The New World Disorder - continued

Les Miserables

Do you hear the people sing?

Singing the song of angry men?

It is the music of the people

Who will not be slaves again!

When the beating of your heart

Echoes the beating of the drums

There is a life about to start

When tomorrow comes.

Combeferre:

Will you join in our crusade?

Who will be strong and stand with me?

Beyond the barricade

Is there a world you long to see?

Then join in the fight

That will give you the right to be free!

George Takei: They interned my family. Don’t let them do it to Muslims

Special to The Washington Post

First Published Nov 18 2016 02:30PM

There is dangerous talk these days by those who have the ear of some at the highest levels of government. Earlier this week, Carl Higbie, an outspoken Trump surrogate and co-chair of Great America PAC, gave an interview with Megyn Kelly of Fox News. They were discussing the notion of a national Muslim registry, a controversial part of the Trump administration's national security plans, when Higbie dropped a bombshell: "We did it during World War II with Japanese, which, you know, call it what you will," he said.

Was he really citing the Japanese American internment, Kelly wanted to know, as grounds for treating Muslims the same way today? Higbie responded that he wasn't saying we should return to putting people in camps. But then he added, "There is precedent for it."

Stop and consider these words. The internment was a dark chapter of American history, in which 120,000 people, including me and my family, lost our homes, our livelihoods, and our freedoms because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. Higbie speaks of the internment in the abstract, as a "precedent" or a policy, ignoring the true human tragedy that occurred.

I was just a child of 5 when we were forced at gunpoint from our home and sent first to live in a horse stable at a local race track, a family of five crammed into a single smelly stall. It was a devastating blow to my parents, who had worked so hard to buy a house and raise a family in Los Angeles. After several weeks, they sent us much farther away, 1,000 miles to the east by rail car, the blinds of our train cars pulled for our own protection, they said.

We disembarked in the fetid swamps of Arkansas at the Rohwer Relocation Center. Really, it was a prison: Armed guards looked down upon us from sentry towers; their guns pointed inward at us; searchlights lit pathways at night. We understood. We were not to leave.

My parents did their best to make life seem normal. As a child, I very readily accepted our new circumstance and adjusted to it. As far as I was concerned, it was normal to line up to use the common latrine, or to eat wretched grub in a common mess hall, prisoners in our own country. It was normal for us to share a single small barrack with no privacy whatsoever. And it was normal to stand each day in our makeshift classroom, reciting the words to the Pledge of Allegiance, "With liberty and justice for all," as I looked past the U.S. flag out the window, the barbed wire of the camp just visible behind it.

Not until I was older did I understand the irony of those words and the injustice that had been visited on so many of us. As I studied civics and government in school, I came to see the internment as an assault not only upon an entire group of Americans, but upon the Constitution itself - how its guarantees of due process and equal protection had been decimated by forces of fear and prejudice unleashed by unscrupulous politicians. It had been a Democratic administration at the time, under Franklin D. Roosevelt, that had ordered us to the camps, proving that demagoguery and race-baiting knows no party.

It took decades for the United States to own up to what it had done and officially apologize for the internment, offering symbolic monetary reparations to the survivors. I donated my own check to the Japanese American National Museum, whose mission, like mine, has been to help ensure the mistakes of the past are never repeated. That is why these words by Higbie, which ominously are representative of much of the current thinking in the incoming administration, have reopened very old and very deep wounds.

This was not the first time the Trump camp had raised the internment. When he did so before, it wasn't as the historical warning it should be, but as a precedent for what might yet come. In late 2015, during the presidential primary, Trump actually went on the record with Time magazine stating that he did not know whether he would have supported or opposed the internment.

"I would have had to be there at the time to tell you, to give you a proper answer," he said. He argued that FDR was "one of the most highly respected presidents," and that what he was suggesting was "no different from FDR." Trump hedged his response with a nod to the horror of the camps, but tellingly did not disavow them: "I certainly hate the concept of it. But I would have had to be there at the time to give you a proper answer."

Higbie similarly has kept open the specter of the camps, in one breath stating that the does not favor the idea, but in the very next noting, "We have to protect America first." Indeed, in a follow-up interview with the New York Times, Higbie doubled down on the unthinkable: "There is historical, factual precedent to do things [that] are not politically popular and sometimes not right, in the interest of national security."

Let us all be clear: "National security" must never again be permitted to justify wholesale denial of constitutional rights and protections. If it is freedom and our way of life that we fight for, our first obligation is to ensure that our own government adheres to those principles. Without that, we are no better than our enemies.

Let us also agree that ethnic or religious discrimination cannot be justified by calls for greater security. During World War II, the government argued that military authorities could not distinguish between alleged enemy elements and peaceful, patriotic Japanese Americans. It concluded, therefore, that all those of Japanese descent, including American citizens, should be presumed guilty and held without charge, trial or legal recourse, in many cases for years. The very same arguments echo today, on the assumption that a handful of presumed radical elements within the Muslim community necessitates draconian measures against the whole, all in the name of national security.

It begins with profiling and with registries, but as Trump and Higbie have made clear, once the safety of the country is at stake, all safeguards are off. In their world, national security justifies actions that are "sometimes not right," and no one really can guarantee where it will end.

We cannot permit this invidious thinking, discredited by history at the cost of so much misery and suffering by innocents, to take root once again in America, let alone in the White House. The stigmatization, separation and labeling of our fellow humans based on race or religion has never led to a more secure world. But it has too often led to one where the most vulnerable pay the highest price.

The Constitution and the government exist in large measure to protect against the excesses of democracies. This is particularly salient when, in an atmosphere of fear or mistrust, one group is singled out and vilified, as Japanese Americans were during World War II and as Muslim Americans are today. How terrible it is to contemplate, once again, that the government itself might once more be the very instrument of terror and division. That cannot happen again. We cannot allow it.

George Takei is an actor, activist and social media maven.

Letter: I gave Trump a chance

By Kim Murphy Horiuchi

For the Deseret News

Published: Nov. 20, 2016

      Since the election, a number of friends have instructed me to “give Trump a chance” and dismissed my concerns as “fearmongering.” But I already have given Trump multiple chances. Like the rest of the electorate, I’ve been listening and watching for the past 18 months since he declared his candidacy in June 2015.

I do not share any of Donald Trump’s values and condemn his comments about women, minorities, immigrants and the disabled, as well as the instigation of violence at his rallies. I am troubled by the claims of fraud against his businesses (Trump U, etc.), the allegations of abuse against women, his failure to pay contractors, his bankruptcies and his write-off of almost $1 billion that likely allowed him to avoid paying taxes for 18 years. The endorsements of Trump by the KKK and other alt-right groups also are alarming, as is his recent appointment of Steve Bannon as his chief strategist, whose blog has promoted white nationalism. His comments about veterans and verbal attacks against a Gold Star family and John McCain as a POW sicken me. These are facts, not “fearmongering.”

The people who are protesting have reason to be afraid, and I would hope that my fellow Utahns would have more compassion. A lot of people, including myself, are feeling abandoned by those who preferred a misogynistic and vengeful demagogue for president. We thought our friends and neighbors, people we thought we knew, would stand against Trump’s charged and abusive rhetoric and that reason and human decency would prevail. We are questioning if the country we love is really the same place we thought it was — a place of liberty and justice for all.

The following somewhat tongue-in-cheek opinion with a serious suggestion:  that the question about affiliation with apostate groups be dropped from the recommend interview.

I am sure Mason's piece will elicit a bevy of criticism from Republican Mormons who are much more accustomed to asking the question of Democrats than answering it.  "Baby-killer" is the most often used epithet LDS Republicans hurl at their Democratic brothers and sisters.  Or a feigned surprise Republican Mormons show when they see one of their Democratic co-religionists in the temple.  I was once asked in a temple recommend interview if, aside from the Democratic I affiliated with any other apostate groups.  ("just [half] kidding, heh, heh").  Never mind that I was high priest group leader at the time.

As M. J. Ogden points out in a letter to the Standard Examiner November 21, 2016, Mormons did not always march in lock step on political matters.  They voted four times for FDR over the explicit endorsement of his opponents by then President Heber J. Grant.

I suspect the current change in following Republican church leaders began in 1960 when David O. McKay inadvertently let slip his preference for Richard Nixon. Desmond  Anderson, then a USC professor of public administration, did a study on this.  I was asked to do questionnaires for it, and I thought it was later published, but cannot find a reference to it.  Nixon carried Utah that year by about 10%

Relating church leadership to the Republican Party was further  strengthened in a quote by Ezra Taft Benson.  In February of 1974, he was asked if a liberal Democrat could be a good Mormon, to which he responded:  ‘'I think it would be very hard if he was living the gospel and understood it.’  Benson's defenders (including many Democrats) like to point out that after he became church president, he eschewed political statements.  While this is true, his actions behind the scene were often partisan. 

Since then the Salt Lake Tribune has published the party affiliation of the top 15 members of the church hierarchy. They are majority Republican with a minority being unaffiliated and not a single registered Democrat.

Thus the church's bi-annual repetition of its political neutrality and support for a two party system is greeted by a vast majority of its practicing American members with a wink-wink, nod-nod reception as they go about their way of being the most reliable group of Republican voters in the country.

Regarding Mason's recommendation that question 6 about sympathy with apostate group, I'm old enough to remember the background for this question. It goes back to the apostasy of French missionaries in 1958 an d the resurgence of the Church of the Firstborn. Unfortunately, it has morphed in the minds of many Mormon and some Mormon leaders to mean any disagreement with the church over almost any issue.   

Op-ed: Should Mormons who voted for Trump get temple recommends?

By David Mason

Mormons who want to get into LDS temples must have a card, a "temple recommend" that certifies not only that they live a certain, institutionally prescribed orthopraxy, but also that they have verbally assented to a number of ideological-theological propositions.

Among the questions that LDS authorities will ask those who aspire to participate in Mormonism's temple worship is Question 6: Do you affiliate with any group or individual whose teachings or practices are contrary to or oppose those accepted by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or do you sympathize with the precepts of any such group or individual?

Question 6 is one of the more perfunctory questions of the temple interview process. The strict and literal application of this question would exclude pretty much everyone. So, these interviews largely dance across this question, often acknowledging its pointlessness with chuckles.

Nevertheless, the premise of this question serves, sometimes, as the rationale by which LDS leaders exclude individuals from temple worship. LDS authorities can, and have, used Question 6 to identify ideas they don't like as contrary to what the church accepts and, then, to justify the exclusion of Mormons who find the ideas compelling.

The institution, it is often said, has a perfect right to regulate its affairs in this way. I probably wouldn't dispute that the LDS Church's agents can exclude people from its temples on the basis of behavior and belief, as, after all, the church owns and operates the temple buildings in question.

But I would point out that the application of Question 6 to exclude members from the temple shows that the LDS Church has become a sectarian institution. A certain Mormonism, among many possible Mormonisms, has secured a privileged place in the LDS Church and protects and projects itself as the only genuine Mormonism by marginalizing and excluding all alternatives. The use of Question 6 to stigmatize Mormons who support the ordination of women, for instance, is an index of the sectarian power that has seized control of Mormondom.

Consider the recent presidential election. A perfectly reasonable reading of Question 6 would justify revoking the temple recommends of all recommend holders who voted for 2016's GOP candidate, who, after all:

• Boasts, openly, of sexually assaulting women, as a part of normal, daily interaction.

• Cheated, rather shamelessly, on each of his three wives.

• Defrauded thousands of people with a fake "university."

• Has habitually refused to pay what he contractually owes.

• Lies with frequency, regularity and, apparently, as a matter of strategic policy.

• Has publicly ridiculed disabled people.

• Has advocated violence against opponents.

• Has incited violence against people of color.

I can see no reason why Mormondom should not read a vote for such a man as a willful affiliation with an individual whose teachings or practices are contrary to or oppose those accepted by the church. I can see no reason that it should not read a vote for such a man as sympathizing with the precepts of such a man.

What I write here is not another lamentation over a lost election. My purpose here is to draw attention to the identity of Mormonism. The fact that my proposal that Trump-voting Mormons lose their temple recommends will be laughed off as ridiculous — or probably vilified as another reason that I should lose my temple recommend — reveals just how narrowly sectarian Mormonism has become.

I hold no illusions that the LDS Church will revoke the temple recommends of Trump-voters, though I genuinely think the gospel and tradition warrant such action.

But with some hope, I would suggest that the LDS Church scratch Question 6 from the recommend interview and abandon, formally, officially and finally, the custom of holding disciplinary councils on the basis of disagreements over theological or ideological ideas.

And it won't do to say that such councils form not to resist contrary ideas but only to resist advocacy of contrary ideas. Contrary is in the eye of the beholder, and in the church the power to act on what a person sees is grossly imbalanced in favor of a particular sect. The refusal to acknowledge that a Trump vote advocates sexual assault and racism makes clear that the way in which disciplinary action is meted out in the church serves only to sustain a conspicuously sectarian claim on the church.

David Mason is chair of theatre and director of Asian studies at Rhodes College in Memphis and the editor-in-chief of Ecumenica. He is the author of "Brigham Young: Sovereign in America," "My Mormonism" and "Theatre and Religion on Krishna's Stage."

Dan Rather - Now is a time when none of us can afford to remain seated or silent. We must all stand up to be counted.

History will demand to know which side were you on. This is not a question of politics or party or even policy. This is a question about the very fundamentals of our beautiful experiment in a pluralistic democracy ruled by law.

When I see neo-Nazis raise their hands in terrifying solute, in public, in our nation's capital, I shudder in horror. When I see that action mildly rebuked by a boilerplate statement from the President-elect whom these bigots have praised, the anger in me grows. And when I see some in a pliant press turn that mild statement into what they call a denunciation I cannot hold back any longer.

Our Declaration of Independence bequeaths us our cherished foundational principle: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

These truths may be self-evident but they are not self-replicating. Each generation has to renew these vows. This nation was founded as an opposite pole to the capriciousness of an authoritarian monarch. We set up institutions like a free press and an independent court system to protect our fragile rights. We have survived through bloody spasms of a Civil War and a Civil Rights Movement to extend more of these rights to more of our citizens. But the direction of our ship of state has not always been one of progress. We interned Japanese Americans, Red Baited during the McCarthy era, and more. I feel the rip tide of regression once again swelling under my feet. But I intend to remain standing.

In normal times of a transition in our presidency between an incoming and outgoing administration of differing political parties, there is a certain amount of fretting on one side and gloating on the other. And the press usually takes a stance that the new administration at least deserves to have a chance to get started - a honeymoon period. But these are not normal times. This is not about tax policy, health care, or education - even though all those and more are so important. This is about racism, bigotry, intimidation and the specter of corruption.

But as I stand I do not despair, because I believe the vast majority of Americans stand with me. To all those in Congress of both political parties, to all those in the press, to religious and civic leaders around the country. your voices must be heard. I hope that the President-elect can learn to rise above this and see the dangers that are brewing. If he does and speaks forcibly, and with action, we should be ready to welcome his voice. But of course I am deeply worried that his selections of advisors and cabinet posts suggests otherwise.

To all of you I say, stay vigilant. The great Martin Luther King, Jr. knew that even as a minority, there was strength in numbers in fighting tyranny. Holding hands and marching forward, raising your voice above the din of complacency, can move mountains. And in this case, I believe there is a vast majority who wants to see this nation continue in tolerance and freedom. But it will require speaking. Engage in your civic government. Flood newsrooms or TV networks with your calls if you feel they are slipping into the normalization of extremism. Donate your time and money to causes that will fight to protect our liberties.

We are a great nation. We have survived deep challenges in our past. We can and will do so again. But we cannot be afraid to speak and act to ensure the future we want for our children and grandchildren.

Carrie Ann Sandt - I'm a single mom and my oldest son has autism. I have been so scared for Kenny's future. I am terrified that Medicaid and Social Security are going to have major cuts that will effect his future. Kenny just turned 18 and will depend on these services for the rest of his life.

Since the election we have noticed that people have a new sense of freedom in the awful things that they are saying. Kenny works at a local grocery store as a bagger with a job coach. A shopper last week said to him "I didn't know they hired retards at this store". This was devastating. People feel like they have gotten the green light to talk to people like this. People with disabilities can't defend themselves. They are the most vulnerable among us. The saddest part is that I had to explain to my son why someone would say something like that to him. I have always told him that he was special and that autism was a gift.

Kenny voted for the first time and voted for Hillary all on his own. He sobbed the next day. I didn't know what to say. He is very logical and this isn't logical.

See why I'm still concerned?

Profundity

"Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.” – Rumi

I probably would not have paid one iota of attention to this quote by Rumi if I hadn’t read it just after I came home from sacrament meeting where the high councilman talked about how if you follow the prophet you will never be lead astray.  He even quoted the primary song:

1. Adam was a prophet, first one that we know.

In a place called Eden, he helped things to grow.

Adam served the Lord by following his ways.

We are his descendants in the latter days.

2. Enoch was a prophet; he taught what was good.

People in his city did just what they should.

When they were so righteous that there was no sin,

Heav'nly Father took them up to live with him.

3. Noah was a prophet called to preach the word,

Tried to cry repentance, but nobody heard.

They were busy sinning-Noah preached in vain.

They wished they had listened when they saw the rain.

4. Abraham the prophet prayed to have a son,

So the Lord sent Isaac as the chosen one.

Isaac begat Jacob, known as Israel;

Jacob's sons were twelve tribes, so the Bible tells.

5. Moses was a prophet sent to Israel.

He would lead them to the promised land to dwell.

They were slow to follow, or so it appears.

They were in the wilderness for forty years.

6. Samuel was a prophet chosen as a boy.

Hannah promised God her son would serve with joy.

In the tabernacle, Samuel heard his name;

He was called by God and answered, "Here I am!"

7. Jonah was a prophet, tried to run away,

But he later learned to listen and obey.

When we really try, the Lord won't let us fail:

That's what Jonah learned deep down inside the whale.

8. Daniel was a prophet. He refused to sin;

So the king threw Daniel in the lion's den.

Angels calmed the lions, and the king soon saw

Daniel's pow'r was great, for he obeyed God's law.

9. Now we have a world where people are confused.

If you don't believe it, go and watch the news.

We can get direction all along our way,

If we heed the prophets-follow what they say.

Chorus

Follow the prophet, follow the prophet,

Follow the prophet; don't go astray.

Follow the prophet, follow the prophet,

Follow the prophet; he knows the way.

Follow the prophet not just on the big issues but in every facet of our lives, he preaches. He gave examples of what some of the prophets had said throughout the years. I wonder what the brother sitting in front of me thought when he dwelled on the Proclamation on the Family, emphasizing it was marriage between one man and one woman. He was there with his mother, whom he tenderly takes care of in her senility and fragility. Others have excluded other groups of people.

Maybe a child unthinkingly should follow the prophet but as adults we need to search our souls to know how to be inclusive, loving, kind, caring to all of God’s children in individual circumstances.

By chance, later in the day, I listened to a Doug Fabrizio podcast with Roman Krznaric who wrote a book entitled  “Empathy: Why It Matters, and How to Get It”. In this lively and engaging book, he argues that our brains are wired for social connection. Empathy, not apathy or self-centeredness, is at the heart of who we are. By looking outward and attempting to identify with the experiences of others, Krznaric argues, we can become not only a more equal society, but also a happier and more creative one. Empathy, Krznaric tells us, is “the art of stepping imaginatively into the shoes of another person, understanding their feelings and perspectives, and using that understanding to guide your actions.”

He utilizes some pretty impressive case studies to argue that it is possible; from Oskar Schindler to Beecher Stowe - author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin - to Gandhi and Mandela. All people who without doubt developed very strong empathetic skills.

Krznaric identifies numerous tools to deploy to increase empathy: babies in classrooms; joining a choir; considering the full potential lifecycle of the jumper you are wearing; chatting to strangers; and immersing yourself in the role of somebody else for a period, as George Orwell did in Down and Out in Paris and London. Reading books, looking at photographs and watching films can also help build empathy.

The 21st century needs to see significant boosts in empathy, says Krznaric - empathy with the victims of flooding, including in far-away countries; empathy with future generations to spur action on cutting carbon pollution; and even developing a kind of empathy for the natural world.

In his book he mentions four things that can kill empathy:

Prejudice

Authority

Distance

Denial

We need to overcome these four barriers if we are to boost our empathy skills, he says.

Our tendency to obey authority is our greatest obstacle to empathy.

He talks about the Milgram Tests around 1960 where people were invited into a lab and told by a man in very official looking lab coat to administer shock if someone in the next room got a memory test question wrong.

If he got another question wrong, the subject was supposed to administer even greater electric shock.

The shocking results were that 65% of the people would administer electric shock that would kill another person if they were told by an authority person to do so.

The way we obey authority so readily can overcome any empathic instincts that we have.

This was at the time of the trial of German Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders?

In Milburg’s experiment, when he brought the person who was getting shocked into the same room, then only 20% of the people would do the shocks.

And if there were people in the room with you who are refusing to do the tests and disobeying authority, almost nobody will administer the tests.

So in solidarity our empathy comes out.

Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", writing:

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

For me personally, I’m with Rumi. I would much rather be drawn by the strange pull of what I really love, for I know it will not lead me astray. I have to figure these things out for myself and decide how to live an empathetic life with equality and acceptance for all. It helps to have a son with special needs, a neighbor who is gay, a friend with a transgender grandchild, interracial marriages in the family; and I don't live in an ivory tower. 
     Rules are to be broken, not hearts. (A prophet said that.)

The Thrill of the First Snow

No other season comes so abruptly,

like a thief in the night,

as the first snow of winter.

We wake up,

glance out the window--

Absolutely astounding.

Exciting. Electrifying.

Every year.

Spring, summer, fall

come gradually,

slowly charming us.

Winter startles and dazzles us.

 It's so pure.

 Covering all the fallen leaves.

 Making our yard as tidy as everyone else's.

  Wondrous.

We didn't ride our trikes,

even though the snow didn't stick on the road,

because at mid-day it was 34 degrees.
Yesterday it was 71 degrees.

                Salt Lake City residents may have awoken to a skiff of snow on the ground this morning, but last night the city set two new heat records.

Though snow fell, the temperature in Salt Lake City never hit freezing, according to the National Weather Service. That makes this year's fall frost — whenever it comes — the latest on record. Previously, the latest known date Salt Lake City experienced its first frost of the season was Nov. 16, 1921.

Midnight last night also marked the longest known warm season in which Salt Lake City has gone without a frost. The city has been above freezing since March, 20, 2016, making this past frost-free period 242 days long. The previous record, 241 days, was set in 1915.

But while those records are being broken, so far this year Utah has not experienced record-breaking heat to the same extent as the rest of the United States, said Christine Kruse, a Salt Lake City-based meteorologist with the National Weather Service. While 2016 overall is on track to go down in history as the hottest year since the meteorological record began in the 19th century, temperatures in Utah are still lagging behind last year's records.

Thus far this year, Salt Lake City's average temperature is sitting at 59.5 degrees; last year at this time the average was 59.9. Further south, Cedar City is averaging 54.4 degrees. Cedar City's warmest year on record, 1981, had an average temperature of 55.8 degrees.

It's November's weather, which to date has been exceptionally warm, that made the new records possible, Kruse said. For the first half of the month, she said, most of Utah has been 10-13 degrees above normal.

The National Weather Service's Climate Prediction center expects Utah's warm winter to continue through much of the season, Thursday's abruptly wintry weather notwithstanding. Above-freezing temperatures and even rain are in the forecast for next week. SLTrib

                  Looks like when the snow melts,

                  we'll be picking broccoli and kale.

Supermoon

Amy took this picture tonight

of the brightest Supermoon

in almost 70 years.

You have to wait until 2034 for the next one.

God's in His heaven--

all's right with the world!
--Robert Browning

The New World Disorder

ELECTION 2016

Best quote of the night: "America is in labor right now. In a few hours we shall know if it's a boy or girl. Then we all are going to have post-partum depression."

Brigitte Hugh - My dear friends, may we remember as we are embroiled in fear and chaos that it is our duty, as the American people, to step up and make a change. 

Step up or tap out. 
You have a choice. 

Robert Kirby (written November 8, 2016)

A big part of this problem isn't who we elect but rather how we go about it. While it's nice that we have democracy, this past election makes me wonder if we deserve it anymore. Wars have been started with less vitriol than we've been forced to endure this year.

Maybe that's why no matter who we elect, our lives don't seem to improve. We still have poverty, racism, ignorance and growing taxes. It's almost like we've been electing the same person over and over again. Ourselves.

That's not good. To quote H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), "As democracy is perfected, the office of President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

"Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States…"

          Trump upsets expectations to claim White House

The Associated Press

Washington • Donald Trump was elected America's 45th president Tuesday, an astonishing victory for a celebrity businessman and political novice who capitalized on voters' economic anxieties, took advantage of racial tensions and overcame a string of sexual assault allegations on his way to the White House.

His triumph over Hillary Clinton will end eight years of Democratic dominance of the White House and threatens to undo major achievements of President Barack Obama. He's pledged to act quickly to repeal Obama's landmark health care law, revoke the nuclear agreement with Iran and rewrite important trade deals with other countries, particularly Mexico and Canada.

The Republican blasted through Democrats' longstanding firewall, carrying Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, states that hadn't voted for a GOP presidential candidate since the 1980s. He needed to win nearly all of the competitive battleground states, and he did just that, claiming Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and others.

Global stock markets and U.S. stock futures plunged deeply, reflecting investor alarm over what a Trump presidency might mean for the economy and trade.

A New York real estate developer who lives in a sparking Manhattan high-rise, Trump forged a striking connection with white, working class Americans who feel left behind in a changing economy and diversifying country. He cast immigration, both from Latin America and the Middle East, as the root of the problems plaguing many Americans and taped into fears of terrorism emanating at home and abroad.

Trump will take office with Congress expected to be fully under Republican control. GOP Senate candidates fended off Democratic challengers in key states and appeared poised to maintain the majority. Republicans also maintained their grip on the House.

Senate control means Trump will have great leeway in appointing Supreme Court justices, which could mean a major change to the right that would last for decades.

Trump upended years of political convention on his way to the White House, leveling harshly personal insults on his rivals, deeming Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers, and vowing to temporarily suspend Muslim immigration to the U.S. He never released his tax returns, breaking with decades of campaign tradition, and eschewed the kind of robust data and field efforts that helped Obama win two terms in the White House, relying instead on his large, free-wheeling rallies to energize supporters. His campaign was frequently in chaos, and he cycled through three campaign managers this year.

His final campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, touted the team's accomplishments as the final results rolled in, writing on Twitter that "rally crowds matter" and "we expanded the map."

The mood at Clinton's party grew bleak as the night wore out, with some supporters leaving, others crying and hugging each other. Top campaign aides stopped returning calls and texts, as Clinton and her family hunkered down in a luxury hotel watching the returns.

At 2 a.m., Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta told the crowd to head home for the night. "We're still counting votes and every vote should count," he said.

Trump will inherit an anxious nation, deeply divided by economic and educational opportunities, race and culture.

Exit polls underscored the fractures: Women nationwide supported Clinton by a double-digit margin, while men were significantly more likely to back Trump. More than half of white voters backed the Republican, while nearly 9 in 10 blacks and two-thirds of Hispanics voted for the Democrat.
Donald J. Trump has been elected the 45th president of the United States.

Donald Trump Clinches The Presidency In Major Upset

The rise of a candidate with no experience in the military or elected office confounded nearly everyone in politics. But Trump won over white voters with his promise to "Make America Great Again."

Trump crossed the 270 electoral vote threshold at 2:31 a.m. ET with a victory in Wisconsin, according to Associated Press projections.

The rise of Trump, a candidate with no prior experience in the military or elected office, confounded nearly everyone in politics. Improbably, the real estate scion turned reality TV star had not even been a member of the Republican Party for long. That made his victory over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton even more stunning, preventing her from becoming the nation's first female president.

Taking the stage to cheers, Trump said Clinton had called him to offer her congratulations and to concede the race.

"Now it's time for America to bind the wounds of division and get together," he told supporters in New York City. "It is time for us to come together as one united people. I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans."

In a rough and tumble campaign, Trump convinced a large slice of the American electorate that the government, Wall Street and the justice system were rigged. "I will be your voice," he told supporters, who then defied the polls to propel him to the nation's highest office.

Critical battleground states broke Trump's way. Delegate-rich Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin moved to the Republican candidate. Many polls failed to predict those shifts, leaving the crowds at Trump's party in New York momentarily puzzled, then celebratory. About a mile away, in Manhattan, the event for former Secretary of State Clinton turned solemn.

Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, told a dwindling crowd early Wednesday that she would not be speaking yet. "They're still counting votes and every vote should count," he said.

Amy Hugh - I don't see how to sleep tonight or ever... it's wrong, it's going down wrong. Inconceivably wrong. Fix it.

Jessie Pechmann - This is the end of the world, as we know it. And I'm not being dramatic. I'm talking about the environment, health, science, compassion, the constitution... you know everything I care about.

Lindsay Hansen Park - Wow America. You really hate women. You have shown us that you will give a deranged cheeto who repeatedly lies, incites hatred and violence, tricks the poorest and most uneducated among us that he cares about them, is a sexual predator and adulterous misogynist, who has ZERO experience, is unapologetically bigoted and racist- you've given him, your vote. Because all of that means less to you than emails. These are your values.

This is so close it's embarrassing. Mark my words. Our kids will look on this day with shame.

I am disgusted and so heartbroken. You've shown with your vote what you value. Your votes show us who we are and I guess we deserve this disgusting man as our president.

George Takei - I am addressing this to all who voted to defeat Donald Trump and what he represents. We may not have prevailed, but we must not despair.

Many of you are, like me, in a state of shock. This does not feel like the America you love and honor. We are in unchartered waters. In times like these we must reaffirm the values we cherish and have fought for: equality, justice, the care of our planet. We must stand up defiantly to any dark or divisive acts, and look out for the most vulnerable among us. It is more important than ever.

Within our hearts we know the society we wish to live in. No one can take that vision from us. We are each of us keepers of that promise. This country has seen wars and grave injustices, slavery and even civil war in its past. Yet we found our way through.

Hold your loved ones close. Tell them that it is in times of sadness and in the toughest of days where we often find our true mettle.

Jennifer Levinson Waldman - What can we do? How do we make this better? How do I tell my son with special needs that a man who makes fun of the disabled will be our president? How do I tell my daughter that a man who has no respect for women will be leading our country. This should have been Hillary's night. Our night together.

Republicans Keep Control of the Senate as Democrats Largely Falter

Republican Party elites initially brushed off Trump. But he bested 16 more experienced rivals in the primary process while spending little on traditional campaign infrastructure and relying on family members for political and media acumen. By the presidential race's closing days, Trump had won support from only one living GOP presidential nominee, former Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas. Turns out, he didn't need the extra help.

"We want him to be as conservative and effective a president as possible," said Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review, who has opposed Trump. "We're skeptical of him on many levels, but you only have one president at a time."

Trump will succeed Barack Obama, a two-term president and the first African-American to occupy the office. The president-elect is virtually Obama's polar opposite and in fact needled Obama for years with false claims over his birthplace.

Obama had campaigned feverishly to elect Clinton in hopes she would preserve his signature domestic health care law, revive a plan to open up a path to citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally, and nominate more left-leaning justices to the Supreme Court.

By contrast, Trump's governing agenda is far less clear. He has promised to deport millions of immigrants who don't have papers, to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico and to bargain with foreign governments such as those of Russia and China. His list of nearly two dozen potential nominees to the nation's highest court is largely in line with conservative doctrine, if Trump in fact chooses from that list.

There are hints that Trump, 70, would defer to his vice president, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, on many key policy decisions.

That would hardly be the first unorthodox decision by the candidate and his campaign.

To say Trump violated the norms of political contests would be an understatement. He never released his tax returns, citing an ongoing audit that would not have barred him from making them public. He called his opponent a "nasty woman," launched his campaign by declaring that some Mexican immigrants who come to the U.S. illegally are "rapists" and "murderers," and flatly denied accounts from about a dozen women who accused him of past sexual misconduct or assault.

Many voters also appeared to be undeterred by the release of a 2005 videotape from Access Hollywood in which Trump, on a hot mic, talked about grabbing women between the legs because celebrities "can do anything."

Donald Trump Has Brought on Countless Controversies in an Unlikely Campaign

His relationship with Congress represents another uncertainty. Republicans maintained control of both the House and the Senate, but Trump has openly feuded with Republican lawmakers such as House Speaker Paul Ryan. In other cases, Trump promised to create a superPAC that would go after his enemies.

The election deals yet another bitter defeat to Clinton, 69, a former first lady and U.S. senator who had appeared to retain a modest lead in national polls heading into Election Day. Clinton, the first woman to run atop the ticket of a major political party, had cast her candidacy as an inclusive vision for the future. She pledged to devote new resources to restoring American infrastructure, to fight for gun safety measures, to fix a broken immigration system and to nominate judges to the Supreme Court who would overhaul the campaign finance system.
Clinton had been shadowed for more than a year by revelations she used a private email server to conduct State Department business. The FBI investigated her handling of classified information and determined that "no reasonable prosecutor" would have filed any criminal case.

But in the final weeks of the campaign, FBI Director James Comey dropped a bombshell. He notified Congress that the agency had discovered a new cache of emails and needed to sort through them, just 11 days before the election. Comey later announced the FBI had found nothing to change its analysis in the case, after polls between Clinton and Trump had tightened.

Former Trump adviser Barry Bennett attributed the victory to the idea that Trump understood the mood of voters better than the political professionals.

"It's a testament to how angry they are at Washington, and Washington better hear it," Bennett said. "Perhaps we got a little aligned too closely with business and not with the people. So maybe this is a shift back, which would be good for the party."

Trump supporter and onetime candidate Ben Carson put the president-elect's appeal this way: "As I've said all along, this is not about Democrats and Republicans; this is about we the people versus the political elites."
Melissa Murphy - I have a serious question, the US markets are expected to open with an 800 point loss due to Trump winning....how does that make America great again? And there's talk of shutting the market down altogether....
Jeanette Hugh - America was great . . .
Melissa Murphy - Exactly...I am in tears and heartbroken. I have friends that are US citizens that are terrified because of their religion, coloring and sexuality and that's not even mentioning the fact that the environment took a HUGE HIT tonight and women's rights got set back 50 years...
Colleen Casto - I am terrified. We seem on the brink of another recession. There's all this talk of acceptance and unity, but as of now I cannot in all good conscience bring myself to support a blatant racist/ misogynist as my president. It goes against everything I value and believe in. It's a time of great sorrow. I fear this country is headed for a bad, even dangerous time.

Amy Hugh - go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and cheat a friend, you can do it in the name of heaven, you can justify it in the end, there won't be any trumpets blowing come the judgement day, but on the bloody morning after.... 

One Tin Soldier is a 1960's era protest song written by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter. It was first recorded by the Canadian group The Original Castle.

Karla Bennion - I wake up to an America that has chosen overt white nationalism, with all it entails. If the consequences were not so dire, I could find it instructive as to the true beliefs of my neighbors and countrymen. As is, I must pledge to protect and defend my friends, family, and patients who are now in such danger.

Jerry Thompson - I've never struggled to be hopeful about the future. I've never been ashamed of my country. And I've never questioned my faith in humanity. All three happened last night. I've never wanted to be wrong so much. Hopefully that'll happen too.

Brigitte Hugh - I have just one more thing to say, and I hope it brings you hope. I hope it does.
Redhead's Opinion

I make no claims to be an expert on world politics and news, but I definitely have an opinion, whether right or wrong.

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

My World, Your World, Our World

I'm watching my world fall apart.

Since 5 pm this evening I've been watching my world fall apart. This morning I woke up under the impression that my country would be under the watchful eye of a woman who knows what do in the international community. Tonight I am going to bed knowing that for the next four years my country will be under the watchful eyes of a man who is unpredictable at best.

I'm watching my world fall apart.

I've watched myself change over the last couple of years. Somehow along the way I went from a young woman who didn't support the LGBTQ community, who had unintended racist feelings to someone who cares very deeply about the safety and security of every minority. Tonight I've heard friends express fear because in a Trump Presidency they don't know if their rights will be protected. They don't know if their parents will be deported. They don't know if they will be able to freely practice their religion.

I'm watching my world fall apart.

I was talking with a friend the other day about stereotypes I realized then how fundamentally my viewpoint has changed. I told her "Stereotypes get me in trouble more often than not and, like, I'm really trying to stop thinking in stereotypes because I REALLY don't want to be racist or homophobic or think bad thoughts towards people don't look or act just like me because that's the part of the world I legitimately hate. So I'm trying to change and I refuse to use stereotypes." and I have to believe that there are so many more just like me. I have to believe that America at it's core is not the misogynistic, racist nation that seems to have showed up to vote today. And even if we are that nation, then I truly hope and believe that we can change. because otherwise,

I'm watching my world fall apart.

But also tonight I've watched my friends band together, all of them, regardless of religions, of race, of sexual orientation, of sex. I've watched them all come together to share in each other's pain. To give each other hope. To allow ourselves to purge and to fall apart, but then to pick ourselves right back up to begin to talk about what changes we will make.

We're building the world we want.

I was speaking with a friend who asked me if I still wanted to work for the government after the election results. My response was "Cognitive dissonance be darned. I have to serve the country I believe in, not the president I don't believe in. If all the best, or even mediocre, people step down and don't step up then American will lose even more than we already have." I know I'm not alone in this viewpoint.

We're building the world we want.

Although tonight was absolutely devastating, and I literally watched my world crumble in front of me, I have to believe that we are like the phoenix. I have to believe that we will rise, that those of us who desire to be heard, that we will begin to build the nation we want to see. I have to believe that the incredible people I go to school, church and work with will rise above all of this and be the leaders and voters we want to see.

I'm building the world I want.

You're building the world you want. And together we will build the world we want.

Dan Rather - As Trump took the podium for his first speech, not as a party candidate but as the president-elect of the entire United States, his tone was of the utmost importance. He seemed to be reading off a prompter carefully prepared words. But he started with a statement of magnanimity for Hillary Clinton. He spoke of binding the wounds of division. He promised to be president of all Americans. He spoke of a great public works project and protecting veterans.

He was optimistic in speaking of the future. Notably missing was any talk of some of the drastically contentious hallmarks of his campaign - building a wall, a Muslim ban, the NATO allies - just to name a few.

You can be deeply skeptical of his motives and refuse to forget all that he has said and that has transpired. There is a looming verdict for history to level and it is a story still to be written. There is also a real question with Trump’s ascension whether the ends justify the means - whether the truth matters. Be all that as it may, we need to have a peaceful transition of power. That is an unmoveable hallmark of the stability of our democracy.

Trump said that campaigning was difficult. Well, governing is much more so and that is now in his hands. He has made a lot of promises. We will see what he keeps. He said their work is just beginning. That is an understatement.

The world is on edge. The country is deeply divided. The markets have gone off a cliff. World capitals are erupting in anxiety. Huge segments of the American public are in panic - going through the shock of grief. This is the world that is now Trump’s to contend with. Do we really know what we have wrought?

This is a conversation that I need you to be a part of. Do not opt out. Your voice matters now more than ever. I will continue to be here in the days and weeks ahead. And we shall endeavor, together, to find a path forward in the best of America’s ideals.

Courage.

Jessie Pechmann - I've never been so disappointed in America or the Democratic Party. Don't tell me gender has nothing to do it with it. Don't even start.

"According to the exit polls, Republicans stayed loyal to their presidential candidate. Some 89 percent of self-described Republicans voted for Trump; 91 percent of white Republicans did. In contrast, only 84 percent of white Democrats voted for Clinton. She did win 86 percent of white Democratic women, but only 81 percent of white, Democratic men voted for her."

Terry Tempest Williams

It is morning. I am mourning.

And the river is before me.

I am a writer without words who is struggling to find them.

I am holding the balm of beauty, this river, this desert, so vulnerable, all of us.

I am trying to shape my despair into some form of action, but for now, I am standing on the cold edge of grief.

We are staring at a belligerent rejection of change by our fellow Americans who believe they have voted for change.

The seismic shock of a new political landscape is settling.

For now, I do not feel like unity is what is called for.

Resistance is our courage.

Love will become us.

The land holds us still.

Let us pause and listen and gather our strength with grace and move forward like water in all its manifestation: flat water, white water, rapids and eddies, and flood this country with an integrity of purpose and patience and persistence capable of cracking stone.

I am a writer without words who continues to believe in the vitality of the struggle.

Let us hold each other close
and be kind.

Let us gather together and break bread.

Let us trust that what is required of us next will become clear in time.

What has been hidden is now exposed.

This river, this mourning, this moment --- May we be brave enough to feel it deeply.

Sarah Peck - I cried all night. I just left class to go cry in a corner of the library. My Iraqi Arabic teacher taught us the word for afraid so that he could tell us how he feels today.

My heart is broken that my friends, neighbors, and fellow Americans were willing to sacrifice love, decency, and dignity on the altar of a few issues that they see as more important than the moral backbone of our country--embodied by the president. Go ahead and cheer that there will be a more conservative supreme Court Justice. Go ahead and bask in the possibility of anti-abortion legislation. But don't for a second assume that there will not be ramifications for putting on a pedestal someone who boastfully sexually assaults women, who insults and degrades portions of the population, and who is accountable to no one. No matter what your intent was when you checked that box, you have nationally endorsed that kind of behavior.

Dr. John Dehlin - Today is a day of grieving and sober reflection for me, and for many.

What I will say is this: I resolve to continue doing everything within my power to build awareness, community, and action around values that include love, truth/awareness, inclusivity, equality, social justice, and peace - with particular focus on matters of gender, race, sexual orientation, economic inequality, reason, and peace.

I resolve to continue to do my part to showcase individuals, and to support/strengthen institutions that support these values, and to shine a constructive spotlight on individuals and institutions that weaken/undermine these values.

This is my promise/resolve in response to yesterday's events, and I look forward to teaming up with any/all friends who share these values to work together to help make a positive difference for this country, and for the world, in the years ahead.

While I am no longer a religious person, I retain belief in these words:

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
- Martin Luther King Jr.

Let's get to work.

Taylor Greenwell - The electoral college has not actually voted yet. I know I have wishful thinking, but I can't help but hope that in light of the fact that Clinton won the popular vote, and that Trump only got 279 unofficial electoral votes on paper, that the college will vote at least 10 votes less than their projected 279. Wishful thinking I know. But, the hope will remain until January when the electoral votes get read.

Hillary Clinton - Last night, I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country. I hope that he will be a successful president for all Americans.

This is not the outcome we wanted or we worked so hard for, and I’m sorry we did not win this election for the values we share and the vision we hold for our country.

But I feel pride and gratitude for this wonderful campaign that we built together—this vast, diverse, creative, unruly, energized campaign. You represent the best of America, and being your candidate has been one of the greatest honors of my life.

I know how disappointed you feel, because I feel it too. And so do tens of millions of Americans who invested their hopes and dreams in this effort. This is painful, and it will be for a long time. But I want you to remember this: Our campaign was never about one person or even one election. It was about the country we love—and about building an America that’s hopeful, inclusive, and big-hearted.

We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought. But I still believe in America—and I always will. And if you do, too, then we must accept this result—and then look to the future.

Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.

Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power, and we don’t just respect that, we cherish it. It also enshrines other things—the rule of law, the principle that we’re all equal in rights and dignity, and the freedom of worship and expression. We respect and cherish these things too—and we must defend them.

And let me add: Our constitutional democracy demands our participation, not just every four years, but all the time. So let’s do all we can to keep advancing the causes and values we all hold dear: making our economy work for everyone, not just those at the top; protecting our country and protecting our planet; and breaking down all the barriers that hold anyone back from achieving their dreams.

We’ve spent a year and a half bringing together millions of people from every corner of our country to say with one voice that we believe that the American Dream is big enough for everyone—for people of all races and religions, for men and women, for immigrants, for LGBT people, and people with disabilities. Our responsibility as citizens is to keep doing our part to build that better, stronger, fairer America we seek. And I know you will. I am so grateful to stand with all of you.

I want to thank Tim Kaine and Anne Holton for being our partners on this journey. It gives me great hope and comfort to know that Tim will remain on the front-lines of our democracy, representing Virginia in the Senate.

To Barack and Michelle Obama: Our country owes you an enormous debt of gratitude for your graceful, determined leadership, and so do I.

To Bill, Chelsea, Marc, Charlotte, Aidan, our brothers, and our entire family, my love for you means more than I can ever express. You crisscrossed this country on my behalf and lifted me up when I needed it most—even 4-month-old Aidan traveling with his mom.

I will always be grateful to the creative, talented, dedicated men and women at our headquarters in Brooklyn and across our country who poured their hearts into this campaign. For you veterans, this was a campaign after a campaign — for some of you, this was your first campaign ever. I want each of you to know that you were the best campaign anyone has had.

To all the volunteers, community leaders, activists, and union organizers who knocked on doors, talked to neighbors, posted on Facebook—even in secret or in private: Thank you.

To everyone who sent in contributions as small as $5 and kept us going, thank you.

And to all the young people in particular, I want you to hear this. I’ve spent my entire adult life fighting for what I believe in. I’ve had successes and I’ve had setbacks—sometimes really painful ones. Many of you are at the beginning of your careers. You will have successes and setbacks, too.

This loss hurts. But please, please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it. It’s always worth it. And we need you keep up these fights now and for the rest of your lives.

To all the women, and especially the young women, who put their faith in this campaign and in me, I want you to know that nothing has made me prouder than to be your champion.

I know that we still have not shattered that highest glass ceiling. But some day someone will—hopefully sooner than we might think right now.

And to all the little girls watching right now, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world.

Finally, I am grateful to our country for all it has given me.
I count my blessings every day that I am an American. And I still believe, as deeply as I ever have, that if we stand together and work together, with respect for our differences, strength in our convictions, and love for this nation—our best days are still ahead of us.

You know I believe we are stronger together and will go forward together. And you should never be sorry that you fought for that.
Scripture tells us: “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season, we shall reap, if we do not lose heart.”

My friends, let us have faith in each other. Let us not grow weary. Let us not lose heart. For there are more seasons to come and there is more work to do.

I am incredibly honored and grateful to have had this chance to represent all of you in this consequential election. May God bless you and God bless the United States of America.

Jessie Pechmann - Are people going to now come out now and say jk, they only wanted to vote for Trump to make a point? They didn't actually want him as president? Are they going to call for a re-vote when they finally agree they've been lied to.

Melissa Murphy - I'll be honest, I didn't like you from my first exposure to you, which was before your reality tv stint, before you announced you were running, something about you just rubbed me the wrong way. I watched the returns with great trepidation and was shocked to see you win. As an American, I respect our voting process and the results of this election. I didn't however watch your acceptance speech live, I wasn't in a place of acceptance yet. I watched it about 30 minutes later because I wanted to see if the full measure and responsibilities of this position had started to weigh on your shoulders and if the unbelievable rhetoric and mocking and isolationism of your tone was just a campaign tactic. You were on script like I had never seen you before, reading from a TelePrompTer as if you knew this was different, granted you never mentioned some of the more controversial items of this election, but for a brief moment I was somewhat ok. Then it happened, one of your supporters in the room with you yelled out 'kill Obama' loud enough for microphones to pick it up, so I know you heard it too, and you stayed silent. You did not say "it is ok to disagree with me, but it is never ok to threaten someone 's life." The new President-elect stayed silent and continued on with his acceptance speech. Ignoring the fact that someone just threatened the current President of the United States, ignoring the fact that an American citizen was just threatened and on a most basic level, ignoring the fact that another human being's life was threatened. And if you personally didn't hear, why did no one in the room say that it wasn't ok? Hatred and violence is never ok. Do you understand how close this election was? You lost the popular vote, you won due to the electoral college . Will you stay silent when others who disagree with you are threatened or worse killed by those who agree with you? Silence can be just as damaging as words, you could of earned some measure of my respect if you had done what you claim you love to do and gone off script and stopped a moment of hatred. This is why you will never have my vote....

Jeanette Hugh - I was so surprised when I woke up this morning and the sun was shining.

Brigitte Hugh - But shining it was, hallelujah

Verla Galloway - I wouldn't know, I'm burrowed under the covers resolved not to come out for 4 years!😞. I'm a sore loser! Maybe I can retain Karla for therapy.

Karla Bennion -  We could commiserate at least.
Jonathan Hugh - I'm glad the sun is shining because I need sunlight in my life

Carol Murphy - I am trying to keep a somewhat positive attitude, but it is hard.

Angie Heaps Schroepfer - I predict that Trump gets assassinated.

Melissa Murphy - That's not the answer either, it's just more hatred in action

Jeanette Hugh - To Verla: Maybe you won't have to burrow under the covers for four years. One of Melissa’s friends thought Trump might be assassinated. I wanted to respond that he's probably the assassinator; not the assassinated; but I didn't know how to spell assassin. (I didn’t post it because I don’t like to talk about assassination.)

Dear Jeanette,

Today has been a hard day.

Electing a sexual predator and white supremacist to the White House is a fearful and hateful reaction to all the progress that we've made in the last several years and the changing face of this country.

But today, one thing is clear: Our work together to end sexism, misogyny and hate in all its forms has never been more important. 

Today we will be sad, angry, and overwhelmed, but tomorrow we all need to fight for and with women, people of color, and LGBTQ people against all efforts to strip us of our rights.

Amy Hugh - Many students are all a buzz about their families moving to Mexico this weekend... I can't exactly discount their talk...

Jeanette Hugh

November 9 at 9:26pm · 

In a strange way, because we are all Americans, the outcome of this election has bonded and comforted us in our shared grief. The other half, brothers and sisters too, deserve what they got, for better or for worse. We'll see.

Garrison Keillor: Done. Over. He’s here. Goodbye.

By Garrison Keillor Special To The Washington Post

First Published Nov 09 2016 07:06AM    •   

So he won. The nation takes a deep breath. Raw ego and proud illiteracy have won out and a severely learning-disabled man with a real character problem will be president. We are so exhausted from thinking about this election, millions of people will take up leaf-raking and garage cleaning with intense pleasure. We liberal elitists are wrecks. The Trumpers had a whale of a good time, waving their signs, jeering at the media, beating up protesters, chanting "Lock her up" — we elitists just stood and clapped. Nobody chanted "Stronger Together." It just doesn't chant.

The Trumpers never expected their guy to actually win the thing, and that's their problem now. They only wanted to whoop and yell, boo at the H-word, wear profane T-shirts, maybe grab a crotch or two, jump in the RV with a couple six-packs and go out and shoot some spotted owls. It was pleasure enough for them just to know that they were driving us wild with dismay — by "us," I mean librarians, children's authors, yoga practitioners, Unitarians, birdwatchers, people who make their own pasta, opera goers, the grammar police, people who keep books on their shelves, that bunch. The Trumpers exulted in knowing we were tearing our hair out. They had our number, like a bratty kid who knows exactly how to make you grit your teeth and froth at the mouth.

Alas for the Trump voters, the disasters he will bring on this country will fall more heavily on them than anyone else. The uneducated white males who elected him are the vulnerable ones and they will not like what happens next.

To all the patronizing b.s. we've read about Trump expressing the white working class's displacement and loss of the American Dream, I say, "Feh!" — go put your head under cold water. Resentment is no excuse for bald-faced stupidity. America is still the land where the waitress' kids can grow up to become physicists and novelists and pediatricians, but it helps a lot if the waitress and her husband encourage good habits and the ambition to use your God-given talents and the kids aren't plugged into electronics day and night. Whooping it up for the candidate of cruelty and ignorance does less than nothing for your kids.

We liberal elitists are now completely in the clear. The government is in Republican hands. Let them deal with him. Democrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, traveling around the country, tasting artisan beers, and let the Republicans build the wall and carry on the trade war with China and deport the undocumented and deal with opioids and we Democrats can go for a long brisk walk and smell the roses.

I like Republicans. I used to spend Sunday afternoons with a bunch of them, drinking Scotch and soda and trying to care about NFL football. It was fun. I tried to think like them. (Life is what you make it. People are people. When the going gets tough, tough noogies.) But I came back to liberal elitism.

Don't be cruel. Elvis said it and it's true. We all experienced cruelty back in our playground days, boys who beat up on the timid, girls who made fun of the homely and naive, and most of us, to our shame, went along with it, afraid to defend the victims lest we become one of them. But by your 20s, you should be done with cruelty. Mr. Trump was the cruelest candidate since George Wallace. How he won on fear and bile is for political pathologists to study. The country is already tired of his noise, even his own voters. He is likely to become the most intensely disliked president since Hoover. His children will carry the burden of his name. He will never be happy in his own skin. But the damage he will do to our country — who knows? His supporters voted for change, and boy, are they going to get it.

Back to real life. I went up to my hometown the other day and ran into my gym teacher, Stan Nelson, looking good at 96. He commanded a landing craft at Normandy on June 6, 1944, and never said a word about it back then, just made us do chin-ups whether we wanted to or not. I saw my biology teacher Lyle Bradley, a Marine pilot in the Korean War, still going birdwatching in his 90s. I was not a good student then, but I am studying both of them now. They have seen it all and are still optimistic. The past year of politics has taught us absolutely nothing. Zilch. Zero. Nada. The future is scary. Let the uneducated have their day. I am now going to pay more attention to teachers.

AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY

 By David Remnick , NOVEMBER 9, 2016

The electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world.

The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety.

There are, inevitably, miseries to come: an increasingly reactionary Supreme Court; an emboldened right-wing Congress; a President whose disdain for women and minorities, civil liberties and scientific fact, to say nothing of simple decency, has been repeatedly demonstrated. Trump is vulgarity unbounded, a knowledge-free national leader who will not only set markets tumbling but will strike fear into the hearts of the vulnerable, the weak, and, above all, the many varieties of Other whom he has so deeply insulted. The African-American Other. The Hispanic Other. The female Other. The Jewish and Muslim Other. The most hopeful way to look at this grievous event—and it’s a stretch—is that this election and the years to follow will be a test of the strength, or the fragility, of American institutions. It will be a test of our seriousness and resolve.

Early on Election Day, the polls held out cause for concern, but they provided sufficiently promising news for Democrats in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, and even Florida that there was every reason to think about celebrating the fulfillment of Seneca Falls, the election of the first woman to the White House. Potential victories in states like Georgia disappeared, little more than a week ago, with the F.B.I. director’s heedless and damaging letter to Congress about reopening his investigation and the reappearance of damaging buzzwords like “e-mails,” “Anthony Weiner,” and “fifteen-year-old girl.” But the odds were still with Hillary Clinton.

All along, Trump seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right. That he has prevailed, that he has won this election, is a crushing blow to the spirit; it is an event that will likely cast the country into a period of economic, political, and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine. That the electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness, his disdain for democratic norms, is a fact that will lead, inevitably, to all manner of national decline and suffering.

In the coming days, commentators will attempt to normalize this event. They will try to soothe their readers and viewers with thoughts about the “innate wisdom” and “essential decency” of the American people. They will downplay the virulence of the nationalism displayed, the cruel decision to elevate a man who rides in a gold-plated airliner but who has staked his claim with the populist rhetoric of blood and soil. George Orwell, the most fearless of commentators, was right to point out that public opinion is no more innately wise than humans are innately kind. People can behave foolishly, recklessly, self-destructively in the aggregate just as they can individually. Sometimes all they require is a leader of cunning, a demagogue who reads the waves of resentment and rides them to a popular victory. “The point is that the relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion,” Orwell wrote in his essay “Freedom of the Park.” “The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.”

Trump ran his campaign sensing the feeling of dispossession and anxiety among millions of voters—white voters, in the main. And many of those voters—not all, but many—followed Trump because they saw that this slick performer, once a relative cipher when it came to politics, a marginal self-promoting buffoon in the jokescape of eighties and nineties New York, was more than willing to assume their resentments, their fury, their sense of a new world that conspired against their interests. That he was a billionaire of low repute did not dissuade them any more than pro-Brexit voters in Britain were dissuaded by the cynicism of Boris Johnson and so many others. The Democratic electorate might have taken comfort in the fact that the nation had recovered substantially, if unevenly, from the Great Recession in many ways—unemployment is down to 4.9 per cent—but it led them, it led us, to grossly underestimate reality. The Democratic electorate also believed that, with the election of an African-American President and the rise of marriage equality and other such markers, the culture wars were coming to a close. Trump began his campaign declaring Mexican immigrants to be “rapists”; he closed it with an anti-Semitic ad evoking “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”; his own behavior made a mockery of the dignity of women and women’s bodies. And, when criticized for any of it, he batted it all away as “political correctness.” Surely such a cruel and retrograde figure could succeed among some voters, but how could he win? Surely, Breitbart News, a site of vile conspiracies, could not become for millions a source of news and mainstream opinion. And yet Trump, who may have set out on his campaign merely as a branding exercise, sooner or later recognized that he could embody and manipulate these dark forces. The fact that “traditional” Republicans, from George H. W. Bush to Mitt Romney, announced their distaste for Trump only seemed to deepen his emotional support.

The commentators, in their attempt to normalize this tragedy, will also find ways to discount the bumbling and destructive behavior of the F.B.I., the malign interference of Russian intelligence, the free pass—the hours of uninterrupted, unmediated coverage of his rallies—provided to Trump by cable television, particularly in the early months of his campaign. We will be asked to count on the stability of American institutions, the tendency of even the most radical politicians to rein themselves in when admitted to office. Liberals will be admonished as smug, disconnected from suffering, as if so many Democratic voters were unacquainted with poverty, struggle, and misfortune. There is no reason to believe this palaver. There is no reason to believe that Trump and his band of associates—Chris Christie, Rudolph Giuliani, Mike Pence, and, yes, Paul Ryan—are in any mood to govern as Republicans within the traditional boundaries of decency. Trump was not elected on a platform of decency, fairness, moderation, compromise, and the rule of law; he was elected, in the main, on a platform of resentment. Fascism is not our future—it cannot be; we cannot allow it to be so—but this is surely the way fascism can begin.

Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate but a resilient, intelligent, and competent leader, who never overcame her image among millions of voters as untrustworthy and entitled. Some of this was the result of her ingrown instinct for suspicion, developed over the years after one bogus “scandal” after another. And yet, somehow, no matter how long and committed her earnest public service, she was less trusted than Trump, a flim-flam man who cheated his customers, investors, and contractors; a hollow man whose countless statements and behavior reflect a human being of dismal qualities—greedy, mendacious, and bigoted. His level of egotism is rarely exhibited outside of a clinical environment.

For eight years, the country has lived with Barack Obama as its President. Too often, we tried to diminish the racism and resentment that bubbled under the cyber-surface. But the information loop had been shattered. On Facebook, articles in the traditional, fact-based press look the same as articles from the conspiratorial alt-right media. Spokesmen for the unspeakable now have access to huge audiences. This was the cauldron, with so much misogynistic language, that helped to demean and destroy Clinton. The alt-right press was the purveyor of constant lies, propaganda, and conspiracy theories that Trump used as the oxygen of his campaign. Steve Bannon, a pivotal figure at Breitbart, was his propagandist and campaign manager.

It is all a dismal picture. Late last night, as the results were coming in from the last states, a friend called me full of sadness, full of anxiety about conflict, about war. Why not leave the country? But despair is no answer. To combat authoritarianism, to call out lies, to struggle honorably and fiercely in the name of American ideals—that is what is left to do. That is all there is to do.

David Remnick has been editor of The New Yorker since 1998 and a staff writer since 1992.

Jessie Pechmann -  "THIRD, a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated". How did his staff even let him say this/?? This makes NO sense. Sure, lets regulate SO2 pollution, but that means we HAVE to cut CO2? What? No. This isn't how regulation works. Ever.

Jessie Pechmann - "FIFTH, I will lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars' worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal." Like magic...... And ignore the thousands in economic and human loss this will cause.

Jessie Pechmann -  "SEVENTH, cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America's water and environmental infrastructure"

Jacqueline Salaz - I cringed so hard when I saw this one.

Jessie Pechmann - My stomach just dropped past the floor. Jackie, what are people saying in Florida??

Jessie Pechmann - "* FOURTH, begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won't take them back" Can Trump cancel visas?

Jessie Pechmann -  Lord.... the wall is really on here. Whoever said Trump would abandon that... I wish you had been right.

Jacqueline Salaz - I'm sure he's really going to get his "full understanding from Mexico that they need to pay it back". Not. He didn't even have the balls to bring it up to the Mexican president when he visited.

Jessie Pechmann - There's also multiple ones that just seem purely designed to piss off the international community, and nothing else.

‎B.A. Dillon‎ to Pantsuit Nation

I shed several tears while making this post tonight. I accept and respect the results of the 2016 election. But it doesn't mean I have to like it or stifle my opinion. I never pick a side based on a single candidate or issue. In this election I voted for Secretary Clinton because I stood and still stand by the ideals of the Democratic party and the platform scripted by the DNC. I believe in the science that supports climate change. I believe the laws of our nation and what guides us spiritually should be separate. I believe everyone should pay their fair share of taxes - especially those at the top. I believe in marriage regardless of gender or race or religion. And I believe proper healthcare and education should be our norm - not a luxury.

I read the first 26 pages of the Republican platform in September. The rhetoric on family conservative values still churns in my stomach. The language plays over and over in my head each night as I struggle to understand what's next. Colleagues have called me a whiner. Allow me to feel what I feel.

I am not defeated. I'm sad. I'm sad because I believe our nation took a backward step this week. Today I grieve. Tomorrow I'll reflect. The next day I will stand next to you as the 45th president is sworn into office.

Tonight I joined several grass-root organizations. No longer will I sit on the sidelines believing my vote is enough. Time to get to work.

Jonathan Hugh posted this on Facebook.

This has been my fear.

Kirby: Don’t let your garbage ruin your life

By Robert Kirby Salt Lake Tribune Nov 11, 2016

On one of the last days of sixth grade, I watched a classmate empty a large collection of folded notes from her girlfriends into the wastebasket.

Most of them were folded into those origami triangles girls that age seem to like. They were easily passed from one hand to another, folded to protect from prying eyes, conveniently concealed. Yeah, sort of like drug bindles.

When Sharon left, I casually wandered over and stuffed my pants pockets fore and aft with the notes for the purposes of future perusal. It was unethical and rude, but we're talking about me.

That evening was my first exposure to the viciousness of gossip, a form of conversation that human beings use to talk about others without fear of repercussion.

At least three of the notes featured me as the primary topic, including one that expressed the opinion that I was both "stupid" and a "prevert" [sic].

Note: It probably says a lot about me that I knew the correct spelling of the word "pervert" in the sixth grade.

The most painful note was written by the prettiest girl in the class and a frequent eager participant in my daydreams. Brenda emphatically stated she would "rather kiss a dog's [bottom] than touch Bobby Kirby."

The comment might have killed a normal/lesser boy, but since my shortcomings had routinely been pointed out by other kids and adults since the day I started school, I had a fairly thick skin.

Still, it hurt. So I did what any sixth grade class "prevert" would do with the notes: I posted some on bulletin boards throughout the school. The rest I passed directly to the people about whom they were written.

Couple of things happened that I didn't expect. First was a ruckus in the girls' restroom, the noise of which I wouldn't hear again until a bar fight in the military.

I didn't actually see the fighting, but I heard wailing, screaming and friendships being scratched apart. It took several teachers (including two who had received notes) to quell it.

Second, after school I was chased halfway home, beaten and pantsed by the boyfriends of the authors of the notes. It was humiliating at the time, but I got over it long before I got over what Brenda had written about me.

They didn't get over it so easily. One of the notes was to Sharon from another girl saying that Brenda was stuck-up. They hated each other clear through high school, so I figured we were even.

These days, the Internet is an elementary school garbage can. Everyone can dump their mean comments into it thinking they no longer matter. But if they're not careful, just about anyone can read them.

Worse are the people who don't even bother hiding their contempt for others and remain indifferent to the pain they cause. But they end up paying for it just the same.

It's a good lesson in minding our manners. Social media is probably responsible for the destruction of more friendships and marriages than any other single activity in the world. OK, fine — with the exception of religion.

Maybe this is a good post-election takeaway. A lot of mean and vicious things were said during this past campaign. Will the president we got be worth the relationships we lost?

Chris Cornelison

Aloha my friends,

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been trying hard to put my feelings into words. I’ve selected them carefully and I would love it if you’d hear me out to the end. Like everyone else, I’m exhausted from all the negativity and hatred. Still, there’s something I feel the need to express. Tuesday night was a dark one for me, and I want you to understand why. However, in order to understand where I am coming from there’s something you have to know about me first: I am gay.

It’s been almost 4 years since I first came out to my parents. Since then, I’ve struggled with the idea of coming out publicly. I didn’t think it was entirely necessary as long as my closest friends and family knew. And to be honest, I was afraid. Afraid of what people would think, what people would say, and how people might begin to look at me and treat me differently. I’ve been living with that fear for so long, it’s become normal for me. I’ve learned to manage it. But Tuesday night, fear completely overwhelmed me. I felt like my hope had been extinguished.

I hope you will not view this as an overreaction. I don’t want to be accused of being “whiny” or a “crybaby.” Please understand that this fear is very real for many people in America right now, myself included. The horrific mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando was a mere 5 months ago and is still fresh in my mind, especially since I’ll be moving to Orlando in just a few months. I want to believe that the Trump administration will continue to protect LGBTQ people. However, I’m concerned that Donald Trump’s speech after the Orlando shooting failed to label the act as a hate crime, preferring to talk about immigration control and fighting radical Islam. Also, in January 2016, Trump said he would “strongly consider” appointing supreme court judges to overturn marriage equality. Furthermore, Mike Pence has been vocal about his anti-LGBT stance: supporting harmful conversion therapy instead of HIV prevention, opposing the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and wanting to secure measures that protect discrimination against LGBTQ people on religious grounds. That’s the reason I voted the way I did. Because for myself and other LGBTQ people, there is a lot at stake.

Now, I want to make it clear that I DO NOT hate anyone who voted for Donald Trump. Far from it. Many of the people that I love the most chose to cast their vote for Donald Trump. A vote for Donald Trump DOES NOT make you racist, homophobic, sexist, or anything else. The fact of that matter is, however, that Donald Trump’s campaign has emboldened some who feel prejudice towards minorities. Some Muslim women now feel unsafe to wear hijabs, refugees and undocumented immigrants hide for fear of their families being torn apart, victims of sexual assault feel like their voices will never be heard, and LGBTQ people worry that our legal rights and protections now hang by a thread. It’s the same fear we have always felt.

But I refuse to give into fear and division. That is why I made this decision to come out to you today, not only to serve as an example to other LGBTQ youth who feel alone or afraid, but because now more than ever I need YOU to be my ally. I NEED YOU to fight for me, just like I intend to fight for immigrants, Hispanics, refugees, Muslims, women, blacks, people with disabilities, etc. We don’t need to agree on every issue in order to protect each other’s liberty.

Neither presidential candidate was ever going to save us. We, the people, have to do that. This truly is an opportunity for us. History will look to us and remember how we acted in this moment. I want them to remember how we came together and rose above our differences. Enough name-calling. Enough hatred. It takes too much energy, and there is still so much work to do.

I sincerely hope that the Donald Trump we see in the White House is different from the one we’ve seen during his campaign, and that he becomes the kind of president I could have voted for. I have faith in the American people, and in our system of checks and balances. I have faith in the goodness of people.

To anyone who feels alone, afraid, undervalued, or unsafe in their own skin, know this: we will continue to fight for you. You are loved, you are valued, and we will fight to keep America the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Dear Mormon Moms, What Will You Say to Your Sons and Daughters? And Mine? 
by  Mary Bingham Lee.

I didn’t want to go to my Mormon worship service the Sunday before the election. It is what we call Fast and Testimony Meeting. It is basically open mic day for Mormons. It can sometimes be co-opted for some in the congregation who are not very disciplined. We are taught that it should be a time to testify of Jesus Christ, but sometimes people digress into travelogues and soap boxing on their own agendas (I have been guilty of this before,) and sometimes people get political—which is considered a big taboo over the pulpit.

We did have one member of our congregation who lives about 50 yards from the church decide that he needed to drive his van to church that day—his van happened to be draped in a giant Trump sign—but we forgave him his inappropriate infusion of partisan politics into our supposedly non-partisan worship services because, well, we love him, and we decided that it was better to turn the other cheek. (Okay, I DID consider painting a giant Hillary sign on my car and parking it next to his, but I decided to be a good sport—really, I did decide to be a good sport.)

But after this week, I wish I had said something. Or done something. Because now, I can’t. Now I will be called a sore loser. Now I will be called a whiner. Even though, it was a cheap shot last week on his part, this week, in the same church where I thought there was a sense of unity and testimony of Christ over the pulpit and the foolishness was left to a small indiscretion in the parking lot, it feels a little different to me.

Maybe in my neighborhood congregation there will still be good will overall, (I hope so..) because I still love these people as much as I did last week. And because some sweet child, or adult or family decided to secretly adorn each of mailbox in the neighborhood with hearts the day after our election--- I think we are still good with each other. But there is still something that bothers me about my (Mormon)people in general—about my sisters in Zion specifically.

I think we need to ask ourselves some difficult questions as Mormon women about what we really believe. Out of all self-identified Christian groups in exit polls, Mormon women were the largest number of religious people who voted for Trump. At least that is what is floating around the Internet—and whether it is actually true or not, why has that exit poll rumor taken hold? And why are Mormon women on Facebook in droves telling people to stop being sore losers? And why are they responding to Mother Jones with defensiveness- without really hearing what is being said.? In all truth, we do live in a patriarchal society, but you and I are smart enough to vote for ourselves and speak for ourselves. We are also smart enough to see complexities in candidates and in people all around us. We could have said, “Yes Mother Jones, you are right, we voted for a Jackass, but we felt like he could offer us, politically, what this country needed, but we sure as hell condemn every bit of his bad behavior.”

Because if we are invoking our feisty pioneer heritage, I would like to invoke my Great Aunt Mildred who used to say “Teach your kids that the world is beautiful and good, but don’t forget to teach them that there is shit in the world too and that shit stinks.” Yes, she said “shit” and “damn” and “hell” Utah Mormons used to be able to say those words.

So while we are all trying to excuse Donald Trump’s bad behavior to assuage our guilt for voting for him (BTW, I didn’t vote for him, but I say “we” because I am a Mormon mom ) how about we get real and start actually practicing what we claim to believe.

I am inviting people outside of our community to listen in, so that you understand, that we are willing to ask difficult questions of our own. That each community should maybe stop hurling epithets and turn inward and ask ourselves difficult questions about how we contribute to the problems that plague our society, how we can resolve them, and how we can help to make our world a better place.

Obviously, there are many issues that we have had to face during this campaign cycle. For the moment, one that is bothersome is our (Mormon women’s) seemingly complete dismissal of Donald Trump’s treatment of women. Before you start in on the anti-Hillary rhetoric, and the abortion = Democrat= burn in hell = I will never leave the Republican Party -- just hold up. I am not asking you to walk away from your Republican values. I am asking you, to stop defending Donald Trump at the cost of all of your values. Please, please, please, be willing to be disgusted with the man, despite the fact that you felt you needed a Republican in the Whitehouse. Please, if you can’t find it in your good conscience to vote for Hillary, find it in your good conscience to condemn the rancid behavior of Donald Trump. I am not talking about made up conspiracy theories here either, I am talking about the behavior that is documented on film and recordings. His bad behavior has not been exaggerated by the media. He has behaved badly. He has owned his bad behavior. He has been unapologetic about it. Please do not stand as an apologist for him. You are not an agent of Donald Trump.

I have read many Facebook posts by Mormon women in defense of Donald Trump. I have read many Facebook posts by Mormon women who are calling people that are devastated by the results of this elections “crybabies” and “whiners”. Really? What happened to our Relief Society motto of “Charity Never Faileth” ?

I have read many Facebook posts by Mormon women who invoke our pioneer heritage and our grandmothers who had the right to vote before many women in this country, but that doesn’t address the fact that you used your valuable right to vote for a man who is not a good example for our sons and daughters to follow—even if you have good reasons to vote for him—do not recuse yourself from your collusion in putting a terrible role model in the White House for your sons and daughters.

Will you teach our sons that they are to continue to treat women, girls and children with proper respect as you are making excuses for Donald Trump’s mistreatment of women in his manner towards them in language and deed?

Do you dare discuss principles of modesty, self-worth, inner-beauty with your daughters when you are victim blaming, demeaning and justifying Donald Trump’s victims and detractors who are horrified at his language and treatment of women?(I don’t want to hear about Bill and Hillary here either, I don’t condone his behavior, I am talking about the man you voted for, that has admitted on tape and on film that he has accosted women. Not to mention the fact that he calls women fat pigs etc.,etc.)

How will you teach children in Primary about loving one another when your vote elected the man who prides himself in calling people “losers” ? And when your reaction to people on Facebook who are genuinely afraid is to tell them to stop whining?

They say we have Donald Trump as a President because of a group of people that were ignored by the elites. Okay. Let’s say that is true. Fine. That is a terrible. No one should have suffered such indignity. But do we have to turn into hypocrites to make things right? Why do we set aside our religion for our candidate of choice? What will you teach your children and mine about the man you elected?

Where are the disclaimers that read like this? I would love to see them all over Facebook:

His language and admitted treatment of women is disgusting and we do not support, condone or agree with it. But we felt we needed his ______________________ to aid our country in this time of ______________________ to solve these problems:_____________________.

People who are afraid that he will endanger them have reason to be afraid because he has said he will. He has promised to target certain nationalities, religions, and groups of people during his campaign, but we will work hard to make sure everyone is safe, protected, and treated fairly because our laws in the United States guarantee that we do that. We will work especially hard to do this because as Mormons, we believe that we are all children of loving Heavenly Parents and we are all important and deserve to be treated fairly.

This is the moment of truth Mormon Moms. Teach your children about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Teach the world about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Maybe you did vote for Trump out of principle. What principle? Your unspoken principle that you are shouting out to the world right now is :

It is okay for person to speak to and about women like they are trash and pornography. As a woman of faith, I will accept it and reward him/her for it with power, my support and my silence. I will even justify it for them as long as it gets me what I want.

It is okay for a leader to use his power and wealth to demean and intimidate the less fortunate. As a woman of faith, I will reward him/her for it with power, support and I will remain silent. I will even justify if for him/her as long as it gets me what I want.

It is okay for a leader to rewrite history. As a woman of faith, I will look the other way, adjust my value system and reward him/her for it with power and support. I will also hurt others who may try and object to this injustice.

Trump is now the President Elect, so whatever was hoped for as that Trump ballot was cast, I hope he will deliver.

As far as Trump as a representative that we can be proud of as our leader who “tells it like it is,” I think we owe it to ourselves and our families to disavow his world view when it comes to how he treats others. While there may be situations where Political Correctness has been taken to an extreme, it is really just an exaggeration and over-application of The Golden Rule and when we take up scoffing at the Golden Rule, we risk scoffing at the very center of our gospel. Aren’t we taught that if a person ask for our shirt, we offer not only the shirt, but our coat also, lest we offend, (Matt 5:40) ?

To the Mormon Mom who voted for Trump because you felt it was best for our country, let that stand for good. But don’t try to condone Donald Trump’s bad behavior, because no matter how hard you try and justify it, ignore it or dress it up, as Great Aunt Mildred said, “shit stinks.”

Ron Farnsworth -  God I love you, Mary. I think I should just abandon the lesson I prepared for the high priests this week and read your post. You inspire me to do better. And I love that I get to hear your voice again. The lesson from this election for me is that I cannot stand idly by and say nothing when any racist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, or nativist things are said and/or done. And I can't just make fun of their antiquated attitudes to all my friends, behind their backs. As difficult as it is, I feel I now must confront any expressions of hate or prejudice vigorously and call people out for their incivility, appealing if I can to their better angels (if they still have access to them). The horrible attitudes that led to the election of this man can no longer be left to fester and corrupt this society. I think I need to begin by appealing to mine own better angels.

Kathryn Hill Lindsay - This is hard and I'm sorry 😢 There are some Mormon Republican women who did not vote for Trump and will not defend him. I know this because I am one of them.

Summer Seschillie - Mary, I'm so happy I know you. As a Native American LDS member of the church, this week has been really hard and disappointing for me. I was sad the candidate I wanted to win lose this election... but I was 1000x more disappointed and heartbroken of the after effects. It was so awkward for me to walk into my place of work or around Provo, knowing that possibly 1 out of 2 people I see had voted for a man whose behavior wouldn't be tolerated in their own home. But a huge number of men and women here were willing to forgive him for that behavior. And it angers me clear down to the depths of my soul how people continue to defend him. 
It just does not make sense to me. 
But despite my despondency, I see posts like yours and I feel comforted. So thank you, Mary. You were my professor at BYU, and I'm so grateful I met you. 
I have not responded to any political posts throughout this week but I read all of them. I know you probably get a lot of negative reactions from your posts, but please know there's someone like me who reads them and appreciates them. 
Don't stop posting.

Karla Bennion -  Thanks Mary. I guess since the nation has reverted to tribalism, I've rediscovered my tribe - and it includes my children, my LGBTQ+ friends, my African American daughter in law, my Tongan immigrant brother in law, all the broken, hurting people I work with in my psychotherapy practice. Protect and defend is pretty much my only job now. Thank you for doing so in this public venue. I hope I can do so with as much passion, clarity, and charity.

Amen Sister! And by the way you are amazing, wish I had your way with words, I did not vote for Trump because of his behaviors.

Jeanette Hugh - Facebook

Trump plans to immediately deport 2 to 3 million undocumented immigrants (excerpts)

By Amy B. Wang The Washington Post

First Published Nov 13 2016 12:24PM •

In a "60 Minutes" interview scheduled to air Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump said he planned to immediately deport 2 to 3 million undocumented immigrants after his inauguration in January.

"What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate," Trump told "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl, according to a preview of the interview released by CBS. "But we're getting them out of our country. They're here illegally."

Trump told Stahl that Clinton's phone call conceding the election was "lovely" and acknowledged that making the phone call was likely "tougher for her than it would have been for me," according to previews of the interview released by CBS.

"She couldn't have been nicer. She just said, 'Congratulations, Donald, well done,'" Trump told Stahl. "And I said, 'I want to thank you very much. You were a great competitor.' She is very strong and very smart."

Trump's tone in the interview was in sharp contrast to his bitter attacks on the campaign trail, in which he nicknamed Clinton "Crooked Hillary" and encouraged chants of "Lock her up!" at his rallies. Among other insults, Trump also referred to his competitor as "the devil," "a bigot" and - at the tail end of the final presidential debate - "such a nasty woman."

When Stahl questioned whether there would be a gap between the repeal of Obamacare and the implementation of a new plan that could leave millions of people uninsured, Trump interrupted her.

"Nope. We're going to do it simultaneously. It'll be just fine. It's what I do. I do a good job. You know, I mean, I know how to do this stuff," Trump said. "We're going to repeal and replace it. And we're not going to have, like, a two-day period and we're not going to have a two-year period where there's nothing. It will be repealed and replaced. I mean, you'll know. And it will be great health care for much less money."

1. Is that the way a president-elect talks? It’s barely coherent. (Me thinks he needs to attend one of Depak's retreats to learn how to get rid of the ego and get in touch with his true self.)

2. Everyone in America, especially our president-elect, should read* “The Book of Unknown Americans” by Cristina Henriquez

Review: Peopled with deeply sympathetic characters, this poignant yet unsentimental tale of young love tells a riveting story of unflinching honesty and humanity that offers a resonant new definition of what it means to be an American.

*Better yet, listen to The Book of Unknown Americans and have the benefit of the accent.

          This is turning out to be a mess. I'll work on it tomorrow. Things change colors even after I re-type them for no rhythm or reason.
These are my personal thoughts jotted down as events expired.

Another thing that goes when you grow older is your emotions. But I cried tonight.

I cried out of frustration and sadness
I'm scared for our country and our people.

The day after: I don’t feel like doing the chores I have assigned myself for today. I feel like I should take the day off. This day is different. Not a holiday or a day for rejoicing; more like a death and I need to plan the funeral and decide on the burial. A day of sadness.

I was constipated until Trump got elected; now I’ve got diarrhea.