The cold rain continued into the dawn, which was lost in clouds. Apparently resisting President Obama's optimistic prediction, the sun did not seem to rise around here the morning after the election.
My family and most of my friends are devastated. Mr. Trump and his ilk stand against almost everything we believe and hold true, beginning with the most basic respect for women.
Maybe I didn't do enough to stop him and to assure Hillary Clinton's election. Maybe guilt is part of the reason I feel devastated. I expressed my opinions in this blog, and in numerous encounters via Facebook. I talked with friends when I was comfortable doing so, but confess I often avoided confrontations. I refused invitations to canvass door-to-door, in part because I harbored some misgivings about Mrs. Clinton and did not feel I could live up to the expectations of those who'd want me to defend her. But maybe I should have put myself outside my comfort zone for the sake of the greater good. Anyway, I probably shirked my responsibilities as a citizen, and now I regret it, even knowing that more activity on my part would not likely have changed the outcome.
Some Facebook friends whom I am quite sure voted for Mr. Trump are now advising those of us who are continuing to lament his election to accept the results and stop talking about it on Facebook (or anywhere else, I suppose). This, after they have been stuffing my feed with anti-Clinton and anti-Obama trash talk for months, much of which has attracted the most vile of responses from haters and racists.
Several years ago I served a church that was deeply divided. The people who held the power there kept asserting their right to that power and suggesting that the dissenters should accept the status quo and "be reconciled" to them. By which they meant, Get over it. See things our way.
The dissenters didn't do as they were told, and most of them finally ended up leaving that church.
I cannot and will not leave this country. My father's family came here in the middle of the 18th century, and my mother's immigrated in the early 20th. This is my homeland.
And Donald Trump will be my president. I am not a he's "not my president" guy. If he's "not my president" he doesn't have to pay attention to me. He will be my President, and our President, and we who cannot accept his vision of our nation need to keep his feet to our fire.
The sun is shining over Orange Village this Thursday morning. Darkness will not prevail. Let's make sure of that.
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