Why Things Went Wrong Last Night, and What To Do Next

I'll tell you why the polls were wrong: the ignorant, uneducated fools who voted for Drumpf thought it would be funny to lie to the man or woman in the suit asking impertinent (to them) questions.

I've seen this behavior up close. It gives them a feeling of superiority to bamboozle the educated person with their country nonsense, pulling the wool over the eyes of the arrogant, college-educated person questioning their beliefs.

Well, guess what? We know their beliefs and motivations now! They're out in the open for all to see their ugliness, backwardness, and bigotry. They feel that Hollywood has shown them as jokes and fools? Well, they are, and it's going to be even more obvious in the months and years to come, as their trust in an arrogant, egotistical, racist, misogynistic, bigoted, selfish, lying rich white man betrays them all. They feel disrespected by the elites? What have they done to deserve respect, besides always being the dead weight that the rest of us have tried (forcibly, at times) to carry into the future? They want their concerns heard and addressed? Well, now they've got one of their own (they think) in the top job, let's see how well he listens. Early guess: he won't.

They want to drag us back into the past, and they've taken a big step towards that. We have to stop them first, then beat them. Time will help. Trump's minions are all older, they won't be around much longer, and the spirits might help us give them early retirement. But we have to do our part, and it's a job that you can't quit, and now, can never stop. We have to fight ignorance and bigotry, and stop being polite when we hear or see it, especially online where these thoughts fester and grow. The "regular people" hate PC speech? Well, wait till they get a load of what I have to say! I'm not honor-bound to respect foolishness, divisiveness, bigotry, and hatred, and I will continue to speak up in opposition whenever and wherever I hear it. I'm just going to be LOUDER from now on!

We have to prepare to defend our values, our beliefs, our standards and principles, and give our support to politicians who stand beside us in defense of those values. No more of this "well, they could be better on Issue X, so I can't support them" bullshit! When the opposition is literally composed of demons from Hell, you support anyone who's willing to stand with you, and hash out the details later. Progressives are facing a repetition of 1932, this time with nuclear weapons, resurgent racism, sexism, and bigotry, and a degrading global climate. We have to take whatever allies we find; time enough later to tend to offended interests later.

Tonight is the 78th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the beginning of the end for German Jews in the Thirties:

"On November 9 to November 10, 1938, in an incident known as “Kristallnacht”, Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses and killed close to 100 Jews. In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, also called the “Night of Broken Glass,” some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. German Jews had been subjected to repressive policies since 1933, when Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) became chancellor of Germany. However, prior to Kristallnacht, these Nazi policies had been primarily nonviolent. After Kristallnacht, conditions for German Jews grew increasingly worse."

Let us not forget that Hitler was democratically elected, with a majority of the German voting population supporting him. We should also remember that Hitler and his Nazi Party began with, espoused, and ran on a platform of extreme nationalism and anti-Semitism. "Through the 1920s, Hitler gave speech after speech in which he stated that unemployment, rampant inflation, hunger and economic stagnation in postwar Germany would continue until there was a total revolution in German life. Most problems could be solved, he explained, if communists and Jews were driven from the nation. His fiery speeches swelled the ranks of the Nazi Party, especially among young, economically disadvantaged Germans."

Beginning to sound familiar?

History cannot be allowed to repeat itself, this time. We cannot allow a fascist demagogue to command the most powerful military in human history, nor extinguish the brightest light of democracy that the world has ever seen. He may have won this battle, this election, but Trump and his regressive forces have yet to win the war.


Thomas Jefferson said "for I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

So do I also swear, to fight tyranny, injustice, and oppression with every weapon at my disposal. Are you with me?


“O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath —
America will be!”

— Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again”

America WILL be.