The Day Aftermath

The Trump salute – Original photo found at deathandtaxes.com

It pains me to say this, but our next president is Donald Trump. Yeah, this is not some story I read on The Onion. It was very dismal to watch last night as the election results unfolded.

Just at a level of WTF just happened here. Shocked doesn’t even begin to explain the feelings here.

How Did He Win

Dwindling numbers each election cycle

Two things. Democrats voted in smaller numbers than in previous presidential elections and almost 25% of registered voters didn’t vote. Which I’m sure both of those reasons are linked for some.

Plain and simple here, folks. Trump’s supporters voted, but Hillary supporters did not – and in record numbers. In fact, the count was down from the last election. So I blame those who sat on their asses and didn’t get out and vote. Voting was made easier this time around, with Utah embracing vote by mail (which I did).

Tell Me Something Good Happened

From the Presidential side of things, Hillary won the popular vote by a little more than 200,000 votes. Guess there wasn’t as many Hillary haters as we had thought. This last happened 16 years ago with the Bush v Gore election when Gore won the popular vote by more than half a million votes.

Marijuana for personal use got approved in 4 states: California, Massachusetts and Nevada. Maine is waiting for the official results to be available, but it looks like it’s going to pass. I don’t smoke or consume it, but do embrace legalization of it.

The first latina US Senator – Catherine Cortez Masto – got elected from Nevada. And Ilhan Omar, the first Somali-American won a seat on the House of Representatives from Minnesota.

Where Do Go From Here

First off, I don’t hate Trump. I never hated George W Bush, either. I just don’t support Trump and his platform of hate, violence, bigotry, pussy grabbing and treating anyone that’s not a white male as a less than. He never shared any solid policies. He lied constantly about pretty much anything, even going so far as to deny he ever said anything, even though there was a recording of him saying just the opposite. None of his supporters cared about his vulgar talking down to women, his expectations of how women should treat him. I think the media spent way too much time on these leaked videos. It only bolstered his supporters, who some approve of these actions Trump took advantage of.

Moving to Canada or out of the country isn’t a solution, in my opinion. Praying for him to be guided to make good decisions is not a good decision. But I do want to see some true unity happen. Part of his acceptance speech called for unity, which I laughed at due to what kind of division that went on during the campaign. Anyone that wasn’t white or male was pretty much taken down to a level of distrust and exclusion. And now that he’s won, he wants unity? Fucking serious? That one is going to need a lot of time for him to pull off and gain the trust of any of us. Would I love to see him embrace unity? You bet. But it’s not going to be an overnight thing, even though it should be.

I think the thing to do now for all of us that are devastated by this Trump win is to find ways to keep supporting the positives we need to happen. Find ways to move this country forward without letting the vile supporters and Trump himself get their way.

If we can pull that off, I think it will keep us busy enough these next 4 years until we find ourselves a solid candidate and can pull the Democrat and Republican parties back into normalcy and possibly a 3rd party candidate that’s not sporting tainted policies. This is 2020 and 4 years isn’t that long. We survived 2 Bushes, we can do our best to survive a Trump presidency.