This is not the first Trump-elect post I’ve written. The first, which urged resolve, got pushed back to tomorrow. After I wrote it and tried unsuccessfully to sleep, my resolve crumbled and the anger came through. So this is the angry post.
It’s not okay.
It’s not the end. It’s not a calamity (yet). It’s not the end of the Republic.
But it’s not okay.
A plurality of the American electorate has embraced a radical xenophobic nationalist who openly disdains racial minorities and people with disabilities and who boasts of assaulting women.
That’s not okay.
It’s also not okay that he has zero experience leading public institutions and has expounded barely a single concrete policy proposal; nor that he hid his financial records from the public, something no modern Presidential candidate has done; nor that he has promised to prosecute his political foes.
Not okay, not okay, not okay.
But back to the first part, the xenophobia and misogyny. Mostly the misogyny. My wife, a feminist from birth and a badass super professional, sobbed herself to sleep tonight, because when our eight year-old daughter awakes in a few hours she will face heartbreak like she’s never known; she watched the debates–she heard the things Trump said about women–and she went to bed certain that there weren’t enough Americans who would tolerate, much less vote for, such a person for him to become President. It falls to us to tell her she was wrong about that, that we were wrong, that many, many people were wrong about who this country is.
That part’s actually okay. I can say I was wrong. She needs to learn the world isn’t what you think when you’re in the third grade (I was her age when the Challenger exploded, and that event helpfully altered my view of my country and the cost of its achievement). She can see her parents on the losing side of something. All of that is okay.
But it’s not okay that today over half her compatriots have thrown in with a man who calls women “fat” and “ugly” and, when they accuse him of assault, not attractive enough to merit the offense. It’s not okay that the country she and her fellow third grade schoolgirls are inheriting is one where millions upon millions of citizens cast their lot with such a man.
It’s just not okay.
YoRocko! 
No. it is not OK. “How shall we then live?”
Rocky, last night I just kept thinking how grateful I was that J is too little to understand what happened. May God be with your family when you talk to Laura.
It is tough bringing a daughter into the world knowing that she could potentially be thought of as less than her male peers. It is terrifying to know that her aunts, uncles, neighbors, service providers, etc. have all thought so little of her that they voted this person into power.
She asked, “Why did we elect a jerk?”
Thank you for this. It isn’t okay.
I am sad for those of us who voted for Hillary and lost, but am even sadder for those who have personal moral codes of ethics that have sunk so low as to cause them to elect Donald Trump as their president and world wide representative.