Let me be the first to admit it. I was wrong.
The majority of Americans are like Donald Trump. You don’t vote for somebody you don’t believe represents who you are and what you believe in.
But I confess I refused to see it. I thought we were better than that. And then when I woke up this morning it dawned on me that we’re all living in Texas now.
Pundits have been saying for several years that Texas is trending blue. Turns out, the nation has been turning Texas.
Think about it.
It has a Republican controlled legislature that is determined to control women and their bodies to the point where three of them dying because of draconian abortion laws makes no different to them. They’re also doing everything they can to prevent people not like them not to vote.
The state has a governor who blames immigrants for all its problems, even putting barbed wire in the Rio Grande to catch illegal immigrants trying to cross, resulting in some dying before he was forced to remove it. He may as well have stationed Texas Rangers on the river bank to shoot them.
Texas also has an Attorney General, a crook himself, who wants to monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute any who try to leave the state to have an abortion.
It’s a state that sees social progress as “woke” philosophy and wants to keep great literature from being read in schools by Texas children.
It’s economy is controlled by big money, thrives on the mantra, “drill baby drill,” and shows no concern or interest in saving the planet.
And the majority of Texas voters continue to re-elect these same people because they are just like them.
I realize now that one of the reasons I misread this election so badly is that I didn’t realize all of us now live in Texas.
The challenge today is figuring out how to survive it. I didn’t choose to be living in Texas. And I sure as hell don’t want to be. But it’s where you and I are and we need to figure out what to do about it.
The one good thing is that we’re in the same boat together, including the minority of voters in Texas who don’t like what’s going on there anymore than we do in the nation.
Maybe that’s the first thing to remember, that we’re together as we try to cope with what comes next.
No doubt things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. Trump is who he is and he is going to be a disaster worse than he was the first time around.
I’m thinking that at this point all we can do is wait for the s**t to hit the fan, and because of Trump’s incompetence, it surely will. Maybe there will be sufficient discontent in the chaos he will create that we will have an opening to get back into control of some things again. Maybe not, but it’s our only chance right now.
In the meantime, holding on to who we are is about all we can do. We may be living in Texas at the moment, but we don’t have to become Texans.
So I’ll close with this.
I have often quoted the Canadian lawyer who made the prescient comment that the United States has a long way to go to be the country most Americans believe it already is.
I apologize for being as guilty of what he said as anyone. I didn’t realize we had so far to go to become the country I thought we already were.
It’s not much consolation, but this morning that’s all I’ve got.
linnposts.com 
Devastating day. So unsettling! Our friends and family in France, UK, Holland are expressing great dismay.
They must think our country has gone off the deep end. I kind of think so myself.
Yes, they think Trump is appalling and dangerous! They all said they can’t believe Americans would be so stupid as to elect him. Some of their international businesses are slow because people fear the results of the election. It is just plain mind-boggling to them and to us as well. Very unsettling times!
I think we’re living in a time of transition, but don’t know what that is exactly. It may take a long time and reflections by historians to know for sure what is going on. Too late for me, though.
Our granddaughter goes to university in France, and she just wrote that she won’t be telling people she’s American for awhile, but she said people there are as disgusted and appalled as we are.
One hour, one minute, one day
It’s the only way I know to survive, Katherine. Never dreamed this would happen.
I was waiting for your blog to arrive. You did not disappoint in timeliness nor content. The danger lurking in the wings is the one who didn’t want to be fact-checked during the first debate: J, D. Vance. We’ve had the trailer preview of their performance. Watching these actors play out on the national stage is not what I imagined for my so-called golden years.
Joy and I feel the same way, Pen. Unimaginable. Hope you two are otherwise doing okay.
very sobering morning. Life goes on.
It does, Wilbur, but not the same. When a nation that elects a convicted felon, sexual predator, failed businessman, and president of the liar’s club, nothing can ever be the same again.
m
Jan,
I share your thoughts; I misread the country, as well. Most Americans chose whatever it is they thing they see in the in-coming occupant of the Oval Office. That is concerning; the person they chose apparently embodies the country they want to live in. It is strange to my thinking, but it might be that those who voted for him either are tired of democracy or want a supposed “strong man” to do the thinking about governing for them.
I recall a poem I ran into in a American Literature text the first year I taught, many, many years ago, 68 years, called “One Wants a Teller in a Time Like This” by Gwendolyn Brooks. It’s worth a read. I also recall Sinclair Lewis’ novel, IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE, which I believe I alluded to a few years back here in one of your early columns.’
Well . . . now to figure out how to respond and try to re-shape our future.
Gene
Gene, the whole thing befuddles me. No logic to it at all. I was and remained stunned by what happened. It can in fact happen here because it just did. Not familiar with the Brooks poem so I’ll look it up. We’ll have to keep encouraging each other. Thanks.
Jan, count me in with those who have been “shocked to the core” (again) about the election results. But at least this time, we understand more about why it has happened.
Last night, Rachel Maddow gave a masterful sermon to all of us that feel that our America, as we know it and love it, will be destroyed. She reminded us that it took hundreds of years to create the American Dream that we so rightfully cherish – WITH LOTS OF OBSTACLES WE HAD TO OVERCOME. But then she proclaimed that they can not tear it all down “overnight”. She stated that they will quickly try of course, and they may succeed. But if they do, it will take time. American public opinion on most issues they espouse and the values that created our great country, are still on our side.
She stated that we are not at the “beginning of the end”, but that we are at the “end of the beginning”. She stated that “we the people” still have strong forces in place to “stop them from succeeding”. These forces include the courts, the legislature, the media, educational institutions, state governments (particularly blue states), local governments and communities, and “civil society”. And until they have “total control” of all these forces, we must use these forces to our best advantage to stop them.
I see us as having two important objectives. 1. We must “accept” the circumstances that we are are currently in. Acceptance means that we must reverse our current state of minds of shock, anger, and despair (which, if not, will lead to retreat and little continued action), and take even greater ownership for what we have yet to do. 2. Even though our backs are against the wall, we must “not give up”. We must be even more determined than ever to “win this war”, even though we have lost a very important battle. In effect, we must “move the wall”.
Jan, as I remind the potential readers of the two books I am writing, “this is easy for me to say!”
But as I try to be even a little more “active” in my support of American Democracy, I must, at my age, continue to pursue my personal goals of “happiness, prosperity and peace” no matter how successful they may become. This they cannot this take away from me, and from all good people in America.
John Hamerski
Thank you, John, for being open about where you are after the bad news election we just witnessed. I think Rachel in right in reminding people that we still have ways to fight Trumpism, which will be an important source of encouragement when the bad stuff gets doing. There is no give-up in you or me, or in millions of Americans who will never let Trump and his minions define who we are as a nation. Hope in not in the circumstances we face changing. It is in the human spirit that transcends any and all circumstances and has the last word.