What Have We Done?

Well - waking up this morning and reading the election news was like dashing into a shower of ice water. Extremely unpleasant. The nation will survive, but the financial markets will probably tank. The thing that I fear the most is now an open wound - the filling of open slots on the Supreme Court and the abrogation of personal rights that I've fought so hard to achieve such as gay marriage and abortion rights. Those adjudicated personal freedoms, the right to love and marry the right person indeterminate of their sex, and to have the freedom to end a pregnancy if wanted/needed - those are causes that are foundations of my personal beliefs. The fear that they would be taken away through new people slotted into the Supreme Court, well, that's why I voted for Hillary. I suddenly wish that I lived in a different country. Canada, maybe.

Apparently Hillary Clinton conceded in an early morning
phone call to Donald Trump. This may very well be the
beginning of the end of our democracy. 

My nation is deeply divided - this was a hard fought and very close battle that brought out record numbers of voters. Most of the pundits and predictions were wrong. They thought the rhetoric and basic personal undesirability of Trump would cause people to vote Democratic. But this nation wants change. We're living in an industrial machine that is rusted, we're a people where the middle class is a disappearing group, and we're a nation where the dividing lines between those who have and those who have not are becoming impassible wastelands instead of sidewalks to be crossed.

Are you looking for an inciteful article about why Donald
Trump would win this election? Michael Moore wrote
a very readable article that was right on the money.
  Follow the link and read for yourself. 

So, I fear we just elected Darth Vadar. Along with a Republican congress, he might be able to affect some real changes that will take decades to rescind and revise. I've been fairly insular in the past and now am looking for my shell to pull over myself once more. Retirement, something that I was really looking forward to in a few years, may have just become a pipe dream for me. I really need my pool today - need to work off some of this shock and depression. I'm suddenly glad that I'm as old as I am, I won't have to live in the aftereffects of a Trump presidency for as long as many of my much younger friends.