My thoughts on the 2016 U.S. presidential elections
Well now.
As I've written many times on this LJ, my mom has taught my siblings and I something that I'd like to think served us well. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
But while I didn't believe that Clinton had the election in the bag, I never seriously contemplated the possibility that Trump might actually win.
But that possibility began staring me in the face right around the time Florida was called for Trump.
Going through cancer changed something in me. It taught me that, sometimes, there are no last-minute reprieves. No miracles. Sometimes, life hands you a shit sandwich, and hoping it would vanish wouldn't make it vanish any faster. Things are the way things are, and you just have to deal with it.
Part of me thinks back to what it was like during the eight years of George W. Bush. Between the ramp-up the Iraq War and I would say around 2006 or so, it felt like the world (or at least the America) has gone insane, and that there was little one could do to turn the tide. On one hand... we survived this. I mean, sure, the Bush Administration policies threw the fuel into the fire that turned into the collapse of the housing bubble, but the world didn't end. America didn't end.
On the other hand - thing is, we don't actually know what to expect from the Trump administration. The man has a record of lying, changing his positions on the fly and having little respect for the party orthodoxy, or political processes, or any kind of business whatsoever. We are not really sure what the Republican-dominated Congress would do. It might check some of Trump's worst excesses, or they might not (which leads us back to the whole "we don't really know what Trump would do" thing).
Whatever happens, the fact that he has no respect for media, that he's thin-skinned and takes every little slight personally, certainly isn't encouraging.
We've entered a scary world where political conventional wisdom no longer seems to apply. And where polling has been called into serious question. It was already called into question during Brexit, and the UK parliamentary election that preceded it, but it hasn't failed this spectacularly in the United States.
My brother, vladiatorr, is angry. rowandoll and his husband are scared. CC is scared. And I imagine so are a lot of people in this neighborhood (as I've written before, i live in a place where Muslims and refugees of many stripes aren't exactly uncommon).
I might have some more thoughts about this later today, after I had a chance to catch some sleep, but I thought it was important to capture some of my thoughts now, while they're still fresh. For historical record, if nothing else.
This morning, the Chicago City Council is going to hold what was originally supposed to be a perfectly ordinary meeting.
We'll see what happens.
As I've written many times on this LJ, my mom has taught my siblings and I something that I'd like to think served us well. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
But while I didn't believe that Clinton had the election in the bag, I never seriously contemplated the possibility that Trump might actually win.
But that possibility began staring me in the face right around the time Florida was called for Trump.
Going through cancer changed something in me. It taught me that, sometimes, there are no last-minute reprieves. No miracles. Sometimes, life hands you a shit sandwich, and hoping it would vanish wouldn't make it vanish any faster. Things are the way things are, and you just have to deal with it.
Part of me thinks back to what it was like during the eight years of George W. Bush. Between the ramp-up the Iraq War and I would say around 2006 or so, it felt like the world (or at least the America) has gone insane, and that there was little one could do to turn the tide. On one hand... we survived this. I mean, sure, the Bush Administration policies threw the fuel into the fire that turned into the collapse of the housing bubble, but the world didn't end. America didn't end.
On the other hand - thing is, we don't actually know what to expect from the Trump administration. The man has a record of lying, changing his positions on the fly and having little respect for the party orthodoxy, or political processes, or any kind of business whatsoever. We are not really sure what the Republican-dominated Congress would do. It might check some of Trump's worst excesses, or they might not (which leads us back to the whole "we don't really know what Trump would do" thing).
Whatever happens, the fact that he has no respect for media, that he's thin-skinned and takes every little slight personally, certainly isn't encouraging.
We've entered a scary world where political conventional wisdom no longer seems to apply. And where polling has been called into serious question. It was already called into question during Brexit, and the UK parliamentary election that preceded it, but it hasn't failed this spectacularly in the United States.
My brother, vladiatorr, is angry. rowandoll and his husband are scared. CC is scared. And I imagine so are a lot of people in this neighborhood (as I've written before, i live in a place where Muslims and refugees of many stripes aren't exactly uncommon).
I might have some more thoughts about this later today, after I had a chance to catch some sleep, but I thought it was important to capture some of my thoughts now, while they're still fresh. For historical record, if nothing else.
This morning, the Chicago City Council is going to hold what was originally supposed to be a perfectly ordinary meeting.
We'll see what happens.