This & that....

Richard Neil Graham

America used to make sense to me.

Now, it seems odd to be "the bad guy" for protesting against:

1. Grabbing a stranger's pussy.

2. Hating people because they're not wealthy and white.

3. Calling for a wall to be built when your ostensible hero, Ronald Reagan, is most famous for saying, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!"

4. In a land celebrated for "freedom," shouting about whom you want to "lock up."

5. Being uneducated and proud.

I am probably considered an "elite intellectual" by those who support Trump, but all I did was go to school (thank you, San Diego State, and professors Mood, Aninger, Bumpus, etc.) and learn everything I could about everything. I have no doubt that Trump knows more about economics than me. I also know that I could defeat him in just about any intellectual endeavor you could name, from Trivial Pursuit to identifying the names of leaders of foreign countries. He's not intelligent. He's belligerent. Words matter.

Keith Olbermann named about 150 of these things, but he gets paid to compile such lists, so I will stop here. I do this because I am proud of America and I despise fascism, Nazis and the KKK.

Sue me, Trump. You may get some money, but you will never break my spirit or steal my soul.

Neal Gabler has written perhaps the most despair-filled view of the election results that I've read so far:

"If there is a single sentence that characterizes the election, it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” That may be what is so terrifying. Who knew that so many tens of millions of white Americans were thinking unconscionable things about their fellow Americans? Who knew that tens of millions of white men felt so emasculated by women and challenged by minorities? Who knew that after years of seeming progress on race and gender, tens of millions of white Americans lived in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to arrive who would legitimize their worst selves and channel them into political power? Perhaps we had been living in a fool’s paradise. Now we aren’t.

This country has survived a civil war, two world wars, and a great depression. There are many who say we will survive this, too. Maybe we will, but we won’t survive unscathed. We know too much about each other to heal. No more can we pretend that we are exceptional or good or progressive or united. We are none of those things. Nor can we pretend that democracy works and that elections have more or less happy endings. Democracy only functions when its participants abide by certain conventions, certain codes of conduct and a respect for the process.

The virus that kills democracy is extremism because extremism disables those codes. Republicans have disrespected the process for decades. They have regarded any Democratic president as illegitimate. They have proudly boasted of preventing popularly elected Democrats from effecting policy and have asserted that only Republicans have the right to determine the nation’s course. They have worked tirelessly to make sure that the government cannot govern and to redefine the purpose of government as prevention rather than effectuation. In short, they haven’t believed in democracy for a long time, and the media never called them out on it."