Yes, it's happened here

As we start to feel better and can function again, we have to remember that we have suffered a great defeat. We were blindsided. I always thought the Canadians were not paying attention to the fascists in their midst and that we were more alert and somehow on top of the situation with our own fascists. But I forgot about the everyday fascists, who are everywhere in this country. They say and do awful things, and we forget that they really mean it. They really think blacks are super-violent and Mexicans are rapists. And that all ex-wives are crazy.*It's not just the Internet hatemongers, gun-toting survivalists,  the white supremacist groups the Southern Poverty Law Center keeps an eye on.  A large minority of our citizens are fascists, and they have the President of their choice now. Trump is filling his cabinet with evil fascistic men who want to ruin health care, send women back to the 50s, persecute black folks and throw foreigners out of the country.

Some of the Sanders people are really making me angry, but I'll work with them if I have to. I had to realize that many of them are rigid thinkers and not the smartest, either. The weed smokers have not had any new ideas since the 60s. For them, time has stood still and they are quoting Ginsberg (Not the Supreme Court justice, the poet) and imagining that people in the streets protesting means these are the good old hippie days again.  Exciting times! Yes, but not the way they think.

I was out and about in Hilo today, and people everywhere were being as kind as kind could be to each other. We know what we're in for and we know we must stand together. I will have long telephone conversations with my friends and we will console each other. I will invite them over and we will sit on the deck by the hour enjoying the lovely surroundings and each others' company.  I will carry dollar bills everywhere with me to give to street people. I will buy food for a kids' party we are having at a local park. I will be nice, nice, nice.

*Ask one of these guys about his ex-wife. He will tell you she was crazy.

Comments

[Brandon]

"I will buy food for a kids' party we are having at a local park."

I saw the news about that on FB; I was wondering what had happened to the Take Back Lincoln Park group.

As for Trump: Hawaii voted for Hillary, although not overwhelmingly. Even if it were 80 or 90 percent for her, it wouldn't have done much on the national level. Hawaii has only four electoral votes.

In an earlier post you wrote that you'd have nothing to do with Trump voters. But what about those who voted third party, or who were eligible and didn't vote at all?

[Hattie]

Voting for Hillary was essential, and people who did not do that just helped hand the country over to the fascists. Them and their piddling fastidious ideas of how they were too morally superior to vote for a mainstream politician. Well, the ones with half a brain know now what they did. People of color are being threatened and harmed everywhere. Dissent will be crushed. Events are getting out of hand at dizzying speed.
In a place like this, the cops and the military could easily take over and create a terror regime. In this situation, the voice of reason sounds like so much gibberish.

[janinsanfran]

For a blow by blow (some literal) sense of what is happening to people of color/Muslims/immigrants/girls on the mainland, follow @ShaunKing.

He's a Bernie admirer anyone can work with.

[Hattie]

I am following a Facebook friend who is very frightened. She grew up experiencing hate and thought it was over and she could relax and just have a normal American life. The worst worry is for her daughter.

[Joared]

Portion of a Kennedy quote "...the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die."

[Michael Strickland]

Dear Hattie: Would you please stop with the ridiculous generalizations about "weed-smokers," please? I didn't much like marijuana when I was young (it made me sleepy and paranoid), but as an older person, it strikes me as something of a wonder drug, untangling my brain after working on a graphics computer all day in a benign, philosophical way. And for the record, the work of Ginsberg (the poet, not the jurist) is actually aging quite well which sort of surprised me. I had an edition recently of his Collected Poems in the bathroom for a couple of years and was fascinated.

[Hattie]

Michael: No. I am very tired of weed fans. But I have always thought it was dumb to persecute people for using it. If it is nice for you, why should I care? And it's legal now.
As to Ginsberg: I thought he was a kick in his day, etc. and had a blast when he came to Madison in the 60s with the Fugs and his entourage and turned the town upside down, when I lived there. I also enjoyed meeting and talking with one of his lovers, (This was in 1957, in Berkeley), who had a bowdlerized copy of Howl with the expurgated parts penned in in Ginsberg's hand. Very cute guy, too. Forget his name.
But for me, time has marched on.That era is over, big time, as far as I'm concerned.