Yesterday, I woke up at 5:30, dry heaved, got to the hospital and staggered around, white as a ghost, trying not to think.
When I did think, I thought of the soldiers in my family. The Union Major, wounded at Gettysburg, who refused to have his leg amputated and was later eulogized by Oliver Wendell Holmes. The veterans of World War I. The South Pacific. Vietnam. The Cold War. I thought about how honorably and professionally they conducted themselves (bravery just being a part of professionalism). I thought about our military, how its personnel have conducted themselves with such restraint and professionalism under rules of engagement more stringent than any governing domestic police force use, and how these professionals will come under the command of a vindictive child with financial obligations to foreign powers and there's not a goddamn thing they can do about it because they're good professional soldiers and they respect the chain of command. I thought about them having to raise a glass to this abominable embarrassment.
I thought about the women in my family, and how they must feel about a man that treats and speaks of women like Trump defeating a woman who was infinitely better for the job. I thought about the poor women who will have to choose between chastity and childbirth going forward.
I thought about ways to avoid televisions. I didn't think about how the news media had vigorously maintained a false equivalence between Trump and Clinton and acted in every way for their financial interests. I had no desire to read the news, to read some studiously detached analysis as if nothing happened yesterday and the NYT didn't have anything to do with it.
The only thing I hoped for in a moment of involuntary and misguided reflection was that, if it came down to it and the thought police came after me, I could die fighting rather than in acquiescence.
Today, there is some hope.
I have hope that there will be another election in 4 years. That Elizabeth Warren will run for President. That she will not be hampered by the juvenile sanctimony, partisanship and gullibility that led so many to abdicate their civic responsibility to choose a President despite showing up at the polls by either voting 3rd party or not voting for President at all.
I have hope that the CIA or other shadow powers will not let Trump dismantle checks on Russia that are vital to the stability of Europe. I have hopes that the groups oppressed by the most authoritarian elements of domestic law enforcement will be motivated to turn out to the polls. I hope that those of us not so oppressed will stand up for those who are in the mean time. I have hopes that John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy will not let the Supreme Court turn into an authoritarian or theocratic rubber stamp. I have hope that we will withstand the tide of authoritarianism and theocracy that will wash over us the next four years, that this nation will have a new birth of civic engagement to counter this tide, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this land.
