On Nov 9 we awakened into a twisted world, a distorted, terrifying fun-house mirror reality – except without any fun. Instead, just the creepy feeling that something is off. I still feel as though we’ve all somehow slipped into an alternate reality, an “opposite land” where everything is backwards. I keep hoping I’ll wake up.
I’m surprised to find myself just a little bit envious of our loved ones who died during the months before the “election”. They didn’t live to see Nazis and KKK holding “victory marches” after the presidential candidate with the least votes somehow “won”.
It was a coup.
If you’ve followed my music for any amount of time, or if you know me, you know I’m generally quite positive. The things we learn from life can help keep us on an even drama-free keel:
- There’s always tons of things to be grateful for
- Everything changes; change is life
- What feels “serious” today will probably be forgotten a year from now
- Most things aren’t worth getting upset over
- Everybody’s got challenges, our task is to remain compassionate
But this time, I must admit that I’ve been dismayed. I couldn’t really speak much the first few days, and these rather dark thoughts kept circling around my mind:
- Despots don’t just give up power.
- There may never be fair elections in the USA again.
- International vote integrity specialists tell us that when polls and votes are not the same, it’s a sign of fraud.
- Maybe it’s time to leave the United States behind. It’s not the only country on earth.
- Perhaps my optimistic view that this human species would finally awaken at the last minute…. perhaps that lifelong idea is just a fantasy. Perhaps we’re headed for extinction, after all.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope we surprise ourselves. I’m finding myself in meditation a lot more often.
It’s time for us collectively to take a deep breath, center ourselves, and decide what we want to do, what we are able to do.
It feels like a nation in mourning. It feels like right after 9-11. It feels like we’re weeping together for a lost loved one…We feel as if we’ve collectively suffered a death: the death of the dream of a democratic, equal country.
Part of what keeps me somewhat sane right now is searching for another place to call home. A country that’s an actual democracy. A sane country. And one that would accept creative souls without a lot of cash in their pockets; that part seems to be a bit problematic.
The Nazi party and the KKK have held victory parades after the “election”. They’ve posted all over the internet during the race that “tRump will start the ovens again.”
Hate crimes have skyrocketed: hate against latinos, blacks. gay people, trans people, immigrants, muslims, asians, women… angry white men are beating up everybody else, screaming that this is “tRump’s AmeriKKKa now!”
We’re seeing swastikas spray-painted on houses, cars, walls. The words “Heil tRump” scrawled on buildings, shouted by overweight gun-toting Nazis. Violence. Bigotry. Hate has blossomed.
I keep thinking, perhaps the “adults”, maybe the Intelligence Community, maybe even some in the Military, will stop this thing. (Wow, how wild is it to actually want to trust the CIA?) Is there really anyone “in charge”? How could we allow a sleazy pervert, a lying con artist, a racist, sexist fascist man into the People’s White House?
Will anyone reveal how the coup was accomplished, call for a new vote with verifiable paper ballots? Will the hundreds of thousands of legitimate minority voters who were told at the ballot box that they’d been removed from voter rolls – will they now be able to regain their vote and be counted? Will we right this wrong? I keep hoping.
But no “adults” have stepped up.
It seems all the good people are, like me, dumbstruck. But you know what? We are the majority and we are holding each other up. Never forget that. Nobody’s alone in this. We are united and must remain so.
Between the extreme GOP gerrymandering and the hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters stripped from the rolls, not to mention the fact that voting machines are easily hacked…these results could have been predicted. Some of us have been decrying our blind faith in voting machines, for years.
And let’s not even talk about the fake “news” sites and posts that were designed to support tRump and tear the energized Democrats apart. We watched it happen as Bernie supporters and Hillary supporters were fed stories to turn them against each other. Many of us fell for that, to our eternal regret.
Perhaps we will awake from this nightmare. I hope so. Now is the time we’ll find out how resilient our spirits are.
I had expected to spend the next 4 years pushing HRC left, complaining in those times when she showed her centrist attitudes, delighting in our small victories. Never did I dream that we’d wind up under tRump’s authoritarian boot. At this critical time for climate and our planet, for civil rights, for all that we hold dear…… this?
Today an article came out explaining that “something stinks” when polls and votes don’t agree. Lots of people are trying to “explain” how a despotic sexist racist “won” but we all know he didn’t. People are freaking out. What will happen to the USA now?
Somebody wake us up.