What the FUCK

So today I was trying to ask my coworker why she voted for Trump (not that it made a difference, our state is so not a player in the electoral college), why, in the end, she thought Hillary Clinton was worse than Donald Trump.

She practically lunged over my desk to shake her finger in my face and yell "I refused to have those Clintons in the White House again."  Those Clintons.

I don't understand people's hostility. Times were good under Bill Clinton. Shit was accomplished. Congress wasn't at a standstill. No social "progress". (Geez, he passed welfare reform, DOMA, don't ask don't tell.) Economically things were booming. Shrank the debt and deficit. WHAT was so wrong?

Two things: Bill Clinton cheated on his wife and lied to the public about it and got caught and Hillary Clinton stepped outside the traditional First Lady role. That right there is where it started.

That's all I can come up with. Am I wrong here?

None of them. NOT ONE of those Trump supporting Clinton hating folks has been able to give me anything substantive. Anything other than but...Emails...but...Benghazi...but...bullied women he had an affair with...but...stayed with her husband...

Everything having to do with her as a woman or residual backlash against Obama being elected twice. It is just insane.

My fear now is that in the mid-terms, even if Trump and Congress are a colossal catastrophe, they won't see it because of the way the republicans are able to manipulate fact and blind people. They've been doing it since before Obama was elected and all through his presidency.

HOW do people not see that?

I admit to being profoundly disappointed in my countrymen and women.

75% said it's okay to have a president that says out loud all the nasty, mean, divisive things we've been fighting for decades. A president that promotes racism (if he isn't a closet racist himself). A misogynist.  An incompetent. A liar. (He lies to their faces and they don't care. WTF?)

49.5% of the eligible voters in this country didn't even bother to show up. Their apathy showing they clearly don't give a damn what happens to blacks, Hispanics, women, Muslims, or anyone else in this country.

25 % by voting Trump show they don't think his words and actions and threats toward women, minorities, "others", are a problem. It's acceptable, it's okay. What. The. Fuck.

I am really worried what kind of world we are going to be living in once he is sworn in and the Republican party can start making changes. We know which way they've been headed for nearly a decade now.

And I guess the worst for me is that all my life I've been told that I could be anything I wanted to be, do anything I wanted to do, and even when in reality I was faced with the sexism in our culture, especially the subtle ways it hinders women at work, I somehow consoled myself that we'd made progress. That things were better. That being a woman wouldn't hold me back, and more importantly, my young nieces wouldn't have to deal with the same things. Could do anything.

What this election did was slap me hard across the face and say "No, bitch. We humored you. We let you have a little recess on the playground but recess is over. And you know what? Because you sassed us, we're taking it away entirely. Now go sit down and shut the fuck up and be grateful we let you play as much as we did."

I'm now convinced I won't see a female president in my lifetime. People would rather a racist, cheating, morally bankrupt, incompetent, dictatorial-leaning man be president than one of the most highly qualified candidates we've ever had who just happens to be a woman.

Everything I felt and thought when Obama was sworn in that first time is gone. All the hope, all the promise. It's very hard to see where to go from here, what to even do.

Struggling

This election has left me floundering and I'm not quite sure why. It's been almost a week and I've not had anyone to really discuss it with. I'm too busy reassuring everybody else about it or about some other issue they are dealing with. When the fuck is anyone going to ask me how I'm doing with it or comfort me or reassure me?