Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Not Our President

So it's been a week since the Founding Fathers fucked us. It feels simultaneously longer and shorter. Time, like, oh, everything else that made sense 7 days ago, has become unreasonable and surreal. Welcome to the new reality.

I meant to blog Tuesday night, after I voted, to get my feelings out while it was happening, but it was too fresh and I spent most of Wednesday and Thursday numb and reading things and in denial (and angry) and trying to process it all. (I don't think it will ever be fully processed. And the anger is still very much present. Those 60 million wrong... ugh. Just. UGH.)

But, ya'll know this. It's been a bad week. One that, sadly, is probably going to just be the first of at the VERY least another 208 long weeks. (and, hell, that's once he actually gets signed in. fucking politics and their timetables, man. Can't anything happen quickly?)

I then meant to blog Saturday (well, Sunday, since I didn't get home Saturday night until way late, and I was exhausted beyond words at that point) but life gets in the way, and I didn't blog Monday either, and now here it is Tuesday - a full week after 5.3 percent of the US population decided to fuck over the entire planet - and I thought, well, if I don't do it now, I probably won't.
So, blogging.

I don't have any grand insights or words of wisdom or even really a plan of action for the next 4 years (+. Don't forget, the Cheeto will appoint like-minded wastes of skin onto the Supreme Court, which will impact us for DECADES), just some random P@-thoughts from the course of the past week or so.

On Saturday there was a protest here in town, and I attended. It was a largely symbolic gesture, of course, I mean, nothing is going to change (directly) as a result of me and 1000 other people walking a few miles downtown and screaming chants of "Show them what Democracy looks like. This is what Democracy looks like" or "Hey, Ho, Donald Trump has got to go", but it certainly helped my psyche (somewhat) to be a part of it.
If I can find the connector cable, I'll upload some pictures and/or videos from my phone.

The march on Saturday had a much higher turnout than the one that took place on Wednesday night (Saren attended that one, along with about 50 people total) - Vegas can be a little slow on the uptake sometimes.
Saturday's demonstration was posted on Facebook, and the turnout was much more awesome. Before I went, I had been reading thru some of the comments from the deplorables (god, they're EVERYWHERE online), but at the actual event - they weren't really there. The overwhelming majority of feedback the crowd received was positive. The entire march, I think there were maybe 4 pro-Trump assholes. One in a truck who drove past and yelled something about toilet paper. (??); An older (60s, maybe?) white guy who replied to our "Not my president" chants with "He's MY president"; a middle aged white woman (sigh) who told the crowd to "get over it", and another older white man (perhaps 50s) who said, "He won!" (To which I replied, "WE won the popular vote! We outnumber you!!" not my best moment, sure, but jesus christ, this whole thing is so irritating. Donald Trump DID. NOT. WIN.
During the march, a very popular chant that the crowd took up several times was "Not my president". (My sign even read as such.)
After the encounter with the "he's my president" dumbass, I tried (unsuccessfully, for the most part) to get people to change the chant to "Not OUR president." Because it's more inclusive of a chant, and it reinforces the fact that the majority of people did not elect him. And because he isn't our president.
He isn't fit to be ANYBODY's president. And the majority of the people don't want him, or his ideas.
I know it's a very small comfort that that's the truth, especially since it doesn't change the fact that he IS going to be sworn in, but it's been something that has kept me going through some of the harder times this week. The fact of the matter is, Trump and Pence and their ilk are on the losing side of history. The majority of people are opposed to his brand of evil.

I haven't accurately documented the march, and everything that went down that day like I wanted to, but I need to wake up early tomorrow, and I am going to just end this with a few of the videos from the protest (I was able to get them uploaded. Hooray!)