
The United States of America held its elections Tuesday ,November 5, 2024.
It must be admitted that those of us who have stood by the Democrats had already been through the wringer.
With only three months to campaign, our shiny new candidate, Kamala Harris, the current Vice President, an African American Asian woman, a prosecutor and attorney, was thrust into the campaign after a debate performance by President Biden brought extreme shame and question into the party. Anxiety and doubt held court. Republicans were quick to mock, dismiss and continue the character assassinations they had maintained for four years ""Sleepy Joe," "Demented Joe.. has to go!") . Turmoil toiled the Democrats. What to do? Celebrities like George Clooney insisted that Biden could not win. He was simply too old. The Republicans succeeded in moving the needle to their talking point.
The nomination of Harris and the beautifully staged Democratic Convention filled everyone with a fresh energy, Contributions poured in. A new age had begun. We could do this. We could do anything. When Walz from Minnesota was nominated to be Vice President, a middle-class Midwesterner who owns a gun and hunts, a football coach, for God's sake!- the win seemed inevitable. All of the Stars were on our side. Beyonce. Taylor Swift. Clooney came back. Even Bernie Sanders Urged the Harris Walz vote. Our Rallies seemed full, and enthusiasm, joy and good humor abounded.
VP Vance's comments on "Childless Cat Ladies" became fodder for clever lawn signs and millions of women chanted "We Will Not Go Back!"
I was one of them, and I did believe we had the wind at our back.
This euphoria lead me to relax a bit. I finished writing my get-out-the-vote postcards and mailed them. I contributed my $30 a month to VOTE BLUE, and I encouraged all of my friends and clients to vote.
My friends and I voted early, and mailed in our ballots, agreeing that watching the election results would not be a party , and thinking aloud that we might have to wait weeks for the actual results. We did not believe that Trump would go gentle into the night, and we dreaded the after math.
I honestly do not believe we ever thought that Trump would automatically win, the very night of the election. We also did not even think about the Senate or the House.
But why? Why were we so blind? Is it because we "live in a bubble?" A Blue state like California?
We've been on a wave of attacks, I think, ever since 2016. No matter what Joe Biden has done for us as President... reducing prescription drug costs, protecting millions of acres as national monuments, advancing green technologies... stabilizing the economy, providing vaccines for COVID... he has been tormented, not as much for his political views, but as a human being.
The way this Republican Party works is to attack the individuals who serve. The goal is to render them as immoral or incompetent, and then cast disparaging remarks onto the ability of government to really serve its people.
There has been a strategy at work, one which really began when Trump was President. Incompetent people were appointed to cabinet positions. Louis DeJoy, Federal Postmaster, has been on a mission to bankrupt the US Postal Service so that it can become another FED EX.
In a topsy turvy world, it seemed that each appointee had as a goal to destroy the very department they represented. Betsy Devos aimed to defund the Department of Education by providing more money for parochial schools. The foxes were in the henhouse then.
We got us our Biden, but these forces never stopped. The energy they have had is incredible.
And the sheer audacity to mount a January 6th attack on our Capitol, threatening to hang Vice President Pence. Such theater. Such opera. Such spectacle.
For nothing with these Republicans is without drama. The rage is theatrical. The humor is cut throat, macho and mean. These are seen as strengths, in comparison to the "snowflake" emotions we on the other side have been accused of having.
We have been intimidated to feel, with a sense that we have to defend ourselves from the bullying.
Eight years of this divide. These culture wars.
And a lot of dark money. Who is giving it? And to whom? It is as though politics were inside the dark net. And with this, we watch different networks, and buy into separate truths.
NO, the election, the campaign, the vibe underneath it, didn't begin this year . It started long ago.
It's been a psychological war for nearly a decade.
Without a lot of money, there seems to be nothing that can be done.
And it is true, that the Republicans have much more money. They have been putting this money into think tanks. They have paid lobbyists and very intelligent writers to redraft laws, legislation. They ally with ALEC and organizations that push the same legislation from state to state, where pencil pushing Republicans look at the drafter of the law, and simply sign it without reading it.
Well meaning politicians, full of idealism and dreams for the public good, are placed into the cycle of constant fund-raising, to the extent that it interrupts their office hours and ability to serve. One wonders how these simple idealists without huge budgets survive. Who succumbs eventually to lobbyist money? And what is the deal? And is it possible we don't even know what is going on with the money?
When both the LA Times and The Washington Post refused to endorse the Harris Walz ticket, many of us were shocked and enraged. Many of us cancelled our newspaper subscriptions.
Perhaps this was an early sign of what was to come.
In all of our online reactions to what we learned about these new Republicans, we were continually gob-smacked and shocked. Project 2025 was circulated, and many of us saw what might be in store were Trump and his cronies to take over these offices.
Our campaign was one of fear, loathing and warnings to our fellow Americans. "The death of democracy." The "End of the freedoms we know." The hate and vitriol we heard in the Trump rallies befuddled us. How could people put up with this man? A convicted felon. A rapist. A man in cahoots with dictators, particularly Putin. A man who did not like women, opposed women's rights to choose what happened with their own bodies. A man who did not support gay marriage or the rights of LGBTQ citizens. A man who threatened to "drill drill drill" who did not support any environmental legislation. A man who did not believe in the Department of Education, FEMA, OSHA, the protection of workers. We could only think of his supporters as radical haters, people who did not believe in climate change, the rights of women, workers, immigrants, LGBTQ.
Even before the election, we had created the drama. It felt like the Elves versus the Orcs.
Who knows the role the media has played in this set up.
We cast our ballots, and many of us did not tune in to find out what would happen.
SO. When we did, when the ax fell.. we were beside ourselves. Devastated. Thrust into visions of the end times. Demoralized. Bruised. Numb. Sick. Nauseous. Unable to function.
And many of us are still reeling. Planning to move. Not knowing whether to tune in, or drop out.
feeling meaningless. Betrayed. confused. Living our 4am nightmare.
And what happened?
What if. What if. What if.
It were nothing more than two things.
What if it were simply a hold your nose and vote for the one who can rid us of inflation.
What if, having been exposed to countless images of foreigners arriving, illegally, these images over and over and over.. there were a fear so deep that immigration was the second reason to vote for Trump?
Sure, we see the Christians blessing Trump and laying their hands on him as though he is a deity, but how many of these people are why he is where he is now?
Someone once said "It's the Economy, Stupid."
I myself see the haters, and these Christians that are in "end times" but somehow I do not see them as the majority who did not vote for Harris.
What they did, in voting for this man, is a horror to me, personally, BUT I DO WONDER HOW MUCH THE MEDIA HAS CREATED THIS DRAMA IN ME, AND FOR HOW LONG.
Do I want to blame someone? Of course I do.
But I wonder what good this will do. The ones who gloat , the ones who are mean to me on Facebook. why are they doing this? I don't know. Why do I feel so fragile? I don't know.
But I also know that feelings are not facts.
I am now cowed by my own feelings, which are raw, weak, unsteady. I feel like I took a big punch. I am lying on the ground, seeing stars. I cannot stand up.
And so I end PART ONE in admitting that I am not sure why we have Trump and a Trump government.
HOWEVER, PART TWO must happen. TOMORROW. MOVING FORWARD, Those thoughts.
Our country is NOT a democracy! It is a Constitutional Republic asn has been and always will be! Trump won whether Dems, libs, or leftists like it or not! It is sad that Governor Newsome want s to block Trump from being President! If the Reoublicans would have done that to KH if she would had won, they would have been called racists, evil and every other negative word imaginable! Why is it okay for Dems, libs , leftists to all Republicans names such as garbage, ignorant, etc to those who did vote…