Seek the Truth, Face the Facts, Welcome the Results -

Instead of letting that still, small voice nag me half to death, I am gonna look it straight in the eye and try to figure out why this last election bothered me so damn much, and still does.

I've come to a simple conclusion: the thing motivating trump to be our president was not about what he could do for our nation, but quite the opposite. He was motivated by what he could get out of it. What wealth, status, influence and other attributes could he walk away with? He wasn't raised like I was (that's no surprise) but apparently he was raised so totally different than me, and perhaps others, that it put us in a frame of mind that was recently expressed as revulsion and disbelief when he was elected. I was raised to believe one thing about my place in this World and in this Nation: in the span of my life, what can I contribute is vastly more important than what society can do for me. What challenges and obstacles will I overcome as an adult that will help me learn how to reach out and do good in this country, in this world, in this race we call Human? I believe trump was raised in a way that is quite in opposition to that. He appears to be motivated by what he can get out of this world, this nation, his cronies, his spouses and his children. He makes choices based on how he can benefit from being close to a person or group or business.  He was taught to measure success in terms that have to do with the accumulation of wealth, the amount of influence or power a person has, the level of notoriety that person has achieved and sustained. When he comes to the end of his life, will he judge himself a success? Stupid question. Of course he will. When I come to the end of my life, will I judge myself a success? Stupid question. Of course I will. He has a different set of gauges and filters than I do, and that's the fundamental difference between he and I, or his kind of person and my kind. Who's to say one is better than the other??

I'll tell you who - ME!! His kind of person is negative, abusive, abrasive, ignorant, and really repugnant. Why does a portion of our voting public find him acceptable as a political leader? Because they sensed his power, his influence, his (presumed) effectiveness as a leader. They are wrong. He can't be an effective leader because our nation is not founded on playground politics, i.e. the bully gets to keep the ball because he will beat the snot out of you if you try to take it away from him. Our beloved nation is founded on many things and none of them have to do with being a snot to others. Our nation is about opportunities to prove you can make it on your own. Do you know how much grit and determination that takes? I've been trying to be self-sufficient my entire adult life, and I'm much closer to it now than I've ever been. It knocks the wind out me most of the time, but now and then, I catch my breath, I look at my situation with some objectivity, and I'm really effing impressed with myself. In this blasted recession, I've managed to keep an apartment, pay my bills, keep my car on the road, enjoy a couple of hobbies, feed a couple of kats, and have a happy family Christmas every December. How'd I do that? By working my fat ass off every hour I can possibly force myself to do my stress-inducing job, by keeping to a budget no matter how uncomfortable it is, and by continuing to scale that high horrible mountain on my own. Yeah, I know that sounds kinda dramatic, but what I'm trying to help the reader understand is that there is toil & effort behind every GENUINE success. Would trump be able to relate to my story? No chance. He'd have no fecking idea what I'm talking about. His experience of the world is just so extremely different than mine, than yours, than 99.99% of the rest of America. Why would we want someone like that to be an elected public servant that's supposed to be devoted to furthering our nations destiny? I dunno if he can be considered an enemy of The American Dream, but there was a very strong feeling amongst our founding fathers, that an entity who took most of the profit, whether it was financial revenue or other kinds of unearned benefits, was something we must absolutely be freed from and avoid contact with. We were willing to back that up with armed conflict. We'd earned everything we had in our hands. We felt strength because of our efforts to be self-sufficient from the Crown.  We didn't need validation from other countries to go forward with our plans to become a nation unto ourselves. We'd created a nation out of a wilderness, and that was something to be really proud of.

Yes, of course I know this country had prior occupants and the story of how we've treated them is horrific. I'm sorry to say we subjugated fellow human beings much like we'd been subjugated. Regarding slavery - nope, sorry, white folks don't have much akin to that experience. We brought that activity with us from Britain, much like we brought fleas and syphllis. One part of our nation found that acceptable. One part found it abhorrent. We fought a war about it, among other contentious topics. So many of the deepest injuries to our national psyche are to do with discrimination, and racism falls into that category. We need to work on that, my Friends.

We also need to stop treating the male/female gender differently in the workplace, but that's an argument we'll save for another day.

Perhaps we need to revisit the Past for a moment to understand better what needs to be done to go forward into the Future. It's my belief the Founding Fathers made the Constitution and Bill of Rights to be living documents, meaning they moved and changed and echoed the movements and changes our society undergoes. We're a living, breathing, surging culture. We're not static nor are we fixed in the 18th Century economically or socially. We're not stalled, unmoving, halted. Human beings are still around because we are adaptable and flexible. The societies we build must absolutely be that way, too.

If you're brittle, you get broken, says the old saw.

How do we go forward? By putting one foot in front of the other, my Friends. By continuing to learn about our world, we can still the beast that has always been with us, that watches as we bring about our own destruction, sometimes. There's a damn good reason the belief systems of the world talk so much about greed, avarice, envy and emotions like those, that have such a negative effect on us. If god had a sign on his desk, I'm certain it would say, "Stop being a jerk. Be nice to each other, dammit. You're here to learn about the world I made for you, to be good to each other and to yourself. Simple as that."

Simple as that.