eight years–the Paris Agreement, the Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank, America’s repaired image abroad, the reversal of Bush-era torture policies, the fuel efficiency standards, the EPA restrictions on coal plants, the Iran nuclear deal–it’s all in jeopardy. But not only will Trump walk us backwards, not only will he rewind the progress we’ve made, he’ll walk us in an ugly new direction, giving our country new problems we could have avoided, problems that will plague us for years to come. There’s a reason he’s so beloved by KKK-types like David Duke. Trump’s election has breathed life into the alt-right, a new movement of nationalistic, white-supremacist fascists.
So that’s where we’re at, and that’s why I’m angry.
I know we’ll be okay. I know there’s reason for hope somewhere, somehow. But it’s hard to see today.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2016 William Bloom