The Uncontrollable Grief We Feel

2017

“President Pussygrabber,”

GRR Martin wrote after the results of the 2016 presidential election came in.

Trump was the least qualified candidate ever nominated by a major party for the presidency. Come January, he will become the worst president in American history, and a dangerously unstable player on the world stage… Over the next four years, our problems are going to get much, much worse.

In a chilling summation ? for anyone who’s spent time in the brutal, politically precarious “Game of Thrones” world dreamed up by Martin ? he hearkened back to one of his own most iconic fictional lines.

This time, though, it wasn’t a fantasy tale.
“Winter is coming,” he concluded.

“I told you so.”

A Facebook Member’s Confession:
Bruce Lindner on Facebook:
I have a confession to make. I haven’t been a very happy camper lately. Every so often, the reality of November 8th, 2016 comes crashing down on me, and it makes me wish I was of some nationality other than an American. ANYTHING other than an American. I’m embarrassed to be an American now. Reading the news every day is tantamount to slow torture. Seeing the disingenuous smirk on #KellyAnneConjob’s face and hearing her reshape facts whenever I turn on my television is literally bad for my health. My once semi-weekly nosebleeds have become a daily nuisance since November.
I think the half of America that didn’t vote for Trump—and yes, I’ll say it; the *smarter* half—is experiencing a kind of PTSD, myself included. The source of that traumatic stress doesn’t stem from just losing an election per se, but from being cursed with the prescience to envision where that defeat is going to take us. They ARE going to hack away at ObamaCare. They ARE going to install jurists whose main mission is to overturn Roe vs Wade. They ARE going to put a man at the helm of the Environmental Protection Agency who doesn’t give a shit about protecting the environment. They ARE going to make an old school southern racist the chief law enforcement official in the land. Because We the People empowered an utterly unqualified creature to make these decisions.
No matter how I try to distract myself from these facts (music works, but only temporarily), reality circles back around and slaps me upside the head. I turned on the radio before I went to bed last night and I heard the voice of Mitch McConnell. He was warning Democrats against blocking the incoming administration’s Supreme Court nominees. “The American people won’t tolerate that sort of political obstruction.” Let that sink in. I thought to myself; should I buy a plane ticket to Washington, find McConnell’s office and beat him to a pulp with a baseball bat, or should I listen to some old Stephen Stills and try to relax? I opted for the latter. This time.
Fascism has come to America. Right-wing extremists will soon be in control of all three branches of government. A man who doesn’t believe in science, who picks petty squabbles with anyone and everyone–including our own intelligence services, who lives in a Fox News bubble, is about to become the most powerful person on Earth. This is NOT the Nixon crew. Nor is it the Reagan crew or the Bush 43 crew. It’s finally dawned on me why he didn’t offer Sarah Palin a cabinet position: She would have made the rest of them look bad. This bunch might as well be of a different species altogether. The world trembles. Beginning with me.
For the sake of my own sanity, I’m going to try to disengage myself somewhat. Yes, I’ll always be a politics junkie, and yes, I’ll still offer my 2¢ worth from time to time. But we’ve truly entered a period of unenlightenment, and I refuse to let it destroy my otherwise sunny disposition. And I also refuse to get into debates with my fellow liberals over inconsequential issues such as what their financial motive might be or theoretical political scenarios.
Who the hell CARES?
At the end of the day, what matters to me are the ramifications of the election of 2016: the overturning of healthcare for 20M Americans, the rights of women to make their own informed healthcare choices being revoked, tax policies that favors the draft beer folks rather than the Dom Pérignon set, sane and effective strategies for dealing with nuclear-armed rogue states such as North Korea, etc., and oh yes… maybe protecting the planet itself from a man-made apocalypse.
I’m not optimistic for the future. The only scenario I can envision that brings me any hope at all, would be if he does something so outrageous, SO stupid… that it has immediate and catastrophic consequences upon the lives of the fools who made this nightmare a reality … that they might WAKE UP and make a sharp U-turn in 2018. But that’s a long-shot fantasy. We Americans aren’t that bright.
Back to my music.https://www.facebook.com/macbruce/posts/10154755911866145

~~~~~~~~~

Dear Bruce your “confession” brought a deep sadness to my being. I believe it’s a ubiquitous feeling that anyone who considers their thoughts to be rational will encounter.

I empathize completely and my daily routines like yours, have become so taxed with the idea that a monster is now in charge of every bit of our wellbeing even to the air we breathe and tears of sadness and fear are waiting, beyond my control at the slightest thought of what this imbecile might unleash upon us, at any given moment.

I did a Google search to see if anyone who feels this pain equally and is good with words as you are, may have written something we can absorb to lessen our grief… “OK Google, How will America stay sane in Trump world” and Google gave me this link: Will Donald Trump destroy America? Click Link: 
Upon reading the few paragraphs I excerpted (below) from the article, I now feel even more anxiety and know there’s no one who can ease our fear. We are in for one horrible cookie crumble and I believe, we’re going to experience a stunning test to the documentation the founding fathers labored so diligently to create… one of which a new born nation shall base its laws upon, a nation that we-the-people are ALL citizens of, and only time will tell if or how long this Constitutional Document will survive.
"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth"
Should be changed to,
"Damned the ignorant, for they have inherited the earth" 

thinkingblue

Excerpted from:

What did the Founding Fathers want for America?

The Founding Fathers were a revolutionary group, diverse in their professions and yet unified in their goal: American liberty.
They understood that the citizens should have a say in their government and that the government only derives its legitimate power from the consent of the governed.
When Thomas Jefferson penned those timeless, eloquent words of freedom in the Declaration of Independence it sent political shock waves around the world that continue to reverberate in the minds of revolutionaries everywhere.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
A challenge was issued that kings did not automatically have supreme authority.
Rights come from Nature’s God and it was time for men to rise up to secure these rights at any cost because it was the right thing to do.

~
Excerpt From: Will Donald Trump Destroy America? He (Trump) makes a staggering 4,000 appointments, staffing the entire top layer of government – all owing their jobs and total loyalty to him. So, no, there will be no civil service to stop Donald Trump. They will be Trump’s servants. (It’s said that the military will behave in the same way: they will not want to be seen resisting democratically elected, civilian power.)
In other words, Trump will have enormous power from inauguration day on 20 January 2017. He can build his border wall if he wants to – and, so memorable was the promise, the political penalty for not doing so will be enormous. But he can do much, much more besides.
On day one, he can – at the stroke of a pen – undo much of the Obama legacy. Trump has had a team of aides draw up what they call the First Day Project, a series of executive orders signed by Obama that Trump could overturn with his signature before he has got his feet under the desk. Among the measures they have targeted for repeal are: the Paris agreement on climate change, the Syrian refugee programme and the rules demanding checks on the background of someone seeking to buy a gun. By the end of that first day, America would already be a changed country.
Once work starts on the border wall, Trump’s most vociferous supporters will demand action on the president-elect’s other signature proposal: the deportation of those migrants. With Republican control of the House and Senate, he will have no excuses for inaction or delay. On this, too, there has been some advance work. One thinktank envisages a force of 90,000 “apprehension personnel”, equipped to make raids on farms, restaurants and building sites, rooting out illegal immigrants. As Osnos reported: “Thousands of chartered buses (54 seats on average) and planes (which can accommodate 135) would carry deportees to the border or to their home countries.” Others have talked of putting these unwanted people on trains and expelling them – a method that evokes the darkest chapter in European history.
In the meantime, Trump could work on his ban on Muslims entering the US. The constitution might strike that down as discrimination on grounds of religion, but it would not be too hard to refashion it. Indeed, Trump has spoken of banning arrivals from countries associated with “Islamic terrorism”, which may be an effective workaround. And all the while, Trump would be shredding the legacy of America’s first black president, abolishing Obamacare which gave millions health insurance.
But there is another promise Trump will want to implement. It came during the TV debates when Trump pledged that, if he won, he would put Hillary Clinton in jail over her use of a private email server as secretary of state. He can’t do that directly, but he could steer his Justice Department to pursue her, perhaps via a special prosecutor. Who would stop him doing that? His base will demand nothing less: their cries of “Lock her up!” are still ringing. (The only thing that might stay his hand is if he calculates that the threat of prosecution provides useful leverage, a sword to hang over the heads of the Clintons, to ensure they keep quiet and out of his way.)
So this is the country that Trump – unshackled and unbound – can forge, starting three months from now. Oblivious to the environment, hostile to migrants, snarling towards Muslims and seeking to roll back rights that took decades to secure. It would be a country that saw the constitution not as its greatest gift, but as an obstacle to overcome. It would see diversity not as a strength, but as a fact to be tolerated, at best. And anyone objecting to any of this would find the big institutions, all three branches of government, arrayed against them. RIP America? It certainly might feel that way.
For what we saw in the astonishingly ugly campaign fought by Donald Trumpwould be only an inkling of what is to follow. Or, as one senior Democrat put it to me: “The horror show has not even started. This is just the overture.”