Take my $1.37… I want my PBS.

Take my $.46… I am all for federal funding of art programs.

Take my $.46… I love my museums, colleges, and libraries.

Take my $.11… I support developing minority businesses.

Take my $.66… I am for entrepreneurship and innovation.

Take my $1.60… I want us to export more goods overseas.

Take my $0.43… I would like to see more American manufacturing.

Take my $0.88… I think community policing needs vast improvement.

Take my $1.48… I support programs for women.

Take my $1.55… I believe in due process for all.

Take my $0.48… We need a civil rights division in the justice department.

Take my $0.38… I think we need to defend our Mother Earth.

Take my $0.03… I know more work needs to be done for climate change.

Take my $8.95… because we need more sustainable energy.

Take my $2.71… we should reduce our carbon footprint.

If saving these programs means I’m out $22.36 a year, I’m good with contributing my $.07 a day to save American jobs and these federal programs.

[Numbers taken from a report in Time about what the roles of the 17 federal agencies the Orange Douche has threatened and how much they cost the average taxpayer]

One of my favorite true-life parables is the story of Hungarian Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis. In the mid-1800s, Semmelweis worked in a maternity clinic where a large number of women died during childbirth. He believed that the problem was neither the medicine nor their treatments. Semmelweis believed that there were tiny little creatures living on the clinic’s medical instruments that were making the women sick. He tried to tell the people at the hospital that washing their hands and sterilizing their medical tools in a chlorine mixture would stop the spread of disease.

Everyone in the medical profession laughed at Dr. Semmelweis. If these “germs” were making people sick, why hadn’t they heard of them before? More importantly, why couldn’t they see them? Almost every medical professional thought it was a ridiculous theory, but Semmelweis never gave up. He told everyone who would listen about washing hands and sterilizing equipment, but no one listened to him.

When he was 47 years old, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis was committed to an insane asylum, where he died.

Whenever conservative-leaning Caucasians begin listing Barack Obama’s trespasses against America, they don’t get far before they reach the favorite claim of the faction that wants to “make America great again.” Nestled between their accusations of socialism and sympathizing with terrorists—just above charges of Obama’s madrassa education but below his Kenyan birth—is the most frequently recurring charge against Obama and his administration:

Barack Obama made race relations worse in America.

According to his detractors, during Obama’s presidency, racial animus between blacks and whites reached a fever pitch. He presided during the rise of Black Lives Matter. The riots in Ferguson, Mo., happened under his watch. The city of Baltimore burned during an uprising. Beyoncé turned black. Everything was falling apart.

From their perspective, if Obama gets credit for ending two wars, rescuing the country from the brink of economic collapse and rescuing the auto industry, then he should take the blame for the increasing racial tension that spread across the country during his tenure.

They see the constant marches, the side eyes they receive in Wal-Mart parking lots, the Colin Kaepernick protest, the anti-police sentiment and even the natural-hair movement as Obama’s fault, and they are upset about it. Before Obama sashayed his meddling ass into the Oval Office, white men were free to wave their Confederate flags, whisper racist jokes and touch whomever’s hair they damn well wanted.

Here’s the thing: They are probably right. Barack Obama did make race relations worse …

For white people.

Since its inception, black people have known that this country was sick, but America treated its race problem in the same way the white world has treated everything else. It’s why they feel comfortable teaching us that the Roman Empire ruled the world, even while richer, more advanced civilizations thrived around the globe. It’s why your third-grade social studies teacher can tell you that Christopher Columbus “discovered” a land that already had people, governments and even constitutions.

In the great book of rewritten history, white people invented the blind spot and peekaboo. In their eyes, nothing exists until they see it, and if they refuse to acknowledge it—then it doesn’t exist.

If Obama had not signed the Affordable Care Act, killed Osama bin Laden or saved the nation’s economy, the one thing for which he deserves credit is forcing America to confront its ideas about race and racism. He may not have explicitly championed Black Lives Matter or raised a black fist on the White House lawn, but his effect on the psyche of black America is undeniable.

Before the Obama administration, America could bury its head in the sand because black America knew there were no sympathetic ears inside the Bush regime, and Bill Clinton was too busy instituting mandatory minimums, advocating for unequal drug sentencing and ridding the country of “superpredators.” The Reagan administration was … well … the Reagan administration.

Then came Obama. The fact that a black man held the nation’s highest office forced a national self-examination of its sickness—whether it wanted to or not. Obama’s simple presence gave some white people the heebie-jeebies, and when they were confronted with unapologetic blackness, they weren’t just resistant, they were aghast. They couldn’t believe that Negroes would be so ungrateful for centuries of white benevolence that they would bicker about small details like income inequality, an unfair justice system, education disparities and police lynchings.

And it is all Obama’s fault. Caucasians say that Obama ruined race relations in the same way that law-enforcement officers say cellphone cameras ruined policing. They were trying to avoid it, but under Obama, black people kept waving white America’s past in its face. You know how black people are. They love bringing up old shit like prejudice.

And history.

And truth.

They don’t want to talk about it, because it is an icky sordid past to confront, but the only people who will ever be negatively affected by the increasing dialogue about race in America are racists.

Just because wypipo ignored racial tension until 2008 doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. Just like Dr. Semmelweis, black America has been trying to tell them about it for years. We have seen the cause of the cancer, watched it spread and witnessed it snuffing out more black lives than anyone can imagine. We have screamed about the invisible disease at the top of our lungs, but they have laughed at us. They called us crazy. They even tried to blame it on Obama.

Yet they refuse to look at their own filthy hands.

—MICHAEL HARRIOT

KEEPING A RUNNING LIST FOR ALL THOSE “give him a chance” people.
THIS IS NOT NORMAL. THIS IS NOT OK.
Suzan Eraslan has taken up the herculean task of listing all the bonkers things that have happened in and around the Trump presidency. It is important to list these things as they happen so we don’t normalize them.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the DOJ’s Violence Against Women programs.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Minority Business Development Agency.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Economic Development Administration.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the International Trade Administration.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Legal Services Corporation.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the DOJ.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Electricity Deliverability and Energy Reliability.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Fossil Energy.
* On January 20th, 2017, DT ordered all regulatory powers of all federal agencies frozen.
* On January 20th, 2017, DT ordered the National Parks Service to stop using social media after RTing factual, side by side photos of the crowds for the 2009 and 2017 inaugurations.
* On January 20th, 2017, roughly 230 protestors were arrested in DC and face unprecedented felony riot charges. Among them were legal observers, journalists, and medics.
* On January 20th, 2017, a member of the International Workers of the World was shot in the stomach at an anti-fascist protest in Seattle. He remains in critical condition.
* On January 21st, 2017, DT brought a group of 40 cheerleaders to a meeting with the CIA to cheer for him during a speech that consisted almost entirely of framing himself as the victim of dishonest press.
* On January 21st, 2017, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer held a press conference largely to attack the press for accurately reporting the size of attendance at the inaugural festivities, saying that the inauguration had the largest audience of any in history, “period.”
* On January 22nd, 2017, White House advisor Kellyann Conway defended Spicer’s lies as “alternative facts” on national television news.
* On January 22nd, 2017, DT appeared to blow a kiss to director James Comey during a meeting with the FBI, and then opened his arms in a gesture of strange, paternal affection, before hugging him with a pat on the back.
* On January 23rd, 2017, DT reinstated the global gag order, which defunds international organizations that even mention abortion as a medical option.
* On January 23rd, 2017, Spicer said that the US will not tolerate China’s expansion onto islands in the South China Sea, essentially threatening war with China.
* On January 23rd, 2017, DT repeated the lie that 3-5 million people voted “illegally” thus costing him the popular vote.
* On January 23rd, 2017, it was announced that the man who shot the anti-fascist protester in Seattle was released without charges, despite turning himself in.
* On January 24th, 2017, Spicer reiterated the lie that 3-5 million people voted “illegally” thus costing DT the popular vote.
* On January 24th, 2017, DT tweeted a picture from his personal Twitter account of a photo he says depicts the crowd at his inauguration and will hang in the White House press room. The photo is curiously dated January 21st, 2017, the day AFTER the inauguration and the day of the Women’s March, the largest inauguration related protest in history.
* On January 24th, 2017, the EPA was ordered to stop communicating with the public through social media or the press and to freeze all grants and contracts.
* On January 24th, 2017, the USDA was ordered to stop communicating with the public through social media or the press and to stop publishing any papers or research. All communication with the press would also have to be authorized and vetted by the White House.
* On January 24th, 2017, HR7, a bill that would prohibit federal funding not only to abortion service providers, but to any insurance coverage, including Medicaid, that provides abortion coverage, went to the floor of the House for a vote.
* On January 24th, 2017, Director of the Department of Health and Human Service nominee Tom Price characterized federal guidelines on transgender equality as “absurd.”
* On January 24th, 2017, DT ordered the resumption of construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline, while the North Dakota state congress considers a bill that would legalize hitting and killing protestors with cars if they are on roadways.
* On January 24th, 2017, it was discovered that police officers had used confiscated cell phones to search the emails and messages of the 230 demonstrators now facing felony riot charges for protesting on January 20th, including lawyers and journalists whose email accounts contain privileged information of clients and sources.

FROM A HIGH-LEVEL STAFFER TO A SENATOR

 There are two things that all concerned citizens should be doing all the time right now, and they’re by far the most important things.

[If you want to share this, please copy and paste so it goes beyond our mutual friends.]

You should NOT be bothering with online petitions or emailing. The best thing you can do to be heard and get your congressperson to pay attention is to have face-to-face time – if they have townhalls, go to them. Go to their local offices. If you’re in DC, try to find a way to go to an event of theirs. Go to the “mobile offices” that their staff hold periodically (all these times are located on each congressperson’s website). When you go, ask questions. A lot of them. And push for answers. The louder and more vocal and present you can be at those the better.

But those in-person events don’t happen every day. So the absolute most important thing that people should be doing every day is calling.

You should make 6 calls a day: 2 each (DC office and your local office) to your 2 Senators & your 1 Representative.

 The staffer was very clear that any sort of online contact basically gets immediately ignored, and letters pretty much get thrown in the trash (unless you have a particularly strong emotional story – but even then it’s not worth the time it took you to craft that letter).

Calls are what all the congresspeople pay attention to. Every single day, the Senior Staff and the Senator get a report of the 3 most-called-about topics for that day at each of their offices (in DC and local offices), and exactly how many people said what about each of those topics. They’re also sorted by zip code and area code. She said that Republican callers generally outnumber Democrat callers 4-1, and when it’s a particular issue that single-issue-voters pay attention to (like gun control, or planned parenthood funding, etc…), it’s often closer to 11-1, and that’s recently pushed Republican congressmen on the fence to vote with the Republicans. In the last 8 years, Republicans have called, and Democrats haven’t.

PHONE CALL GUIDELINES THAT WORK    –      So when you call:

A) When calling the DC office, ask for the Staff member in charge of whatever you’re calling about (“Hi, I’d like to speak with the staffer in charge of Healthcare, please”) – local offices won’t always have specific ones, but they might. If you get transferred to that person, awesome. If you don’t, that’s ok – ask for their name, and then just keep talking to whoever answered the phone. Don’t leave a message (unless the office doesn’t pick up at all – then you can…but it’s better to talk to the staffer who first answered than leave a message for the specific staffer in charge of your topic).

B) Give them your zip code. They won’t always ask for it, but make sure you give it to them, so they can mark it down. Extra points if you live in a zip code that traditionally votes for them, since they’ll want to make sure they get/keep your vote.

C) If you can make it personal, make it personal. “I voted for you in the last election and I’m worried/happy/whatever” or “I’m a teacher, and I am appalled by Betsy DeVos,” or “as a single mother” or “as a white, middle class woman,” or whatever.

D) Pick 1-2 specific things per day to focus on. Don’t go down a whole list – they’re figuring out what 1-2 topics to mark you down for on their lists. So, focus on 1-2 per day. Ideally something that will be voted on/taken up in the next few days, but it doesn’t really matter – even if there’s not a vote coming up in the next week, call anyway. It’s important that they just keep getting calls.

E) Be clear on what you want – “I’m disappointed that the Senator…” or “I want to thank the Senator for their vote on…” or “I want the Senator to know that voting in _____ way is the wrong decision for our state because…” Don’t leave any ambiguity.

F) They may get to know your voice/get sick of you – it doesn’t matter. The people answering the phones generally turn over every 6 weeks anyway, so even if they’re really sick of you, they’ll be gone in 6 weeks.

From experience since the election: If you hate being on the phone & feel awkward (which is a lot of people) don’t worry about it – there are a bunch of scripts (Indivisible has some, there are lots of others floating around these day). After a few days of calling, it starts to feel a lot more natural. Put the 6 numbers in your phone (all under P – Politician. An example is McCaskill MO, Politician McCaskill DC, Politician Blunt MO, etc…) which makes it really easy to click down the list each day.

In addition: If you live in DC, with no voting representation – what do you do?? I’ve been calling senators on committees who are dealing with nominations. I figure their job is to represent all of us, and where staffers ask for my zip code, I give it to them and politely say D.C. has no senators. (For some I’d like to say, “and also your boss thinks it’s his/her business to f*** with the District’s democratically passed laws.”) It’s not perfect, but it’s better than not calling, and some don’t ask for zip code/location at all.

–by Susan Grigsby (Daily Kos)

Trump’s unexpected Electoral College win has focused attention on the white working-class voters that, it is claimed, the elitist Democratic Party no longer appears to represent. Of course, the Democratic Party has never stopped representing them. We have just never used fear and anger to convince the voters of that representation.

Being Democrats, we will continue our navel gazing and internal strife as we slowly come to terms with the November election results. But we should remember that the Democratic candidate did win the popular vote by a substantial margin and that we continue to represent the white working class, as well as the rest of the American people.

In addition to being accused of elitism, a new meme making the rounds lately claims we lost the election because we think that we are morally and intellectually superior—although it is never made quite clear who we think we are morally and intellectually superior to.

If it is the members of the Republican Party who are proposed to run the government under Donald Trump? Then yes, we clearly are superior.

Let’s examine the evidence. Nominated for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos is totally unaware of the difference between proficiency and growth in standardized testing, as pointed out by Sen. Al Franken. Although not nominated for the position, Franken demonstrably knew more about the issues the secretary would face. And while everyone is aware that she believes guns are needed in schools to protect against possible grizzly bear attacks, some may have missed her initial refusal to admit that the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act trumps state laws.

The current secretary of education since March 2016 is John King. He has spent his adult lifetime involved in education, including service as the commissioner of education for the state of New York prior to joining the federal Department of Education in 2011. Betsy DeVos has no experience in public education, nor have any of her children ever been exposed to it.

Rick Perry, former governor of Texas, has been proposed as secretary of the Department of Energy. That’s a department he claimed he wanted to eliminate during in his 2012 presidential bid—if he could ever remember its name. According to the New York Times report on his nomination:

“If approved by the Senate, he will take over from a secretary, Ernest J. Moniz, who was chairman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology physics department and directed the linear accelerator at M.I.T.’s Laboratory for Nuclear Science. Before Mr. Moniz, the job belonged to Steven Chu, a physicist who won a Nobel Prize.”

For Mr. Moniz, the future of nuclear science has been a lifelong obsession; he spent his early years working at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Mr. Perry studied animal husbandry and led cheers at Texas A&M University.

Mr. Moniz had such deep experience with nuclear weapons that in 2015, President Obama made him a co-negotiator, along with Secretary of State John Kerry, of the Iran nuclear deal.

Donald Trump wants Tom Price to run the Department of Health and Human Services. His apparent qualifications include the ability to shape legislation to benefit the stockholders (including himself) of corporations in the medical field. Unlike Perry or DeVos, he at least has a tangential connection to the field in which he is tagged to advise the president. Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York has asked the SEC to investigate.

The request to investigate Rep. Tom Price, a Georgia Republican, comes after The Wall Street Journal reported last month that he made trades worth more than $300,000 in stocks of biomedical, pharmaceutical and health insurers while serving on the health subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, sponsoring and advocating legislation that potentially could affect those companies’ stock.

In addition to suspected insider trading, he is unalterably opposed to contraception, according to Amanda Marcotte. This despite the fact that wide access to contraception has been credited with the largest drop in abortions since Roe v. Wade.

Price has been quite open about his hostility to contraception. As a member of Congress, he has voted to terminate Title X, a program that subsidizes contraception for low-income women. He voted against a law barring employers from firing women for using contraception. He hates Planned Parenthood and he really hates the federal regulation, under the Affordable Care Act, that requires insurance plans to cover contraception without a copay.

To justify his opposition to insurance coverage for contraception, Price sneeringly told ThinkProgress in 2012, “Bring me one woman who has been left behind” by plans that don’t cover contraception adequately.

Not that the Affordable Care Act is expected to survive the Republican government that was elected in November.

Current Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell has extensive experience in managing large complex organizations, most recently as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Before her most recent federal service, Burwell served as head of the Walmart Foundation, supervising the distribution of $1 billion to help end hunger and empower women around the world.

Before joining the Foundation in 2012, she was President of the Global Development Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington, where she spent 10 years working on some of the world’s most pressing challenges, from vaccinations to children’s health to agricultural development. She also served as the Foundation’s first Chief Operating Officer.

Price, meanwhile, was a physician and a member of Congress.

I watched President Obama’s press conference last week with a great deal of regret, remembering how proud I was during his first one. There was not a single question to which he did not respond in complete sentences and organized paragraphs. His answers were clear and, while often complex, totally spontaneous.

Donald Trump, terrified of the press, is considering removing them from the White House and intends to continue communicating with the American people via social media.

As for being morally superior, I will proudly stand with men and women like the Rev. William Barber of North Carolina, who began the Moral Monday movement to fight back against the Republican agenda of voter suppression in North Carolina. Meanwhile, the Republicans offer us Franklin Graham, a purveyor of hate and intolerance under the flag of Christ.

Their version of morality calls for the wealthy to increase their wealth while millions of children in America go to bed hungry for food and for education. Their morality dictates corporate tax subsidies instead of decent housing, education, and medical care for all Americans. It sees women only as incubators and homemakers. It is a morality that invests in weapons systems rather than roads, bridges, airports, and schools. And it is this morality, this supposed Christian morality, that they want made mandatory.

Perhaps the reason that so many of us appear to think that we are morally and intellectually superior is that we are.

 

[THIS APPEARED AS COMMENTARY IN THE OKLAHOMA GAZETTE. WRITTEN BY A SENIOR MINISTER OF THE MAYFLOWER CONGREGATIONAL UCC CHURCH, ROBIN MEYERS)

Oklahoma was the first state west of the Mississippi to be called for Donald Trump, and what prouder moment could there be for followers of Jesus? If Hollywood designed the perfect candidate to represent the anti-Christ for evangelicals, he would be thrice married, twice divorced, a builder of casinos, a sexual predator (unless the women are ugly), a liar and a man so in love with himself that his fondest wish is to die in his own arms.

In the Jesus spirit of the open table and unbridled compassion for the last and the least, deeply religious Oklahomans joined the majority of Americans in electing a man who mocked a disabled reporter; insulted women for menstruating; invited a foreign power to interfere in our elections; bragged about paying no taxes after losing other people’s money; refused to release his tax returns (which would have revealed how little money he gives to charity); and insulted Mexican immigrants, John McCain and Carly Fiorina — the latter for having a face no one would vote for.

He blamed Bush for 9/11, made lewd remarks about his own daughter and regularly encouraged violence at his political rallies. If the Middle-Eastern Jesus himself came knocking, Trump would deport him. Who could blame the Prince of Peace for saying, “With friends like this, who needs enemies?”

In the 31 years I have been in ministry in Oklahoma City, I have heard Republicans insist that character counts for more than anything, especially as it applies to Bill Clinton. “By your fruits you shall know them” they quote scripture, while sparing us no lurid details about Clinton’s infidelities.

Democrats are all secular humanists, they said, and the problem with America is that not enough people go to church. If we had the Ten Commandments in plain sight, they say, morality and virtue would return to America. Really? If you vote for someone who violated all 10 of them, then obviously something else matters a lot more to you than the religion you are wearing on your sleeve. As for the seven deadly sins, see Donald Trump.

This is the unmasking of evangelical religion in America. It is not, in the end, about character or virtue. It is not about what love does to transform the human heart. It is about power, it is about fear, and Donald Trump tapped into widespread economic frustration and a smoldering rage about the displacement of the working class, especially less-educated white workers. They believe that Trump is the strongman who can save them. He is the first president ever elected who has never held office or served in the military and does not seem to understand why nuclear weapons cannot be used.

He doesn’t go to church; he mocks communion by saying that he “eats those little crackers and drinks those little cups of juice,” and then he boasts about his sexual conquests and calls his opponent a “nasty woman.” We almost elected the first woman president of the United States. We almost sent that unforgettable message to women and girls everywhere. Instead, we elected a sociopath and think he is an answer to prayer.

God help us.

(Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers is senior minister of Mayflower Congregational UCC Church and professor of social justice in the Philosophy Department at Oklahoma City University. | Photo Gazette / file)

This is Trump’s single, overarching message for the nation, and it’s as simple as it is deafening:

“Fuck you, America. I won. I conned you all, and I now am going to do whatever I want. I will obey no rules, laws, whiny ethics committees, popular votes, congressional regulations, media guidelines, conflict-of-interest boundaries, historic precedent. Why should I?

I have no filter, no real plan, no fresh ideas, no crisis management strategy, no moral compass. Who needs it? The presidency is now mine to do with as I please, and I will piss all over it like a dog on your favorite carpet.

Know this now, America: I am not here for you. I am not here for peace, or democracy, or our collective success, or the working classes, or anyone else.

I am here only for revenge and to further expand my own wealth, and the world is my punching bag. Thank you for coming, and you may now all feel free to go to hell.”

Resistance is nigh.

–Mark Morford

This morning, Trump tweeted: “James Clapper called me yesterday to denounce the false and fictitious report that was illegally circulated. Made up, phony facts. Too bad!”

Hello? Clapper didn’t say the report was false or fictitious or contained made-up, phony facts. He only said that the information in the dossier attached to the report wasn’t yet substantiated. 

The big story here has nothing whatever to do with allegations about Russian prostitutes or bribes. The big story – which Trump desperately wants to deflect attention from – is evidence that Trump and/or people working for him met with and colluded with Russian operatives in rigging the 2016 presidential election.

That evidence exists. Intelligence agencies are digging into it. This is the bombshell. After January 20, Dan Coats, the incoming director of national intelligence, will probably stop the investigation. Keep your eye on this. Don’t be deflected by Trump’s ravings.

—Robert Reich

by Chris Brecheen

If you are still trying to convince yourself that a Trump presidency will not be that bad, here is (some of) the cognitive dissonance that exists within that narrative of normalization:

• That a presidential nominee who you praised for not being a typical politician (one who goes back on their promises) will go back on their promises…..but only the ones you don’t like (like cutting YOUR government support or maybe that Muslim registry that DID sound kind of scary). The ones you liked he’ll do. Absolutely.
• That nearly every person who has either lived through or studied Hitler’s rise to power suddenly, all at once, decided to become melodramatic and overwrought. For no reason.
• That he says what he means and you like that. Except for the stuff that you swear you weren’t okay with him saying. You’re not a racist or anything. That was just bluster. But the stuff you agree with wasn’t just bluster; it was totally sincere. You are able to tell exactly which things are bluster and exactly which things he has high integrity about.
• That a guy who lies almost every time his mouth is open was totally telling the truth to you. Totally. And sure he lies all the time, but he’s right about all the stuff you agree with him about. Yep.
• That a presidential nominee who bragged during nationally televised debates about scamming freelance workers and spent twenty-five million to settle a fraud lawsuit can be trusted to know exactly where the water’s edge of “conflict of interest” is between his personal investments and US interests and doesn’t need the slightest oversight.
• That a presidential nominee who bragged during nationally televised debates about scamming freelance workers and spent twenty-five million to settle a fraud lawsuit totally wasn’t saying anything he had to to win so he could defraud YOU.
• That these appointments aren’t terrifying at all. Breathtaking cronyism in a historically uneducated and inexperienced cabinet with a bent towards white supremacy and anti-LGBTQ+ policy is only alarming because everyone on the left is a sore loser.
• That Republican paranoia about shit that Obama never said he would do (like taking away your guns) was justified, but our fear of explicit campaign promises is blowing things out of proportion.
• That Russia hasn’t ever done anything enemy-ish, is absolutely blameless, would never do such a thing, and you should mock everyone who thinks otherwise. Even those seventeen U.S. intelligence agencies. Because what did they ever do.
• That nothing bad ever happened when a president decided not to pay attention to an intelligence report. *cough9/11cough*
• That your vote was all about economics. Not even a teensie weensie bit about race or bigotry. (Even though those “identity politics PC folks” sure had it coming!) Despite the fact that Trump’s tax plan very clearly spelled out that your taxes would be (and will be) going up unless you are a business or in the top 1%. But let’s go with the economy. Absolutely.
• That intelligence agencies are somehow only trustworthy if they are accusing Hillary Clinton of a crime.
• That someone who has called American citizens of the opposition party his “enemies” in a taunt that a twelve year old 4channer would find petulant egged on by a mainstream constituency that is delighted at how much pain and suffering “those fucking coastal elites” are about to endure is somehow going to heal the divisions of our country.
• That the party that once used “pinko commie” as an insult to the left to insinuate that they were in league with Russia is now darned cool with those guys and their curious blend of anti-LGBT, one party, imperialistic oppression.
• That after enduring eight years of birther crap, racism, faux lynchings, literal burning effigies, the rhetoric of taking the country “back,” watching the Tea party rise as a Koch brothers astroturf movement involving a bunch of white dudes in revolutionary war costumes calling the administration of a right leaning Democrat (with an infuriating penchant for compromise) “tyranny,” as well as an unprecedented obstructionism at every single level of government, liberals should just “get over it” because “He won.”
• That the REAL problem is that a group who is trying to get everyone the same rights, achieve equality, listen to others’ lived experiences, and empower those pushed to the margins of our society is lacking empathy. If only we’d learn to build a bridge.
• That in a country where the status quo is already violently unjust towards certain people, an administration that has openly voiced hostility towards these people will make things better.
• That a head of state who chooses not only to ignore a foreign attack by our enemies, but also mocks the sitting president who retaliated with sanctions….then turns around and PRAISES the foreign head of state who almost certainly attacked us…. That THAT guy is going to keep US interests safe.
• That a dude who didn’t realize his tweet calling for a boycott of Apple was going to reveal that it had come from an iPhone somehow knows more about hacking than 17 U.S. intelligence communities and a host of private analysts.
• That a guy who brags about grabbing women by the pussy isn’t sexist and it totally wasn’t even a little sexist to go ahead and vote to make him the most powerful person on Earth.
• Repeat the last point for racism, xenophobia, ableism and every shitty bigoted thing he has said or done. But it totally isn’t even a little bigoted that all this stuff wasn’t a deal breaker, and liberals are just being “hateful” to suggest it.
• That “the least racist person you’ll ever meet” appointed a white supremacist to a new White House position.
• That a person with an ego so frail that they take to twitter at the slightest criticism (be it from SNL portrayals or a Broadway musical with the audacity to hope that all US citizens would gain equal protection) is going to be an effective diplomat, and totally won’t have a nuclear power rattling its saber at him before he’s even sworn in.
• That negative three million votes is a “mandate.”
• That the problem with a widely diverse groups struggling against the bigotry of cis het white male lawmakers to enact policy that will not target and possibly help marginalized groups is that we are “elites.”
• That nuclear proliferation is a big competition and Trump can “win.”
• That the guy who not only has been conspicuously silent about the shocking uptick in hate crimes but has also demanded a list of the federal employees involved in combatting the rise of extremist groups (but won’t say why) isn’t going to be as bad for minorities as he’s being painted, and all “those people” are just making mountains out of molehills.
• That being cheered on by Nazis is not an inauspicious sign.
• That calling Obama racial slurs and racist epithets are just free speech, but pointing out when Trump is lying with facts should be cracked down on because it’s so hateful.
• That someone who hates taxing the rich and hates unions and hates regulations and hates bipartisan cooperation isn’t talking about the social hegemony of cis het white men when he wistfully looks to the past while invoking a promise to make America “great again.”
• That it’s too late to admit you’ve made a mistake and join us in our every effort to #RESIST