It is a surreal day today. Chemo-brain is pretty strong right now and I keep remembering a vague thought of last night and I keep needed to verify it and I keep reliving it. Trump is the 45th President of the United States. Despite the flaws and the mistakes, he won fair and square.
Trump's victory really should come as no surprise, but that doesn't mean it doesn't. If one watched the polls, without going into their actual number, one had to notice Clinton's didn't move. That means her support was her support and that was she was going to get and it turns out that the 48% WAS all she got. Trump's numbers went up and down: should have shown us that his was a passion based campaign, and passion runs high. Passion trumps reason, no pun intended.
Clinton was better on paper, but Clinton also, as Rush Limbaugh pointed out last week has her fingerprints all over government for the last 30 years. If you are upset with how the parties have run the nation these last few decades, only one candidate was involved. Hate the wars? Only one candidate voted for them. Hate the economy? Only one candidate was involved in shaping it. Obamacare? Only one candidate helped pass it. Trump had no place in our political history and therefore was clean of our political mess. Better on paper became a liability in this weird year of world elections.
Why did polls fail? Because Trump supporters were belittled to the point that none of them wanted to admit to it in public. Sounds weird, I know, but it is pretty much spot on I feel. Trump's behaviours made supporting him at times seem...I lack the word right now, but I think you get my drift. Anyway, his actions made it so that people didn't want to admit to supporting him. I think the fear of the misogyny label made some fear admitting they just opposed Clinton. I think the news over the last week hadn't factored into the polls yet, and last week was a bad new week for Clinton.
And Clinton was a horrible candidate. I don't think you could have found one with more baggage and with less couth when it comes to dealing with an untrusting public than her. She fed into the mistrust rather than countering it. The more she said "trust me," the more her issues arose to bring her trust into question which resulted in her simply attacking the accusers rather than correcting the accusation.
Did Russia hack various email accounts as a ploy to shape and influence our elections? Probably, but that doesn't answer our concerns over the content of said emails. The more her people attacked the questioners, the more valid the questions appeared to the public.
Here is another simple and sad truth: in 2008 the people voted for change. Obama was an outsider and the outsider status was his appeal to many voters, but he didn't stay an outsider long and while he did change certain things, too many other problems were either expanded or ignored and the people were still waiting for that change. Clinton offered more of the same. Obama said his legacy is attached to Clinton's win. The people looked at the last 8 years and said "no thanks, we'll gamble again on the outsider" and this time they went even more outside.
I hope things work out. I fear the pendulum may have overswung to the right, but I have faith in the America people. We are easily lead temporarily, but we have a strong compass that doesn't let us drift too far off course. The truth is we were going to be uneasy, sick, and scared no matter who won yesterday, so let's just work on working together to keep them in check.
3 comments:
Well said; totally agree . . . I'm with You
You're far from alone. But Trump didn't win fair and square. He never plays by the rules. The truth is out and should become more and more prevelant in the days to come. Just as Trump said, the elections were rigged. By him and Russia for starters. Peace.
He played fair by the rules of the game. I'm not happy about the outcome either, but he didn't cheat. The Russia story is as I said in this post, obviously true because they didn't deny the contents of the emails, just attacked the sources of them. I was personally bothered by both aspects of it and, while I don't like the methods by which they were released, they were released. And she handled it horribly. Hell, I wouldn't even say Trump won so much as Clinton lost. Her arrogance and perceived trust issues cost her something like four million Obama voters. That is a problem.
What we have to do now is work on dealing with the situation we find ourselves in and stop dwelling on what ifs. If all one does is whine and cry preemptively, then nobody will listen when the time comes to scream. Let Trump make his initial mistakes and then react, but all that is happening now is that those thousands of voices are being wasted and written off as poor-losers.
Always be ready to respond, but don't provoke. The greatest danger is backing Trump's ego into a corner where he responds in ways even he doesn't want to and I promise you even Trump's reflection sometimes says "what the fuck did you just do?"
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