If you’re depressed about the bloated orange fart cloud that has enveloped the USA for the past several months and are seeking lovely photos to take your mind off it or comforting words of hope to lift you up, keep scrolling, friend — this isn’t the post for you. An angry rant lurks below the fold…
Still here? Okay. I’m not sure why, but I’m as angry and depressed this week as I’ve been since the night of the election, when I realized with dawning horror that yes, my countrymen really are racist, sexist and/or fucking stupid enough to elevate an embarrassing, malignant turd like Donald Motherfucking Trump to the highest office in the land, a notion that, in my naivete, I’d considered impossible until it actually happened.
Why the rage now? The Gorsuch thing is part of it — the theft of that seat is as clear an example of evil cheats prospering as you’ll ever see. And also that pathetic peacock display of a bombing run and the media reaction to it. That a lumpy, gelatinous pile of possum scat like Trump is now appointing SCOTUS judges and ordering military action rubbed my nose anew in the cold reality of November 2016.
I’ve never been so filled with hatred and contempt for such a large number of people in my life, and I’m sure it’s not healthy. I hate Trump, of course — the lying, conceited, demagogic sack of shit who has already made this country a laughingstock and will wreak irreparable harm. I also hate the beady-eyed, opportunistic Christo-fascist Pence and his smirking rationales for an evil agenda.
I deeply loathe the simpering bubblehead Ivanka, her two sociopathic brothers and her callow, arrogant sprog of a husband. I hate Trump’s plagiarizing, emptyheaded wife, who is very much an accomplice to this outrage. I despise the ambulatory carbuncle Bannon and his oafish, supercilious Nazi sidekick Gorka. I have nothing but contempt for the odious lickspittle Priebus.
I long to see the lying fiend Conway suffer a soul-destroying public humiliation that sends her scurrying into the hills, never to be seen again, and that goes double for that animated slab of rancid Spam Spicer. I hate that Keebler Elf-looking KKK retread Sessions. I despise the lying piece of shit Price, a physician who surely knows his new job is to rob people of access to care. I can’t stand that toxic waste dump in human form Pruitt or the grifting, self-righteous piece of shit DeVos.
In fact, here’s a blanket “FUCK YOU!” to everyone in Trump’s cabinet, each campaign surrogate and TV flack, all West Wing employees and every Republican in Congress who is pretending that this goddamned fraud is a legitimately elected commander in chief. And a special “FUCK YOU” to Comey, Putin, Fox News, Breitbart, WikiLeaks and the rest of Trump’s enablers or dupes — may they all rot in hell.
While I’m at it, fuck everyone who pays a membership at a Trump club for enriching that family of parasites, and fuck each company that rents office space in a Trump building and every retailer that hawks Trump merchandise for the same reason.
That is all. Have a nice evening, everyone.
Baud
Ditto.
At least we have each other…
rikyrah
This was a rant of beauty.
Simply glorious.
I have long decided to stay in the rage stage. Only way to function. Might not be good for me, but, oh well.
I will never get over or forgive or attempt to understand those who voted for Dolt45 and did this to the country.???
lollipopguild
But Betty you are being shrill! and E-Mails, and if Killery is elected she will start wars with Every country on earth and Goldman-Sachs will be running the country!
Emma
Sing it, sister!
Corner Stone
Surely there’s something in it specifically for Mulvaney as well? He can’t ask a poor mom to do something something but he can demand she pay for the wall.
Corner Stone
@rikyrah:
I will never forgive any single person who voted for Trump.
?BillinGlendaleCA
You seem somewhat upset, Betty.
Baud
I’ll add a large part of the rage is based on how Hillary was treated, which followed how Obama was treated, which followed how Kerry, and Gore and Bill and a whole hose of others up and down the line of the Democratic Party were treated. Trump is the proverbial back-breaking straw.
Splitting Image
In Trump’s defense, he may be a liar, a crook, a con artist, a fascist, an oaf, a buffoon, a likely wife beater and a possible statutory rapist, but he’s still a better person than any of the 60 million odd people who voted for him.
They in turn are right to look down their noses at the American news media.
Shell
I don’t know what harm this kind of rage is doing to your health, but its gold for your writing!
p.a.
Well done B.C. Rant worthy of Cole.
Corner Stone
That is three illegitimate justices to SCOTUS since 2000. Our country will be shaped for 3 decades by people who should not ever have been on the court in the first place.
Miss Bianca
Damn, Betty, you have channeled everything I’m thinking right now! I find myself just saying “bullshit bullshit BULLSHIT” to everything and everyone lately. No more Ms. Nice Gal – as if I ever was, but nowadays I’m so “NOPE” about even the slightest whiff of BS, and into nuking it into the stratosphere, that I’m surprised I haven’t lost more friends. Because I’m not nearly as funny as you are when I articulate my rage.
Also, too, since we haven’t run out of FTG yet…fuck these six fish in particular.
West of the Cascades
@Corner Stone:
I haven’t communicated with my favorite (formerly favorite) cousin in Florida since she posted “thank goodness Trump won” on her Facebook page on Nov. 9. She loves animals – I almost wrote her about Trump signing the “kill bear cubs in their dens” bill last week, but I’m not ready to forgive her even if I am able to shame her.
Mnemosyne
Let me tell you how stupid the Trump voters are: my older brother, who worships Ronald Reagan to the point of keeping photos of him in his office, voted for Hillary because he hates Trump that much.
SatanicPanic
I’m depressed about it because A) Gorsuch will be on the court forever B) bombing people might just get the Russia story out of the headlines. I can’t believe it’s been less than 3 months. How does the nation survive four years of this garbage human?
Schlemazel
I have been avoiding BJ for a few weeks now. I had another health crisis so that didn’t help but I find that I am so filled with rage I can’t deal with it. I need a break and I got a short one last week, shut off everything. It isn’t helping. I have done all I know how and it is not enough, I do not think we are going to be rid of the evil troll for at least 4 years & the damage they will do will last long after my grandchildren die.
bemused
There is no getting over it. Not for me. I wasn’t shocked at many Republicans I know voting for Trump. It was the Republican voters that I thought knew better, at long last, that voted for someone who went against majority of the values and morals they lived by that I will never be able to view the same ever again. Many of our friends feeling the same.
debbie
Betty, I cannot believe you didn’t include Mitch McConnell! He’s the focus of my anger. I wish I could spit on him and cast a spell where his chin recedes through the back of his head.
Back to reality, I think he’s probably more of an architect for this mess than Trump. Anything Trump’s done has been unintentional.
Lymie
What she said. Love it, Betty.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
The moment I read “bloated orange fart cloud,” I laughed and knew I had to be reading a BC post… scrolled back up and sure enough. LOL!
geg6
Couldn’t have expressed my own feelings any better, Betty.
Now I need to go have a cigarette. That was very satisfying.
debbie
@Schlemazel:
I’m sorry you haven’t been feeling well, but I too have found disconnection is of no use. It’s the cause that needs to be fixed, not the symptoms.
Ajabu
You’re my girl, Betty. I couldn’t have said it better!!
And I have the added grief of having moved back to the states (on my own initiative) from the Caribbean in 2009 on the naive theory that with Obama as President things would get dramatically better. — Definitely in my top two stupid moves of my lifetime.
I thought you were supposed to gain wisdom with age. Apparently I lived the same year over & over for the past 50+ years. FUCK…
zhena gogolia
Pain gives rise to beautiful language. Thank you, Betty.
Mnemosyne
Also, yes, I’m back at “enraged” from the combination of McConnell ramming through the Gorsuch nomination and the Syrian escalation. And the fact that the fucking MSM bleated about both sides! again just makes me want to take a baseball bat to the genitals of each and every one of them.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
May I add Lamar Smith and his conservative Texan disdain for science? This steaming turd stew of morons will likely cause much damage; nevertheless, we will persist.
bupalos
@Splitting Image: Well that’s pretty fucking weird. Not sure I want to see your math on that one.
geg6
I’m with you and Schlemazel. I tried disconnecting from all media for a while and it didn’t help at all. You are right. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it and I know I can’t forgive it. We need Obama’s time machine in order to feel right again. And I don’t think that will happen either.
This is not the country I thought I lived in and I really don’t want to live in it at this point. But I’m stuck here and I just feel totally and completely rage filled and impotent.
ETA: This was meant to be a reply to Debbie. Not sure why that didn’t work.
lol chikinburd
You are right.
Nicole
Me too. Reading about Gorsuch getting sworn in today made me sick to my stomach.
This election really woke me up to how incredibly misogynist this nation is. And there was a comment here some time back that depressed me to no end- someone pointed out that maybe nominating a woman wasn’t a good idea since clearly the fact that Clinton was a woman hurt her and maybe the Dems needed to choose more wisely next time (that’s not word-for-word, but that was the sentiment). And I’m sure the person didn’t mean anything other than, “How best do the Dems win next time?” but, as I said, it depressed the ever-loving fuck out of me. As Patton Oswalt said, what this election showed was that the US is even more sexist than it is racist- and we’re really racist.
I was diagnosed with cancer a week before the election- at that point I wasn’t sure how far along it was, but I did think, “Well, whatever happens, at least I lived to see the first woman President.” A surgery later, I’m hopeful that my cancer won’t recur and I’ll live to see my son get gray hair (or, more likely, lose it, if he takes after his dad). But I’m doubting that I’ll live to see a woman President, even if I live to be 90.
Schlemazel
@debbie:
But what to do? This is the first time I have ever felt the institutions designed to protect us are useless and there is nothing (legal) I can do to make a difference.
I am friends with several parents of players on the womens national hockey team & I got into an argument with the one who is a fuckingtrump supporter last week. He can’t even understand that fuckingtrump will destroy the title IX program that gave his daughter the chance to excel because he does not believe it will affect him. I had to walk away before I did something stupid. He is a nice guy and I just do not understand how he can be so fucking dense
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Every morning since the strikes Thursday night, my first thought is to turn on the TV to see if the flabby ape has taken us into full blown war in the last seven hours. It wears on you.
bupalos
@p.a.: For my money Betty could rant circles around Cole or anyone. Most glorious potty-mouth in Christendom and beyond.
But art is not a contest.
MIchael Windbigler
Thank you….to true
SiubhanDuinne
@Schlemazel:
DaveInOz
I think that sums it up nicely.
I don’t expect I’ll be visiting in the next four years. Any visit to Canada will be via Vancouver. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/09/uk-tourists-to-us-may-get-asked-to-hand-in-passwords-or-be-denied-entry
Schlemazel
@SiubhanDuinne:
so fuckingtrump’s grave will be empty?
Lee Hartmann
dear Betty:
I got nothing.
but: always look on the bright side of life.
Sandy
Thank you. It’s like you’re reading my mind
geg6
@Schlemazel:
I’ve had to walk away from a lot of people lately for the same reason. The small ray of sunshine in all this is finding out that people with whom I’ve never discussed politics have turned out and turned up for the good guys. A lot of them people who I went to high school with but haven’t really kept up with since then except on Facebook. A bunch of us are going to the March for Science together and we’re meeting up for an organizing meeting before our 40th reunion this summer. That is the only thing keeping me going besides my, thankfully, DFH liberal family right now.
Patricia Kayden
I woke up in a rage a few Saturday mornings ago but willed myself to get over it. My health cannot afford to be in a constant rage for the next four years. Trump will be Trump and we just have to do our best to resist and change things in the Senate next year. This too shall pass.
MazeDancer
Spectacular rant of superb accuracy.
Gorsuch simpering with pride definitely put me over the top. If he had an ounce of moral fiber he would have said “Merrick Garland” and hung up the phone when Trump called.
Mitch McConnel’s karma is long overdue.
“I want my country back” I keep saying. Not without remembering the racist monsters who used the same phrase.
But, still, I want honor, civility, excellence, and kindness to matter again.
And it frightens me how much I hate Trump and all the GOP. And how resigned I sometimes am to nuclear war destroying us all.
max
Still here? Okay. I’m not sure why, but I’m as angry and depressed this week as I’ve been since the night of the election, when I realized with dawning horror that yes, my countrymen really are racist, sexist and/or fucking stupid enough to elevate an embarrassing, malignant turd like Donald Motherfucking Trump to the highest office in the land, a notion that, in my naivete, I’d considered impossible until it actually happened.
Nice rant, but I lost the feeling that this country had some kind of dignity around 2003-2004. We don’t have any dignity, we don’t have any class, we don’t have any brains, and we’re just not nice people. That sounds unpatriotic, and I say that as somebody who is very patriotic for the country we used to live in. It’s kind of like, ‘Yep, we have gay marriage, and also we have the best porn and outside of that… um. Gee. Well, we do have the douchiest douchebags, so there’s that.’
Not supposed to say that I know, but one cannot stare the truth in the face for a decade and just, well, lie to one’s self or others.
max
[‘”America is already great” yeah yeah. A great big pain in the ass.’]
Virginia
A rant to which I can absolutely sign on to one hundred percent. Thanks Betty!
janelle
No lies, I hope Donald Trump gets a horrible form of incurable cancer. That’s how much I hate him.
Smiling Mortician
AS long as we’re venting . . .
Hey, fellow creative artists! Has Trumpism ruined your work? That’s my teeth-grinding, mumble-swearing, I-hate-everyone reality right now. I’m slated to have a play produced in November — a director I’ve worked with several times trusts me enough that about a year ago we agreed I’d have a full-length play ready for him by . . . like . . . now. I’ve finished a complete first draft, but it’s just FULL of fucking Trump. I can’t get away from it. It colors fucking everything. It’s the world now. And what’s more, I have no idea whether this play will be relevant in 7 months because I have no faith whatsoever in my predictions about the future (including tomorrow).
A minor grievance in the grand scheme, I guess, but at the same time . . . he’s ruining my plays. The motherfucker.
debbie
@Schlemazel:
You really can’t do anything. He will have to learn for himself. Just like Glinda told Dorothy.
Woodrowfan
AMEN!
A Ghost to Most
Righteous Rant. Thanks Betty.
We’re gonna need a rant of the year award. This year’s nominations are gonna be epic.
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
My health is stronger than Trump, but it’s when I find myself yelling at the radio while driving…
SiubhanDuinne
Apart from all the people and institutions mentioned in Betty’s wondrous rant, and in the comments, I think a lot of my own rage is directed at the many Republicans, both officials/high profile public figures and ordinary voters, who swore throughout the primary and even into the general election campaign that they would never support Trump, couldn’t under any possible circumstances see themselves voting for him, stated repeatedly for months on end that “this time he’s crossed the line,” and yet when push came to shove every fucking one of them folded like a damaged Wal-mart floor model card table.
Villago Delenda Est
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again.
Wipe them out. All of them.
janelle
@Splitting Image: How so?
hedgehog the occasional commenter
What everyone else said. Me, I’m to a point where I’m relieved to wake up and think “oh good, we didn’t get nuked last night.”
janelle
I’m not allowed to wish cancer on someone? That sucks.
Nicole
@Smiling Mortician: Yes. I’m having that trouble, too. My husband’s podcast had a pretty good first season (over a quarter of a million downloads), to which I contributed 2 episodes. I’ve promised 3 for this season and I have about 12 pages total of absolute trash written, total. Because I’m mad and depressed ALL THE TIME. And, unfortunately, I am not one of those who writes best when mad and depressed.
Villago Delenda Est
@janelle: He needs to die in searing pain.
JGabriel
Beautiful rant, Betty.
Question: In the drawing at top, I can’t tell what’s held in the hand. Is it a megaphone, a turkey leg, a club/shillelagh to beat Republicans with, or a bottle of your preferred alcohol delivery system?
SiubhanDuinne
@Schlemazel:
I don’t know, and I can hardly wait to find out.
amygdala
Righteous rant, Ms. Cracker. Sometimes it’s all a good-minded person can do, although rarely with your exquisite style.
@Schlemazel: Please take good care of yourself. You’re needed for the long haul, and we jackals can cover you for the short-term.
Mary G
Yeah, I was very optimistic from the election up through the Women’s March, but ever since I’ve been sliding into depression, compounded by lack of sleep from two or three months of severe bronchitis. Finally got rid of that, thank FSM.
No Drought No More
“I realized with dawning horror that yes, my countrymen really are racist, sexist and/or fucking stupid enough to elevate an embarrassing, malignant turd like Donald Motherfucking Trump to the highest office in the land, a notion that, in my naivete, I’d considered impossible until it actually happened”.
What floored me was that millions of women voted for Trump. The foundation stone of my laughable conceit that Hillary would triumph was my belief that American women held Trump in as much contempt as I did, because they had better reasons to. Before the election I spouted off that when it came to Trump, not even Baptist women who reflexively obey their husbands would toe-the-line in the voting booth. Of all the ugly shocks associated that election, I’d say that ranks at the very top for me..
waspuppet
@Splitting Image: I cannot, and never will, fathom how anyone has ever looked at Donald Trump and seen a man who has been a success at anything, much less everything, he’s ever tried. I honest to God would rather have a three-card monte dealer in there. More moral, and at least one skill.
The amount of white privilege required to make that guy look like he’s worthy of visiting the White House, much less living and working in it, honestly turns my stomach. And I’m a white guy — I can’t imagine how other people feel.
MomSense
This week did it to me too. I’m back to feeling rage. I think it’s the combination of inexcusable media failure to report with any accuracy or decency on Syria,the SCOTUS seat stolen for a stolen presidency, and the ongoing outrages at EPA, Education, and HHS.
Oh and a special fuck you to Lindsey Graham and John McCain. Those fucking cynical, dishonest, opportunistic assholes have no credibility. Zero.
Nicole
@No Drought No More: Millions of WHITE women voted for Trump. Just as white women have done regarding the Republican candidate for President ever since LBJ did the right thing and traded in the South for the Civil Rights Act.
For me the shock was realizing just how much millions of women value their race over their gender. Especially after knowing the kind of things men say about them.
Mnemosyne
@Smiling Mortician:
I couldn’t write for a couple of months after the election because I write romance and who the fuck can still believe in an optimistic happy ending?
There have been many, many discussion in romance circles about how to keep going. I know the world desperately needs some love and optimism in it’s fiction right now, but it ain’t easy.
A Ghost to Most
@janelle:
Fixt.
Kropadope
@Miss Bianca:
I haven’t fought with a single one of my Trump-voting and Trump-tolerating friends over the election, yet they all have become suspiciously less available.
Fuckem.
Schlemazel
@Patricia Kayden:
but it won’t pass for 2 generations and we as a species may not have that much time
SatanicPanic
@Smiling Mortician: My band was scheduled to go to the studio and record a bunch of songs just a few weeks after the election. I was like, man I was writing some dumb, pointless stuff before I knew the world was going to fall apart. It turned out to be kind of cathartic to record them, but until the day of I was really dreading it. It’s definitely affected everything I’ve written since.
Miss Bianca
@Smiling Mortician: So it’s full of Trump…is that bad? Magic eight-ball and the ghost of Bertolt Brecht say…”no!”
ETA: “The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui”, for example, is still a great play, years and years after the death of Hitler.
Schlemazel
@debbie:
but he will destroy the rest of us while that guy learns
debbie
@JGabriel:
Turkey leg. It was an illustration for a post about a moment of conflict with her sister.
MomSense
Oh and if your rage meter isn’t pegged yet, go take a look at the photo of the Lake County Sheriff presser today. What the hell? They look like fucking IS with their black face masks.
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: and then all the liberals who were all like, “gee…we know Trump is bad, but there’s JUST SOMETHING ABOUT THAT HILLARY that I just don’t trust…”
As Mnemosyne says: “You had one job, America. ONE JOB.”
TenguPhule
Shit is fucked up and we’re all doomed but that’s the best you can do? Humiliation and hope they never come back because of shame? Prison terms in pampered zone? Mere contempt?
You’re NORMALIZING THIS BULLSHIT. For fucks sake, does Constitutional Crisis not ring any fucking alarm bells?
We’re going to slide into a Civil War precisely because this refusal to see the forest for the trees and continuing happy denial that the system has been broken beyond repair. The laws are not going to save us because the people responsible for maintaining them have just signed their souls away to Damien Trump. Civic action isn’t going to save us because we have too many Americans who’d swear loyalty to an Emperor if it means the poors and the coloreds get whats coming to them.
Maybe Trump really is going to have to literally shoot someone before comprehension finally dawns that yes, there are no checks and balances anymore.
geg6
@Patricia Kayden:
Yeah but I’ll be dead by the time that happens, if it ever does. This country will not and cannot ever be the same.
debbie
@Schlemazel:
You won’t be waiting long. I’m sure Betsy DeVos is already working to destroy it.
Schlemazel
@amygdala:
thanks
Smiling Mortician
@Miss Bianca: Exactly. There’s a part of me that thinks it would be easier if the play were actually bad, but it isn’t. It needs a ton of revision, which is fine and normal and all that, but it means I’ve signed on for thinking productively about what all this Trump shit means. It’s possible that it’s killing me.
Also, my general approach to plays is dark humor, so . . . I guess I’m testing my limits for how dark I can go while still bringing the funny.
ETA: Your ETA is comforting.
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
I have now decided that my response to the Bros and other assorted “leftist” morons is: “You wanted anyone but Hillary, and you got exactly what you wanted it. Congratulations.”
Bill Arnold
BC – relentless artful invective grounded in truth can and does have a negative effect on D. Trump, and a second-order effect on his current staff/cabinet and people considering working for him, so very much not wasted effort. (And very much appreciated. :-)
I hope that a few TV comedy writers are lurking; you deserve such readers.
SatanicPanic
@TenguPhule: uh OK, so what will save us?
Schlemazel
@A Ghost to Most:
I wish fuckingtrump would have a stroke that would end his ability to speak & cripple him up so he needed 7×24 care. and cannot say another word but have to live in his fucking brain for the rest of his unnatural life.
And even that is not enough
Miss Bianca
@Smiling Mortician: The darker the better, as long as you can still bring the funny. Not all humor has to be LOL – Dr. Strangelove is a masterpiece of the “heh heh heh” nervous laughter variety of dark comedy.
A Ghost to Most
@TenguPhule:
Judges have been doing their jobs; Congress is slowly digging in; some journalists have rediscovered journalism.
This thing is far from over.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kropadope: efgoldman expects a royalty check from you.
Smiling Mortician
@Nicole: I write well when I’m mad, but not when I’m depressed. I don’t do anything well when I’m depressed — which is, of course, depressing.
rawhide rawlins
You think we’re all really mad now, just wait until the REAL consequences of all this crap lands on us all. I don’t think it’s started hitting yet.
Smiling Mortician
@Mnemosyne: Yeah. Right now I have a sort of ironic happy ending that I’m not satisfied with. Basically, it ends on a note of You want happy? Sorry, this is as close as you’re gonna get right now.
Mnemosyne
Also, when I say “congratulations,” I obviously mean it in the Angelica Schuyler sense. ?
VFX Lurker
@No Drought No More:
You and me both. As a white woman, I was horribly naive about my own demographic. I thought *every* woman would vote the way black women did.
White women voted to keep their cages.
Mnemosyne
And for those who can’t click on my link, here are the opening lyrics:
Nicole
@Smiling Mortician: They say depression is quite common in creative types. I wish it were less frequent.
Mike in NC
Hoping that the next time he golfs at Mar-A-Lago, Trump is struck by lightning as in the classic scene from “Caddyshack”.
Smiling Mortician
@Miss Bianca: Yes. My last play was a musical about a vet coming home from Iraq completely fucked up. It got a lot of laughs, most of them uncomfortable.
Smiling Mortician
@Nicole: No kidding. This all-day, every-day shit is exhausting. I mean, I’ve got a day job, fer chrissakes.
Ruckus
Betty.
Could not have said it better.
And I’m afraid to try, blood pressure, HA, stress on an already overworked system of nerves which works whenever, wherever and however if fucking feels like…… But reading it was like sweet and sour, two things which don’t always go together, it was somehow satisfying and at the same time not. Probably because it was not meant to satisfy and seeing a spleen splashed all over the screen like that, no matter how necessary and true, is still disturbing.
laura
@rikyrah: my only complaint -and I’m willing to be wrong – is it needs MOAR fuck you!!!!!
Otherwise, yeah, what Betty said.
Timurid
I’m mixed race, but I can pass for white.
The day after the election my brother called me to talk about Trump (he was also horrified). He said, half jokingly, “Well, at least we’re white,” I replied, “We’re only white if Steve Bannon says we’re white. So good luck with that.” Later, in a call to a darker-skinned friend, I was venting about how white people and their precious fee fees had gotten us into this mess. I told him that I didn’t want to be around white people anymore. He laughed and said I should move to his town/neighborhood (where they are in short supply). But of course, in a place like that I’ll be a target if and when things start getting seriously out of hand. But here in South Trumpistan I’m camouflaged and safe around strangers. At least I am until the registries start…
So I’m not white enough for out new overlords and too white to fit in with people of color (especially if/when things get uglier). There’s very little in the way of a progressive community here. Even the hipsters voted for Trump (he got over 90% of the white vote in my county). My career outlook was not good even before the election and now… well, I’m in higher education and we now have a lunatic (DeVos) holding the nuclear codes (the federal student loan system) for my industry. Our state budget is in perpetual crisis and I’m literally one more hurricane from losing my job. I’m a year and a half from the magical age of 50, where it becomes much harder to get (re)employed and (suddenly sickeningly relevant) you’re basically ruled out as an immigrant to any other First World country. My main hobby is now following the fucking Russia investigation, as it appears to offer some hope… until I realize that it will probably come down to a simple question: “How many divisions does the FBI have?” I’m angrier now. I’m more suspicious and less trusting. I realize that most of the strangers I meet are really my enemies, who showed their intent on 11/8 to harm me and people like me. I’m gay. liberal and less than white in what’s becoming a white nationalist authoritarian state. A place where they’ve dressed Moloch in a Jesus costume and called it Christianity. The world is a different place since 11/8. And I’m a different person.
Just venting, nothing to see here…
Mnemosyne
@Smiling Mortician:
I think the way I’m thinking of it — and, again, this is within the context of working in a genre — is that people can find happiness with each other even if outside circumstances kind of suck. Beverly Jenkins has been writing historical romances with African-American characters for years and she doesn’t let it hold her back.
Have you seen Moonlight yet? It’s a romance that takes place among drug dealers and drug addicts in a bad part of Miami, but they actually let it be optimistic and don’t feel compelled to slap a “realistic” unhappy ending on it.
If your characters need to feel optimistic at the end, even knowing there’s still bad stuff ahead, then let them.
VeniceRiley
A lot of people left me on fb and I haven’t had to lift a finger. I continue to rant away. But I love the opportunity to learn at the feet of the master, Betty.
seaboogie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s why I clock in too…
Ruckus
@Schlemazel:
I look at young people now and wonder what the hell will they think in 10 or 20 years. Probably along the lines of you fucking assholes, look what you did to us. And they’d be right. Even if we voted for sanity we didn’t do enough to stop this utter, 100% shit show.
Also hope things work out for you and you feel better.
Mnemosyne
@Timurid:
You are in the kind of situation where I say to you, Can you nope out of there and move to a blue state? Yeah, people will tell you that you’re a wimp if you don’t stay, but you have plenty of very solid reasons to get the fuck out while you can.
different-church-lady
This is not going to help the mood, but it is important to remember that Trump is only the symptom. Far too many of our countrymen are the disease.
different-church-lady
@Ruckus: Isn’t that how they look at us now?
TenguPhule
@SatanicPanic: At this point, it may not be saved so much as at least making the other side bleed too. Its not just the big immediate stuff that Trump is doing, the little corruptions are also festering (taxes, weekly vacations, straight up bribery) and once we lose a professional well paid government workforce, we get Iraq government.
A government where you have to bribe everyone to get shit done. And once that happens it takes a lot of hard work and resources to stop it.
We may not be able to.
hitchhiker
SCOTUS did it for me. I hate these people. I hate the way they cheat. I hate the way they sneer at everyone. I hate how bloody stupid they are. DT and McConnell are at the top of my Worthless Humans list … I really do want them both to have a stroke that leaves them paralyzed and drooling and incapable of feeding themselves.
That would be grand.
Brachiator
To every person who said or wrote “Trump/Clinton, no difference.”
Really?
Really?
Smiling Mortician
@Mnemosyne: Thanks. That all makes sense. And your final description is pretty much what happened because it’s what always happens with characters: They decided for themselves — in this case, they decided that they were going to be happy even though the world’s gone to shit. [The playwright is pretty certain they’re fooling themselves, though. Sigh.]
danielx
Not over it and will never be over it.
TenguPhule
@A Ghost to Most: They just took over the courts. All the rulings are gonna be overturned. Congress (I.e the GOP) is just fighting over how much they can fuck over people, only Trump’s fecking incompetence is currently preventing him from exploiting their collective stupidity and insanity.
Smiling Mortician
@different-church-lady: I know, damn it. That’s the problem.
Bill Arnold
@Schlemazel:
Are you thinking of something like this? : Eutrophication, microbial-sulfate reduction and mass extinctions
Or something else?
TenguPhule
@VFX Lurker:
Worse, they voted for cages, tables to be strapped to and their legs strapped open to be bred like livestock by strapping white bucks. And also decided it would be good enough for every other woman and female child in America. And they regret nothing.
Ruckus
@Nicole:
I hope you fully recover from your cancer.
I’m waiting to hear if mine is gone or going and I know others that are or have been in the same boat. My mom beat cancer 50 yrs ago. And medicine is better than it was 25 yrs ago and it was better then than 25 yrs before that.
But I also have to say, because I haven’t said it yet today, FUCK Fucking Cancer.
Brachiator
@Timurid:
Have you seen the movie, “Get Out” yet? It will make you feel better and add to your sense of dread. And hopefully make you laugh.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
HAD to fix that for you.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
I hadn’t done this consciously, but I recently noticed that an inordinate amount of my reading since the election, and especially since the inauguration, has been light romance/spy/mystery fiction set in England during or in the lead-up to WWII. For instance, I’m reading my way through (or, in the case of the earlier books, re-reading) Susan Elia MacNeal’s “Maggie Hope” series (Mr. Churchill’s Secretary), just finished Rhys Bowen’s In Farleigh Field, and before long will probably re-read A Presumption of Death by Jill Paton Walsh/Dorothy L. Sayers.
Somehow, I guess, it helps a little bit to read about the Blitz, desperate young war-torn lovers, land girls, foolhardy and brave RAF pilots, officious village blackout officers, rationing and the black market, stately homes turned into billets for soldiers. At least, it seems to help me. I’m not big on actual descriptions of battles and military tactics and POW camps and the rest, but I love reading about the home front.
Paula
I think you’ve covered it!
Mnemosyne
@Smiling Mortician:
My husband and I managed to get through a year where both of our fathers died within six months of each other. Couples can survive the death of a child, or one of them being paralyzed. People who were forced together as couples during the Killing Fields in Cambodia decided to stay together and get married after Pol Pot was overthrown.
Humans are surprisingly resilient and good at making the best of things in terrible situations. Let your characters be human and don’t force an unhappy deus ex machina ending on them.
Timurid
@Mnemosyne:
I’m an academic. The job market tells me where I can live and where I can’t.
Most people in my field are liberal, so blue state jobs are in great demand. To be honest, I’m not good enough at my job to get a job in a blue state. At least by the standards of the current job market, which are brutally high and will only get higher in the future. And aside from a few (also very hard to get) government jobs, I’m pretty much unemployable outside of academia.
burnspbesq
@Nicole:
I’m pretty confident that we’ll see that on 1/20/21.
Mnemosyne
@Timurid:
It’s worth putting out some feelers and doing some networking. You never know when a friend of a friend knows someone.
Timurid
@Brachiator:
I’ve seen it. It made me feel things, but I’m not sure “better” is one of them.
Ruckus
@waspuppet:
Perfect reply.
Drumpf’s a fraud as a human being. He’s not just imperfect, he fucks up everything he’s ever touched.
Schlemazel
@Bill Arnold:
We are playing russian roulette with 5 loaded chambers. I can easily see 5 ways & that is just one.
SiubhanDuinne
@Nicole:
@Ruckus:
To both of you, and to everyone else who is in any way touched by this awful disease: I wish you only the best — a full recovery if that’s in the cards and a long pain-free management if it isn’t — and a hearty “FUCK CANCER!” to anyone within earshot and within sight of my all-caps shouting.
Schlemazel
@Bill Arnold:
We are playing russian roulette with 5 loaded chambers. I can easily see 5 ways & that is just one.
Timurid
@Mnemosyne: My friends and family are either academics (uhhh…) or in medicine, a field I’m explicitly unqualified for any position in.
Uncle Ebeneezer
One of the only things that helps attenuate my perpetual rage is getting together with others to rage as a group. I’ve been participating in alot of Immigration and Police Reform actions and have gotten to meet some amazing activists and organizers etc. Some have been doing the work for decades, some are young but experienced and some are newbies like myself. It has been great being reminded of how many are out there that share OUR values. The solidarity is very inspiring. Otherwise, yeah, everything Betty said…
hovercraft
Thank you Betty!!
I think I’ll go have a cigarette now ;-)
Singing Truth to Power
Betty Cracker, I love you. If I am still half-sane at this point, you may have some of the credit. Misery truly loves company, especially ranting foul-mouthed company. You speak for me.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
I’d change that answer slightly. YMMV
“Fucking Congratulations.”
You left out the part they need to hear the most. Also you have to say it in your most condescending voice.
Ruckus
@Smiling Mortician:
Depression is sort of a bitch that way, isn’t it?
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
See #94 for the expanded version. ?
Kathleen
@Nicole: @Smiling Mortician:
First, Nicole, sending you {{{Nicole}}} and prayers for your healing.
Second, Nicole and Smiling Mortician, I agree 1000 percent with what your’re saying about depression. Between some minor medical issues and rage about this election, I’ve not written a scrap. I, too, love dark humor and have an idea for a play but nothing feels right to me yet. And, yes, that’s depressing too. It’s all I can do to function at “101” – light workout, work, house cleaning, bill paying, laundry. Pretty much wipes me out.
Both of you take good care of yourselves.
Nicole
@Ruckus: You speak truth. Fuck cancer. My mom died from breast cancer (what I got) when she was 35, and after my diagnosis my big fear was not so much dying myself (although I’m certainly not big on the idea) but on my son having to go through what I went through as a child. But the margins around the tumor were big enough that my doctor elected to leave it at surgery- no other follow-up, other than reconstruction- and the assorted predictive tests they can do now for odds of recurrence came back looking good so that’s all good. It royally sucks, but it’s a thing that happens and then you deal with it, because what else can you do? I hope yours clears out of you, too, never to be seen again. That’s good to hear about your mom, too.
And to join you once again, yes, fuck fucking cancer. I have a friend with multiple myeloma who was just approved for a stem cell transplant. She’s an excellent and kind human being and it sucks that this happened to her. It’s why I can’t wish cancer on people I hate (and couldn’t before I developed it myself, either)- I see too much evidence that there’s no karma involved with cancer. Hell, Fred Rogers died of stomach cancer. Mr. Fucking Rogers. Talk about unfair.
rikyrah
@Villago Delenda Est:
Continue to say it
SatanicPanic
@TenguPhule: There’s obviously going to be some things that we do differently in the future, but wholesale giving up isn’t going to accomplish anything.
Singing Truth to Power
Betty Cracker, please don’t forget the dead-eyed boy not-genius Paul Ryan, the inarticulate boob Rex Tillerson who travels alone, one-note Mulvaney, empty skin-sack Nikki Haley, chinless and equally soulless wonder Mitch McConnell, and many more. How much does a soul go for these days? And why don’t any of these self-professed “Christians” have the vaguest idea what Jesus taught? I could almost swear that it wasn’t to enrich myself at the expense of all others.
Aleta
Based on what Tr has “promised,” I fear that this court will be tested on protection of journalists and media orgs, and that it will include new attempts to bankrupt those who print criticism of Tr.
I have no confidence that Mr. New Guy will protect the press or anyone’s civil liberties.
Freedom of speech and protest will be threatened by new interpretations of support for a terrorist organizations and by HSA actions, and there’s reason to fear that the court will not rule to protect us, based on dissents in past cases.
SatanicPanic
@Uncle Ebeneezer: This has helped me a lot too.
Kathleen
@Ruckus: I’m pulling for your total recovery! Fuck Fuck Fucking cancer!
Brachiator
@Timurid:
Well, there’s always the “adding to your sense of dread.”
It’s great satire for the Age of Trump.
Ruckus
@Smiling Mortician:
How could you write a musical about a person coming home from war? And make it funny? In any way?
That’s not a critique at all, just an inquiry. My mind can not wrap itself around war and funny.
I spent 2 months in a navy hospital in 73 with lots of guys who came back from war, I can not recall anything in any way funny. I suspect that there may be one or two of them that may still be in hospital. I’m absolutely sure that 15-20% of them killed themselves because they couldn’t see how to live. That hasn’t changed a lot since then and the military/VA works overtime on it.
End of my not rant.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Splendiferous ranting.
Equal parts sadness and rage since even before the election, the results only made things worse. Healthwise, not necessarily helpful. I turned off all “newz” media; read BJ and listen to TWiB when the opportunity allows. Not counting on any of the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party voters to revert to human form; just hoping that maybe there are enough of us with working synapses left to outvote them in ’18 and ’20.
Smiling Mortician
@Ruckus: Yup. Circular bullshit. Oh boy.
Last Public Teacher Standing
Betty, I actually found your post somewhat cathartic. As my name implies, I’m a public school teacher here, along with you, in Florida. Yes, the state where we’ve had our own Trump for 6 years in the form of Rick Scott. Every teacher is feeling stressed now because it’s Testing Season. All of my fellow teachers are short on time, patience, and, well, money (BTW, where do I sign up to be a paid protester? The gravy train that is public education is coming to a stop with Trump and I might have to sell the Benz and give up the lease on the Jaguar if I don’t find other income…). I thought it was just us.
In a way, it’s comforting that it’s not just us. But, only for a second. Then I realize this shared anger/stress is plaguing all of us who are watching Orange Julius dismantle everything we hold dear.
Smiling Mortician
@Kathleen: You too, Kathleen. I have to believe we’ll all come out of this.
Theodore Wirth
That felt good. What do you call it? Cathartic?
Smiling Mortician
@Ruckus: The play overall isn’t funny. But many parts of it are funny — darkly ironic observations, lots of clever wordplay, awkward relationships. I would be happy to send you a DVD of the show if you’re interested in how (or if) my co-writer (and cast and crew and orchestra) and I pulled it off. If you’d like me to send you a copy, just email me at llerych (at) gmail.
Nicole
@Kathleen: Thanks, that’s kind. With luck, I’m done. I found my mom’s pathology reports while I was home this past Christmas, and hers was much farther along when it was discovered (I was Stage 1; she was Stage 3, probably State 4, as they suspected there was still cancer in the chest wall after the surgery) As sad as it was, reading the reports, it was also reassuring to know her story is not necessarily also mine, even though the cancer itself is likely hereditary.
And, as Ruckus said, treatment for cancer is much better now than decades back. The next step for medicine, I think, is to try to develop better tests for early detection. They’ve got pretty good early detection for breast cancer, but there are plenty of other kinds that need the same kind of attention (and funding) as breast cancer gets.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@SatanicPanic: Yeah alot of people have woken up. And so far the consensus seems to be a realization that this activism needs to go on ad infinitum if/when times get better. Going back to complacency and inaction: never again.
Nicole
@Smiling Mortician: We will get through this. In February I went to a ceremony recognizing some women in Harlem who made a difference, and the speeches from the honorees reminded me that the fight is long and we don’t give up.
Josie
@Smiling Mortician: It’s ok if your writing explores what is happening to us right now. That is what art is for – to express the feelings we have about the world around us. As long as it’s not boringly didactic, it is valid.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
Not all the ones that I know. But some of them I’m not talking to as they are as fucked up as every other dumpf voter.
The poster that said it’s not dumpf’s fault, it’s his voters, is right in one way. George Wallace ran and got votes 3 times as a Democrat. Our current Democratic party really isn’t that old and wasn’t all that much better for a lot of the last 100 yrs, and sometimes has been worse. (Fuck LBJ. He did good but he also did very bad) Never forget that humans are selfish animals by nature, we have to be taught not to be. And we can be racist or as fuck no matter our skin color or our nationality, or misogynistic as all get out no matter our genitalia.
We have to be taught to be better and many of us never took that class, let alone passed it.
Sam
Well, I am all of that but very worried too. It is bad enough to be a toad, but a toad who starts lobbing missiles and threatening war to own news cycles is much worse.
khead
Sorry if I missed this in another thread, but go f%&* yourself Ed Markey.
Kathleen
@Nicole: Happy to hear about your positive outcome! My mother died from breast cancer in 1994 and she suffered so much, as my beloved (former) mother in law, who died from brain cancer in 1986. Good to hear from former a former patient that today’s procedures are improved and hopefully less debilitating..
rikyrah
@GrandJury:
I love that rant
MomSense
@Nicole: @Smiling Mortician:
Sending healing thoughts and energy to both of you.
We just have to keep doing our best to support each other, love the people dear to us, and keep trying to make things better as much as we can.
Kathleen
@MomSense: Amen!
Josie
Betty Cracker: I love your rant. I echo every bit of it. What is interesting to me: I started to write about the Mexican Revolution before the election took place. It has always been of great interest to me. Now it has taken on an extra special place in my heart and I am writing with even more passion than I was before. Interesting how events overtake us sometimes.
Nicole
@Kathleen: I’m sorry to hear about your mom and mom-in-law. Mine died in 1982 and she was suffering pretty bad at the end, too. I think what makes cancer so very terrifying is the idea that the body is turning against itself and destroying itself.
Kind of like Trump voters- you know, happily trashing the country from the inside out, even though their folly will eventually take them down, too.
grandpa john
@MazeDancer: I may not make it since I am 79, but one on my heartfelt desires is to live long enough to read Mitch McConnells obituary.There are a few more that would also make this world a better place for its inhabitants
I sometimes wonder how it must feel to know you are one of the most despised beings on earth and that people are waiting to dance in the streets and piss on your grave when you die
Ruckus
@Nicole:
My cancer was stage IIc, the tumor was 3/4 of the organ. But I was able to do radiation and the docs are hopeful. I won’t probably know for a while if it was successful, so there is an underlying level of stress in my life which I really don’t need as I’m also currently going study with an entire neurology clinic.
My mom had BC as well as my sister. Mom lived 45 yrs after surgery, said she never had another issue. Sister was not anywhere nearly as lucky. Surgery, lots of chemo, 2 remissions but then total invasion. They cut her open to see what could be done and the answer was morphine to make her comfortable for the next 7-10 days. Life is what you get when you are born. It can be good and long, mom was 94, sister not close. Had a cousin made 6 months, had an acquaintance who made 104.
Make of life what you can everyday, you never know what tomorrow will bring. Have tried to live that life every day, but some days are a fucking lot more difficult than others to look at that way.
Bennett
I feel exactly the same. Another rant with the same message is Rude Pundit’s “Donald Trump Taught Me That My Hatred Has No End.”
I’ve cut off old friends who thought Hillary’s “eyes radiate evil” and that voting didn’t matter. Today I politely gave a piece of my mind to a restaurant owner blaring FoxNews.
And I know that not one of these Republicans believes the horseshit they spout.
Villago Delenda Est
@Singing Truth to Power:
This is really quite simple. They’re not Christians. They are Mammonists.
jnfr
I love you Betty Cracker. And I’m with you on this. I still fight to keep resisting, but my heart is with you.
Josie
@Nicole: Don’t give up yet on the woman president. Practically all my hair is grey, but I am still hoping to see it. Here’s hoping for good outcome for you and for all of us. Good thoughts coming your way.
Drunkenhausfrau
Thank you, Madame Cracker et al.
+? I don’t even bother to count them anymore.
Zelma
Thank you Betty for expressing my feelings. I have come to realize in the last week or so that I am depressed. I do not do depression so this is a shock. But I realize why I can’t shake this feeling: I am going to be 74 in a couple of weeks. I lived the last 9 years with a sense of hope despite cancer, caring for a husband with dementia, and losing him. That hope is gone. The damage that these hateful people will do will not be reparable in my lifetime, I fear. So no more hope.
And I am finding it pretty impossible to forgive those who voted for Trump even tho this includes most of my family. Sad.
Ruckus
@Nicole:
@Kathleen:
Was taking to a very young Dr at the VA today and told him I hope that medicine improves as much in the next 50 yrs as it has in the last. He seemed hopeful. Some cancers that were deadly at any stage not that long ago are now being treated. Surgeries that were very serious because how much had to be cut can now be done using arthroscopic or robotic surgery. As much as we rightfully complain about big pharma, a lot of drugs exist that can and do help exist today that didn’t 25 yrs ago. Yes there are “fashion” drugs and drug advertising should be outlawed but things are better.
And still, it can’t be said enough – FUCK Fucking cancer.
Ruckus
@grandpa john:
A very worth while vision. I would love for you to be able to piss on his grave. Hope you make it.
Nicole
@Ruckus: The genetic counselor who went over my testing results was very optimistic about the next 20 years (she was also very young). It was nice to listen to and very encouraging.
And yeah, a lot of progress has been made! My mom’s pathology reports from 1980 noted her tumor was ER+, and that this new kind of treatment, tamoxifen, was showing results. It’s now very common in breast cancer treatment when the tumor is hormone-receptive (feeds off estrogen and/or progesterone).
I don’t think it’ll ever be a completely curable disease, but I hope that the most aggressive kinds will eventually become like diabetes- for the most part, controllable, if not curable.
And my goodness, am I glad that people talk about it now. That’s something I wish my mom could have had- a support system of people who knew what she was going through.
Nicole
@Josie: Well, if the accuracy of my prediction about when we’ll see a woman President is anything like that of my annual yearly prediction for which horse will win the Kentucky Derby, maybe we’ll all be around to see Madame President. ;) You’re right; good thoughts for all of us.
TenguPhule
@SatanicPanic:
Show me a legal realistic solution that gets rid of Trump and the GOP majority in Congress that can’t be nullified by the Supreme court, an act of Congress or Executive action. Then we can talk.
Larkspur
@Zelma: Zelma, I haven’t commented here in months, and will probably return to drive-by lurking after this. But your comment has really touched me. Unlike you, I have been dealing with depression all my life. Right now, I’m going through the motions. Like you, I know the damage will not be reparable in my lifetime. This country was founded on aggression, genocide, slavery, and exploitation – but guess what, most other countries are as blood-soaked as we are. We have had chances to learn from it, to mitigate the continuing damage, to be better, to look at our history and say “This is what really happened; no more lies, no more fairy tales. Let’s get to work” – and we didn’t. We almost, almost got started with President Obama, almost. Now they are undoing everything and trying to erase him, and that sickens me. The only hope I have is that at some point, somewhere in the world, something better will start, that somehow people will survive our massive capabilities for self-destruction, and that they’ll have hope.
I wish you lived near me. I’d take you out to lunch on your birthday and we’d leave the wait-staff a great big tip.
Nicole
@TenguPhule: I hate sounding hopeful, because I also think bitter despair is the new black, but there are enough districts that went for Hillary Clinton in 2016 yet have a GOP rep that, should they all flip, the Dems could take back the House.
Then, impeach both Trump and Pence, and we get President Pelosi.
As for realistic? Well, the nation’s population, despite all of the reactionary racism we’re seeing right now, is not, in fact, getting any whiter.
Ksmiami
@Corner Stone: Not if we win and enlarge the court. And yes, I am on a mission to make Republican a toxic bad word. So, BLOW IT UP. Institutions only matter if they are empowered and legitimized by the people. Nothing about McConnell, Trump et al is legitimate
AndoChronic
I heart you Betty!
Ruckus
@Nicole:
Yeah my oncologist was very encouraging. He’s young as well but then so are a lot of people to me these days. It’s easier to be positive when it isn’t you with the cancer or incurable disease. Sort of like a counselor if you have depression, easy to say have a positive attitude when you aren’t the one living in a dark cloud and everything looks like shit. It’s why good help groups are made up of people with experience. They can tell the difference between light and dark or hope and despair, they’ve seen both.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Mnemosyne: Can’t recommend this film highly enough. Also the first film I’ve ever seen, and quite possibly the first work of fiction I’ve experienced in any medium, that truly captures how painful the process of coming to terms with one’s identity can be.
(Disclaimer: I went to school with one of the producers of the film, but I’d have loved it regardless.)
Zelma
@Larkspur:
Here’s an interesting fact: just as depression isn’t something I’ve ever experienced before, so too was hope! I’m a historian – spent my entire career cataloging “the evil that men do.” And there’s been a lot of it! I’m a bit of a misanthrope. But for some reason, Obama’s message and his election did make me hopeful that we as a nation might transcend the darker demons. His reelection confirmed that spark. And then the darkness returned with a vengeance. Trump and his people reflect the worst of this country. I know he didn’t win the majority; I know it was only an Electoral Collge fluke that made him president. But 60 million Americans voted for him and each and every one of them should be ashamed.
BTW, to our romance writing friends – please, please keep writing those happy endings. I only really read history and romance; I need the latter’s HEA to bear the former. And I am currently binging on my old favorites for obvious reasons.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
Foyle’s War for viewing, then.
J R in WV
@Schlemazel:
Your “friend” who voted for Trump, not understanding that Trump was going to do his best to kill opportunity for your friend’s daughter… he is not a nice guy. He pretends to be nice, but is actually bigoted, racist, sexist and full of hate. That’s who voted for Trump.
You don’t have to get in his face and tell him about it, but you should think about it. Being nice to a sexist bigot is not mandatory, unless it would upset you to be honest about the situation with him. He voted to screw his own daughter, and if he is lucky will live to console her.
Bill Arnold
@burnspbesq:
Are you thinking Kirsten Gillibrand for 2020?
I (NY-er) was meh for a while until hearing her debate Wendy Long on NPR (2012); smart (they both spoke well, but Wendy was hobbled by her doofy ideology so she lost) and I think KG could easily become the POTUS.
Old Broad in California
@Zelma: Your comment really resonated with me. I’m 63 and a breast cancer survivor and don’t have a lot of longevity in my family tree. So I see much of the rest of my life in the clutches of these evil, evil people who aim to set us all back 150 years.
The one saving grace is how aware and activist so many of us have become.
Betty, I LOVED your rant. You really said it.
Bill Arnold
@Schlemazel: @Schlemazel:
If it would help, I can attach another four apocalyptic papers to four other members of the Trump administration. That one was (obviously) for Scott Pruitt.
Bill Arnold
@Schlemazel:
If it would help, I can attach another four apocalyptic papers to four other members of the Trump administration. That one was (obviously) for Scott Pruitt.
artem1s
thank you for that. I’ve been feeling a little guilty the last couple of days about my rage. It helps to be reminded of all the reasons why this rage is deserved. How long this has all been going on and how many people who enabled this horror show. I wish it was just Trump. But it’s not. Its the whole fucking planet I’m mad at right now. Then I find someone like you who is just as angry and then I don’t feel so alone about it anymore. It’s pretty fucked up and weird. But we all need to be reminded that part of recovery is identifying your abuser and ending the cycle of making excuses for them.
soapdish
@West of the Cascades: Haven’t spoken to my mother since November.
Sab
@SiubhanDuinne: OT sort of (since not WWII fiction) but were you the person who recomended Patrick Rothfuss? If so, thanks.
Miss Bianca
Well, my writing has ground virtually to a standstill these past few months, but I’ve stepped up my brewing. And my best buddy/brew partner and I, after months/years of talking about it, have made the decision – we’re going pro. We’re looking at heading up to my hometown of Paonia and opening a meadery. For a number of reasons, not the least of which being that even in a shit economy, people are still gonna drink, ;-) And we’re damn good at what we do.
Paonia is a funny place – those coal miners that the right-wing loves yo worship are still part of the economy, but just barely, the hippies and the freaks who are into organic farming and ranching have made Delta County the niche agriculture capital of the state. Trump voters abound, as do Bernie bros. ‘Mayberry on acid’ is how I’ve heard it described. Funny place, but it’s home – and I’m only going home if my livelihood isn”t going to be dependent on working for someone ekse for a pittance, if it’s going tobe a pittance, it’s going to be *my* pittance.
MomSense
@Steeplejack:
Loved Foyle’s War. )
sara
Thank you and the dear lord that I don’t believe in for skillful writing that describes exactly how I feel.
Sandia Blanca
Love the rant, agree with above posters, thank God every day for this blog and its ranters. But no one has yet mentioned my personal “fave”–Stephen Miller. Can’t wait until he’s out on his big ears.
Mnemosyne
@(((CassandraLeo))):
I am very white and very straight, so I’m guessing that 90 percent of the stuff about race and sexual identity flew right over my head. But the movie really proves the old adage that the best way to make a work of art that speaks universally to many different people is to make it as specific and detailed as possible.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Mnemosyne: Plus it was absolutely stunning, the acting was amazing and the score was haunting. Just a damn-near perfect film, imo. Plus, did you know that the actors who played Little, Chyron and Black never met each other until after they filmed. How they managed to be so seamless as the growth of one person….amazing.
JGabriel
@debbie: Danke.
Gemina13
::stands and applauds:: That was a thing of beauty, and I salute you for it.
Also, this is pretty much what I’ve been saying every day since I tried and failed to get drunk on 11/09/16.
Tehanu
What you wrote here, Betty — you speak for me. I know we’ve got to take this anger and do something positive with the energy of it. I’m just not sure what. At present all my energy is occupied with trying to keep the anger from giving me a stroke.
BellyCat
@MomSense: Ditto. Foyle’s War is a genuine treat.
stinger
Thank you, Betty. I’m with you on every single word, from the post title to the final FU. It helps, a little, to know I’m not alone. I wake up every day certain that we did the right, sensible, decent and humane thing. Then I wake all the way up.
What really galls me is the increasing evidence that the Russians elected Trump. And, what–we HAVE to live with this? There is NO mechanism by which the election “results” can be overturned and sanity restored to our government? I sometimes think I can’t stand this. Move to Cape Breton or somewhere else that will have me. I can live and think small, so maybe I can survive this administration–I’m white, employed, cis-gendered, too old to need birth control and nearing the relative safety of SS and Medicare. But a) no one is safe, and b) I care about people other than myself.
Still not over it. Nevertheless, I’ll try to persist.
stinger
Forgot to add that I actually saw one of those “rolling coal” jackasses the other day, a Treason flag flying right next to the US flag. In Iowa. Made me seriously contemplate violence.
Gemina13
@stinger: I think setting fire to the Treason Flag would have been an acceptable act of violence.
Mai.naem.mobile
Betty,I’ve also really been in the dumps since last week. Its been up and down for me since he won but Gorsuch just sent me over the edge. It doesn’t help that my initial impression of Gorsuch is that he’s a total A 1 asshole. I tend to be pessimistic so that doesn’t help. I am not sure people are going to show up in ’18 like a lot of Dems think. I don’t have some strong feeling that Dolt 45 is going to pay for the Russian meddling. I saw a truck with a Dolt 45 bumper sticker today and I wanted to pull a Fried Green Tomatoes’ Kathy Bates scene sooooo bad.
stinger
@Gemina13: If I could have caught up to his jackass pickup…. I wanted to shoot out his tires, if I’d had a gun, or smash his windows, if I’d had a baseball bat. Or sneaked up on him and installed a catalytic converter….
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Mnemosyne: As a person who passes as white, cisgender, and heterosexual (my gender identity is non-binary, hence the screen name, but I look close enough to male to pass) and comes from an upper-middle-class background, I too have little superficially in common with its characters, but I agree that the specificity of its writing actually makes its themes more universal and accessible, because almost everyone struggles with identity issues in some way. (In my case, the most painful part of my identity issues was actually being on the autism spectrum, an aspect of my identity that I probably took about half my life to accept completely. Long story.)
And yes, every single aspect of the film was just absolutely beautiful. I need to pick up the soundtrack. I suspect it will make fine repeat listening when I need emotional catharsis. It’s also one of the few films I’ve ever wanted to watch a second time as soon as I finished it, though I haven’t yet. Will probably pick up the Blu-Ray after I move.
cope
Don’t sugar coat it, Betty, if you’re upset, just say so.
Johannes
@Smiling Mortician: This. My writing stutters along with none of ease that typified my first book. I just find it hard to immerse myself.
The Moar You Know
@Nicole: Not how it works, sadly. Ask Nixon’s ghost.
W. Kiernan
You left out the guiltiest parties: the sixty million worthless shit-for-brains who voted for that illiterate piece of shit. May they all roast in Hell. The one and only positive side to the Trump presidency is that pretty much all those cretins will get fucked good and hard.