A New Dawn in America

I breathed a big sigh of relief today…when they finally projected Biden would win a state with enough electors to take him over the 270 mark. SIGH!!! I began to relax about the presidency for the first time in 4 long years. I wanted…I needed to write about this day…Sunday November 8th 2020! This time in America when, after these 4 years we have finally been able to see Trump on his way out the door of the national stage. Sure, it won’t be as easy as it should be, but I believe we will prevail.

I heard the news yesterday, and though I had been expecting it, I just couldn’t relax, or breathe that sigh of relief until it was all but official. As I was busy at a day long event, I didn’t really hear it, I just heard whispers of it from the Trumpers around me.

“They announced it today.” One said. “Isn’t it disgusting?” Said another. “We’ll get this fixed.” Said yet another….etc. etc. I was surrounded by Trumpers where I was. Trumpers who were not happy with the news, and who believed that it could be changed to keep Trump as president.

Behind my mask, I smiled. I didn’t say anything. Life has to go on with these people after its all over. It was reward enough to know that it had finally happened…though I still couldn’t really relax until I read the news for myself and perused every article I could find to assure myself it wasn’t just some rumor. I couldn’t quite internalize it enough to accept that it was finally over. Well…maybe not totally over. I know that. Trump has vowed to challenge it in many court suits alleging voter fraud and whatever else he can think up. But I understood that the counting was scrupulous over these last few days, doing everything they could in all areas to assure the integrity of the count…not that the Trumpers will believe it anyway. But we believe it…because we saw it happening. Every counting place was videoed and observed by watchers from both parties. It was done. And Trump is done, though he may not know it yet.

It didn’t happen instantaneously for me. It was a gradual…acceptance. It started slowly, and then began growing as I watched videos and read articles that stated how it had happened. I didn’t even really feel myself feeling it until a bit later when…I realized that I was feeling…total exhaustion! I was so exhausted that I even went to bed early and conked out quickly.

I have been so tense and so anxious for more than 4 years now…since the first inkling in my mind that….that Trump could actually win in 2016. It was a terribly sickening feeling that grew into anxiety and tension until it was all that I could do to hold myself together. But worse…it became a constant assault on the senses of all of us who knew what Trump really was. Day after day, waking up, and wondering as they say, what fresh hell will he bring us today…everyday for 4 long years!

A great sigh of relief swept over the land yesterday when it was announced that Biden had enough votes for the win! It wasn’t just me. It was almost 75 million Americans who FELT their votes count for something extremely worthwhile. And that extremely worthwhile thing…I don’t care what anyone else says…was preventing Trump from being re-elected!

The really sad part is that some 70 million people still believed that Trump was the guy for them…even after 4 years of creating chaos and hatred!

Enough about that! Time to move forward! I knew, every step of the way that I had been figuratively holding my breath, waiting for something to happen that would take this man…I even cringe at calling him that…waiting for something to take this man out of power! I was severely disappointed several times along the way and never could find a way to get that sigh of relief. As I said, the assault on humanity continued daily.

It did help to know that I was not alone. Thanks to all of you…and you know who you are…who shared my concerns, and who have also now been able to breathe a big sigh of relief! I know it’s not totally over, and won’t be over until he actually leaves that office on Inauguration Day 2021. But, I can breathe again knowing that it is coming…and he is going! The tension that has built up inside me over these past 4 years has begun to untangle itself. I can even think more clearly again!

It is truly sad that so many of my friends, old and new, and loved ones, and so many others, have taken a stand with Trump. I will never understand that. Most can’t even see that it is NOT about politics! It has never been about politics! And I have always held that position and stated that position over and over and over when it appeared some thought it was “just a political difference of opinion”….but they still don’t see.

It has been an eye-opening experience for me and for many others I’m sure. Well…I know it’s been. I have seen that over and over also. I went into the 2016 election cycle LAUGHING…that ANYONE…could ever think Trump would be a good candidate, let alone a good president. It was obvious to most of us from the start…75 million at least…that he was NOT, and never has been a good man. He may have done a few “good things” along the way, but he was not and is not a good man. Why, I wondered, would people want a man like that to be put in such a position of power as the President of the United States???

But they did.

People that I respected and loved began showing their support for him, and I wondered…How could that be??? Can’t they see what he is?

But they couldn’t.

It was a phenomenon that totally eluded me then…and still now! How, I wondered, can there be that many people out there as to elect a man like that as president of a country that is supposed to believe in freedom and equality and fair play and justice and so forth??? How?

But they did. Even more confounding to me is that they still do! Eye-opening and mind shattering and earth shaking…and soul crushing!

With so many still believing as they do about him, perhaps I should let it go and not say these things out loud…try to just move along knowing the situation has been corrected…but I can’t.

Many took the position that they should not engage the Trumpers during the nastiness of it all for fear of reprisal from his avid supporters. I couldn’t do that. There is a saying about the only thing evil needs to succeed is for good men to do nothing. I believe that. Another saying that we should “Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” I couldn’t let such things stand without at least saying that they are wrong. In the same way I had to speak out in these past few months about the terrible-ness of it all, I have to speak yet again…before we go on back to politics as usual.

Politics as usual?!?! Is that what I want? No. Not at all. But…politics as usual will be almost refreshing compared to the atrocities this man has committed in the name of America! The presidency used to be a position of trust. Trump has destroyed that with his constant lies! Sure, we have been lied to in the past by presidents…but Trump raised the bar on lying to a height I hope will never be challenged again by a sitting president…or a human being for that matter.

The world has changed now and will never be the same again! I don’t want it to go back to the same “politics as usual”. I want it to be better! Trump’s reign of terror did not make it better…and certainly did not make it GREAT! Instead, his mean-spiritedness and hatred for people ‘not like him’, took us back to the days when more people all over the country could be openly ugly to their fellow human beings without fear…when people did not even try to control their basest instincts because they knew they were in the majority. And yes…we all have those base instincts! Some of us just choose to overcome those base instincts because we know that they are wrong…that they are not the right thing to do. Some of us have chosen to control those base instincts and work toward the progress of all mankind…the greater good for all of humanity!

I thought…that when Obama was elected…a mixed race man they called black…but certainly not an ‘old white man’. I thought…when he was elected that our country…even our world…was progressing toward that better world for all of humanity. Little did I know, that many…many, many…people out there were harboring a racial resentment about losing their “rightful place in the world”…that of white privilege, and white rich privilege, and even just a privilege of not being poor or of color or of less physical and mental capability.

My God! I was so wrong when I thought we were headed toward a better country, a better world because Obama was elected. ALL of that resentment simply bubbled and broiled inside those lost souls…until a man came along who gave them permission…again…to hate unrestrained and out LOUD!

So they did.

And soon…the rest of us who believed in the good of mankind…who believed that good would prevail…were STRUCK DOWN by the election of the Reality TV star with the Orange makeup who believed in NOTHING but his own ego…and said all the right words to capture their darkest desires of being FREE to show their hatred, and being free from the restraint of having to control those base instincts and desires!

They believe in freedom certainly, but only the freedom to say and do what they want to do and say without fear of being shamed to right action as they had been before Trump. But the Orange Man said that was good.

So they did.

This 2020 election should not have been so close if we were truly going back to times before Trumps reign. I believed that having seen Trump’s reign of shame firsthand, that all of those voters in the middle who pushed Trump over the top in the last election, would have seen and understood by now and would vote to undo what they had done.

But they didn’t, and I was wrong again. My God! Could this Nightmare on Pennsylania Avenue actually be re-elected?

And on top of having conned nearly half of the voters in America, we were also hit with many voter suppression tactics in many critical areas of the country, and by an attempt at mail voter suppression by the President himself!

And we couldn’t even stop him because of the collusion of his supporters at the highest levels of government in both the states, and sadly, in Washington as well!

I feared…that we were going down a road into a deep, dark swamp, from which we could never get turned around. I feared…but I never lost all hope. Inside myself and countless others there remained that spark of decency, of humanity, that would not let us say die! And with the help of each other, we fanned that spark, and we kept speaking out, and giving courage to others to speak out, and we reminded the country that the American…the Human ideals of freedom and justice and equality…and yes truth…were not yet dead!

We voted in record numbers! We had to, because we could not change the minds of those who wanted to keep their privileges and keep down the “different” kinds of people in the world. And we had to, to prevent the scourge from continuing.

I feared, when they chose Biden that he might not be enough to stop the scourge. I feared when he chose a woman, especially a woman of some color, to be his running mate, that maybe this would be too much for the good people of the country to readily accept.

But I was wrong again! Thankfully! Maybe they were exactly the right mix that it took at this time in history, to bring out all those extra voters to say “NO! We don’t want this to continue!” Because that’s what they said!

At any rate, here we are. The oldest ‘old white man’ ever to be elected President…and the FIRST woman ever to be elected Vice President! Chosen by the MAJORITY of the voters in this great land…to help rectify all the wrong done by…the Reality TV star with the Orange makeup.

It will not be without trials that we go forward trying to undo the damage of the last 4 years. The damage to the country, and the damage to the world, and the damage to humanity…but here we are! And here we MUST begin again to truly work toward the American ideals that have been the American Experiment…and that so much of the world has looked up to for so long! The American people set up these ideals when the country was founded. Ideals that honestly could never be reached…in the same way that religions have never been able to live up to the religious ideals they created as good and right.

But, here we go again! Another chance to advance toward those ideals with the election of a woman to the Vice Presidency…another step toward the equality of all humans…and one that other countries have come to embrace ages ago.

I was heartened by her acceptance speech. I believe that she is taking, and will embrace the grave responsibility of her role in a way that…all humans can be proud of. As she said, she may be “the first woman to hold that office, but she will not be the last.” I was heartened!

I have three daughters and one granddaughter and I truly believe in all of them! My daughters have all grown into strong and independent women…with a deep caring for life…and deep convictions toward fairness. It brings me to tears to see the strength in my young granddaughter and her mother as they struggle to overcome the difficulties of my granddaughter’s recent diagnosis of Type 1 childhood Diabetes!

The world is changing. But then again…the world is ever changing just as all of our circumstances are ever changing. The only thing constant they say, is change itself…and it is forever.

The long national nightmare is drawing to an end. It may not be a pretty end, but it will end! And life will go on…maybe at a snail’s pace toward human progress, but forward now…and that is truly a change from the last 4 years when we went backward at such a warp speed that I feared we could never recover.

I believe I was wrong to think that. I see now that a majority of people did hear the call to alert about the dangers we were facing and they got out of their cushy chairs and their comfortable existence and they voted…for human progress. I worried that not enough would respond to the call.

But they did! And I am ever grateful to each of them.

And now we begin a new chapter, not only in America, but in the world, especially to see that women can finally be in a position of power in the U.S. as they have long been in many other countries.

Our country continues to change. Our world continues to change. And as long as they change toward the progress, that makes a better world for all of humanity. That is a good thing.

I am so thankful that I can breathe deeply again. Thankful that the tension and anxiety inside me is beginning to release and untangle. May the Life Force of the Universe that we call God and other names around the world, give strength to the newly elected American President and Vice president to not only repair the damage that has been wrought, but also to work toward progress for all mankind!

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