I’ve gone for some time without writing any political posts, but it’s not something I shy away from.  I was pretty passionate early in the election cycle.  I lost interest in the March timeframe after it became clear to me how the media was simply promoting Trump for the entertainment value.  I stopped following the news, for the most part I stopped watching the news.  I started writing my novel in March and have given very little time to anything else, including running.

I can’t let this election result go though without contributing my 2¢.  I voted for Hillary and sure, I’m disappointed to know Trump will be my President for the next four years.  But I’m not going to lose any sleep over the potential policies he’ll enact that I’ll disagree with.  Short of dropping a nuke, there’s only so much lasting damage he can do.  I’ve been on the losing side of most Presidential elections.  The world doesn’t end.  Or at least, it hasn’t yet.

And yet I woke up the next day depressed.  Seriously depressed.  I’ve never felt this way before after losing five of eight elections.  And I could tell from facebook that I was not alone.  Why the depression?  Trump isn’t going to do much to screw me over.  I’m a white male.  It took me  until the end of the day to figure it out.  Introspection isn’t my strong suit.

I was depressed because I couldn’t get over the notion that half the country voted for Trump.  Not the voting per se, but the implicit acceptance of every base aspect of Trump.  If Trump and half the right-wing media can refer to Hillary as criminal, when after hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have found no evidence of anything, after decades of trying, then I feel fairly safe calling Trump a perverted pedophile.  I mean, we can toy around with some of the little things too, like bigotry, xenophobia, sexism and racism, oh, and third-grade diction; but the man has allegations against him of raping a 13 year old girl.  This photo of him above references a porn movie he cameoed in.  And half the country is okay with this?  That’s why I was depressed.  And then I did the math.

I did similar math in a blog I posted at the start of the year suggesting only 10% to 20% of the country was behind the numbers leading to his nomination.  The GOP is nothing if not fractured.  Well, consider half the country didn’t vote.  Like me back in March, they were so disgusted by everything, they just couldn’t participate.  I know some Democrats are mad at them for this apathy, but I can empathize with them.  Back to the math, if half the country didn’t vote, then Trump’s behavior has only been legitimized by 25% of the population.  Still a bigger number of apparently low self esteem voters than I’d like to see, but this somehow makes me feel better.

For me, it’s not about Trump.  It’s about where we are as a society.  It’s bad enough America seems to be trending dumber.  I want to believe we’re becoming more civilized.  We might not be.  When I woke up Wednesday morning, I thought we were for sure in the gutter.  Like in this photo above, Trump will certainly cheapen the Presidency.  I just don’t want to believe Americans are following his example.  I can live with Trump.  I subscribe to Comedy Central.  I’ll be fine.  I just want everyone else to be fine too.