Alt Reality

I've lived in this country for over 60 years. Yea, I know Older Than Dirt. I thought I knew the place pretty well. I've read a newspaper almost everyday of my adult life. I've lived in Florida, California, Oregon and Washington. I grew up in Florida when Florida was really part of the South. I drank from the Whites Only drinking fountain when I went to the grocery store with my Mom. I saw blacks attacked with thrown soda bottles from speeding passing vehicles because they were black. School integration occurred for me beginning in junior high school extending into high school, where police at the corners of classroom buildings were needed on occasion. I remember when Roe v. Wade became the the law of the land. I remember working in the defense industry where they took women engineers resumes for job applicants and threw them directly in the trash. Chris remembers high school friends being thrown out of school, pregnant because birth control was not available to them and illegal abortions were killing American women. She remembers having to join the boys sports teams in high school, before Title 9 was passed, expanding girls access to public school programs including physical education.

I really thought that those were mostly long gone days. Wow, I feel like I am now in an alternate reality.  How anyone could overlook the racism, bigotry, misogyny, policy shallowness and glaring contradictions of our president-elect is beyond me. These people apparently dream of going back to the good old days of the 1950's, when taxes were high, racism was the law, women's rights were still under male control, and government subsidies for education and housing mortgages, not capitalism, drove the economy and national growth.

While the popular vote is close, it appears that the president elect didn't actually win the popular vote. Even without that, it is still a mandate. The Senate, House and soon the Supreme Court are all heavily weighted to one side. Its a mandate. Can the president elect deliver for his followers his promises: deport 11 million immigrants in a 100 days; build the Mexican border wall and force Mexico to pay for it, get rid of the EPA, get rid of the Affordable Healthcare Act, aka Obamacare, and replace it with something so much better, cherish women, ban Muslims, ban Syrians refugees, prosecute Hillary Clinton and throw her in jail, cut the NASA budget, bomb the shit out of ISIS, bring back waterboarding, renegotiate the Iran deal,  bring back jobs from China, Mexico, Japan, etc, force Nabisco to make Oreo cookies in the US, grow the economy 6% annually,  cut the deficit by $18 trillion, renegotiate the budget to get a 20% discount, get rid of banking regulations and consumer protection laws, cut taxes on the rich, get rid of corporate tax loopholes, fix the mental health system to stop mass shootings, allow concealed carry in all 50 states while enforcing a 5 year minimum sentence for committing a crime with a gun, provide more money for drug addiction treatment.............


Its a mandate, can you deliver or will the people that voted for the president elect look like the picture above along with the rest of us.

I guess I feel like I should just jump on a boat and sail off into the great blue ----------

Paul