Remember: They’re the A**holes – How to Survive Holidays with Your Tr*mp-Loving Family

The Cheeto Hitler-in-Chief-Elect didn’t win the popular vote, but he’s quite popular with ISIS and various bits of the American electorate: neo-Nazis, the Klan, your relatives…

In the past, we’ve often stayed silent to keep the peace when various aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, etc. have spouted racist nonsense. We’ve agreed to disagree about politics. We’ve let things pass.

Well, white folk, we can’t do that anymore. Letting it slide is part of how we got here.

So, when you go home this holiday season and your family passes the praise for Chitler* along with the gravy, remember: you’re not the asshole for pushing back. They’re the assholes for bringing it up to begin with. And they are very much assholes for voting for someone who wants to dismantle American democracy and rob the country. And before you get all sympathetic and think they’re victims, just remember that signs this shitheel’s a con man were everywhere for literal decades, and there’s no damned excuse for not knowing exactly what he is. He just had to settle a lawsuit over his fraudulent university, for fuck’s sake. There are no victims here. Just willing dupes.

With that in mind, here’s a brief guide to surviving the holidays with Chitler-loving relatives, and how to push back against their isms and bigotry. Continue reading “Remember: They’re the A**holes – How to Survive Holidays with Your Tr*mp-Loving Family”

Remember: They’re the A**holes – How to Survive Holidays with Your Tr*mp-Loving Family
{advertisement}

Regrouping

The shock is wearing off. The despair is still there, but anger is quickly overtaking it. Determination is stirring. It’s time.

This blog started during the latter years of the Bush regime. It started as a political blog, where a newborn liberal catalogued the outrages and tried to do her part to fight them.

When Obama became President of the United States, I was able to breathe a sigh of relief, and turn to other things. It’s been a nice eight years, not having to be a political blogger. I had time to become a geology writer. I got settled into my atheism, and learned a few things about social justice, and became a feminist. I tried writing full time, and got some books written. I worked on others, including books on Mount St. Helens, which I haven’t had a chance to finish. I delved into the horrifying world of creationists textbooks. I explored the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints and their abusive world. I was free to follow a lot of different passions.

That’s over, now. Continue reading “Regrouping”

Regrouping

You Wanted to Know How Fascism Wins? Look In the Mirror

Donald Trump won the election, but he is not my president. George W. Bush was. Much as I hated him, much as I thought he was the worst thing that had happened to America in generations, at least he was a properly-elected (the second time), career politician who had some idea of how the republic worked and some shred of decency remaining.

Trump is none of those things.

I would not call Hitler Mark II my president. I will not call him president of my country. And if the Tea Party Republicans have shown me anything, it’s that democracy in this country is dead at the national level, and at many places at the local level, and that fire is needed to fight fire.

Right now, I’m in despair and devastated and staring into a future I doubt I can survive. But I am white and cis and hetero, and I will wield those privileges in defense of those less powerful than me for all I am worth. I live on the blue side of a blue state, and I will use that position to protect everyone I can.

Friends I love are going to die.

The things that were keeping them alive will be gutted.

Bigots who despise them have been emboldened enough to murder them without a twinge of conscience.

And you did that to them.

White folk. You did this. Cis folk. You did this. Bernie-or-busters, third party voters, people who didn’t vote because you couldn’t be arsed, people who thought all candidates were the same, people who voted for Trump because you’re either too white or too sexist or too racist or too selfish or too all-of-the-above to think it through, you did this. It’s all on you.

Those of you who thought racism was over and so didn’t make a peep when the Voting Rights Act got gutted, this is on you.

You ask how fascism rises. Look in the fucking mirror. Look. Look at yourself.

That is how.

You are the reason this happened.

So I will not be kind to you. I won’t be gracious in defeat. I won’t let bygones be bygones. I will absolutely let political differences end friendships, because you just voted to watch the world burn. You voted to murder the people I love. This isn’t the bullshit faux persecution that religious right cis straight white people whine about. This is queer folk, and trans folk, and disabled folk, and colored folk, and immigrant folk, and refugee folk, and poor folk, who will all die because you didn’t want to give up your dreams of domination.

I always wondered. I wondered how this happens. I wondered how the ordinary people chose good or evil. I don’t wonder anymore, because I am living it.

So.

If you voted for Trump, understand that I hold you beneath contempt. If you suffer because of what you’ve unleashed, I will feel pity for you, but understand that you brought it on yourself. If you voted for Trump, we are through. You have no place in my life. You are vile. You’re beneath contempt. I never want to see you. I never want to speak to you. I want you out of my life, permanently. I will not seek to take away your rights, but I hope that this decision ends up haunting you. I hope you end up unable to sleep at night. You shouldn’t be able to rest easy after what you have done.

If you voted for Trump, you are not now and never were a friend of mine. Until you show your remorse for that vote and do everything in your power to reverse the damage, you are not someone I can count as a neighbor, much less a friend.

*** Continue reading “You Wanted to Know How Fascism Wins? Look In the Mirror”

You Wanted to Know How Fascism Wins? Look In the Mirror

Dear Americans: VOTE

There won’t be normal blogging this week because I am godsdamned terrified.

I’m haunted by Brexit (CN: casual ableism). Remember how folks in Great Britain thought that staying in the European Union was a sure thing, so they either didn’t vote, or voted NO as a joke or protest, thinking they were safe – and next thing they knew, they were staring down a wrecked economy and emboldened racists? Yeah. That could happen here.

Don’t believe that Trump losing is such a sure thing that you don’t have to bother voting. Don’t believe it’s such a sure thing that you can safely vote for a third party candidate. Because there’s never a sure thing until the last vote is counted.

Vote.

Vote because we don’t only need to defeat Trump, we need to crush him and all he stands for. If we’re to have a hope of rescuing this country from the white supremacists and militias and all the other deplorables who want to burn it all down, we need to vote in such numbers that it sends a clear message to politicians who want to harness that bigotry: they are the ones who will burn. That strategy of appealing to racists and bigots and misogynists needs to fail so spectacularly that they don’t attempt it again for generations.

Vote, because if we’re going to stop global warming, we need people in office who actually believe it’s happening.

Vote, because we need to put as many progressives in power as we can, and where we can’t get the progressives we want right away, we at least get someone who leans far enough to the left to help pull us in the right direction for next time.

Vote, because we need someone with a solid liberal voting record sitting in the Oval Office, and that person is Hillary Clinton.

Vote, because the next president will decide whether the Supreme Court leans liberal or conservative, and the effects of that will be felt for decades to come. The damage a conservative court could do would not be undone for generations. Continue reading “Dear Americans: VOTE”

Dear Americans: VOTE