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Election, 2016

I have a few letters and memorabilia from when my mother was married to my father.  Thankfully, my dad's mother, Margaret Parsons Apgar, saved everything that was sent to her, as well as carbon copying every letter she wrote back.  Both my mom and dad were prolific letter writers, so their words offer me a glimpse into their lives.  One of the cleverest things my mother did was send out a "BARB WIRE"--a play on her first name, and a telegram--which would update all on what was going on at the moment in her life.  Inevitably, the newsletter would turn to her take on the political goings-on at the time.  Even before I really knew who Richard Nixon was, I was hearing her rage about "Tricky Dick's" policies.

I always feel a sense of pride that Ethan has taken my interest in politics (which ultimately came to me from my Granddad McMillin through my mom) and has run with it.  In fact, I do believe he will be building a career around it.

Now that Inauguration Day, 2017, has come and gone, I wanted to record my thoughts for posterity.  They aren't overly complicated, but I do believe they matter.

At the start of this election, I swore I wouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton.  I had a sense that she was constantly hiding something, or that she was playing to the public for a vote (but not necessarily for what she would actually do in office).  I wanted to hear her say exactly what she felt, and I wanted to believe her.  And I wanted to vote for her simply because she's a woman.  After all, the suffragette movement helped Hillary get where she is today as well as any other woman who wants to have a vote.

However, I couldn't see that in her, and I swore I wouldn't vote for her.  Despite being a registered Democrat, I was determined to vote Republican.  I figured that after eight long years, the GOP would be able to find someone who would not only halt the hemorrhaging of social spending, but who would have a good, moral standing and who would represent some of my ethical values better than the Obama administration has done.

Don't get me wrong.  I am still a Democrat.  I believe in the party.  And I do believe that President Obama will go down as one of the greatest presidents ever.  I admire him for so many things he did in office, not the least of which was him being able to pull the United States out of a financial recession that George W. Bush (and his deregulation of banks) put us in.  But liberalism was becoming just a bit too liberal for me, and I needed to take a break.

I believed in Marco Rubio, and when he wasn't winning, I figured Ted Cruz would be an okay replacement (although I had many of the same reservations about him that I had about Hillary Clinton).  However, the American people (and the Republicans specifically) chose Donald Trump as their candidate of choice.

In the beginning, I thought I might be able to get behind Trump, because he was going to slow down a lot of things that were happening rather fast in this country:  legalizing gay marriage and immigration were a couple that hit home for me.  However, being the political junkie that I am, and remembering the fiasco that was Ronald Reagan's White House (a non-political man filling a political seat), I couldn't understand why anyone would want a corrupt, crude, womanizing businessman as president.

I went along for the ride with the press.  I believed that the American people would see the idiocy of the idea of Trump for president.  I believed that when they really found out who he was, they would choose to vote for someone else.  Anyone else.  And when his vile morality and harassment of women was revealed in magazine articles and newspapers, I just knew in my heart of hearts that people wouldn't possibly think he could be the statesman this country deserves.

So I took the lesser of two evils.  I voted for Hillary Clinton.

If nothing else, Hillary was intelligent.  She had years of political experience.  She had given a large part of her life to public service.  She understood the workings of Washington.  And if I was comparing apples to apples, I trusted Trump less than I trusted her.

And in a complete turn of events, Trump was elected President of the United States.

I was in a state of disbelief for several days.  I cried through Hillary Clinton's concession speech.  And in all honesty, it took me two months to forgive my husband for voting for a womanizer.

In my mind, Trump hasn't disappointed.  He's been just as vulgar, foul, and stupid as I thought he would be.  And once again, I thought the American people would see their mistake.  In fact, his inauguration speech made me sick.  It was divisive and rude to all presidents who came before him.  And the press could sense it, and voiced perfectly my feelings.

However, I read just yesterday that the majority of Americans were pleased with his speech.

Pleased.

And it's here that I realized that it wasn't Trump who was letting me down.  It was my fellow Americans.  By voting for Trump, we have shown the world that the majority of us believes in racism.  We believe in oppressing women.  We believe in showing disrespect to others who don't look like us, speak like us, or act like us.  In short, we believe in dishonest, power-hungry, white men who reward those who pay them millions of dollars.

It's disheartening to say the least.

In less than a week, Trump has frozen federal hiring (better look somewhere else for a job, Ethan), appointed a woman who has no experience in education or in banking as Education Secretary, and has signed an executive order to build a pipeline through ancient burial lands of the Dakotas.  And that's just days.  I worry about the next four years.

I hope that at some point Trump's actions provide the reflection needed for the majority of American people.  I hope they see through him how narrow-minded and selfish they have become.  And I hope that in four years we will have a better set of candidates from which to choose.  

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