Was He Lucky Or Are We?

 

I was entertaining friends for lunch when late in the visit, we decided to turn on the TV. The footage of Trump being shot was shown over and over again. Once all the details came in, we said, 'this must be the luckiest person to have ever walked this earth.' Then, a week later, President Biden stepped down from the presidential race, and Kamala Harris was the new Democratic candidate-to-be. Suddenly, ALL these joyful people appeared! Within the first 24 hours of President Biden's announcement, $81 million dollars was raised for Harris' campaign - the largest amount of fundraising money ever raised in a 24 hour period. 40,000 new voters registered to vote within the first 48 hours of the emergence of Harris' campaign. Tons of T-shirts of Kamala Harris were printed, and excitement was spread all over social media. Just observing the excessively large numbers of attendees at the Harris-Walz rallies over the past week show how many people have come together. No matter what the outcome of the presidential race, there will remain many, many people bonded together through the Harris-Walz campaign.

Maybe the presidential race was not meant to be determined by one of the candidates being assassinated? Maybe the presidential race was to be determined by a collective need for joy, love, positivity, and democracy? A unity between human beings who were hiding in the shadows of doom and gloom until Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee. Maybe WE are actually the luckiest people in the world because we are meant to stand together in large numbers AGAINST Project 2025 and, in time, to join together as one country as we always were in the past, not two separate countries. I believe all of these happenings were meant to materialize the notion that there truly IS strength in numbers!

Not Crying (Yet) - Just Simply Unable To Comprehend It

It's like that time in the early 1990's when I bought tickets to see an IMAX film, went to line up, and was told the viewing had just been canceled. I said: "Ok, so where do I go to get my money back?" The employee answered: "I will go ask my manager if you will be able to get your money back." "What??!!" was my natural response. "Of course, I can get my money back! I bought the tickets three minutes ago, and I'm surely not going to be charged for a movie I didn't see!" The employee didn't respond in any way that made sense, i.e., 'Oh, well of course you'll either get a rain check or a refund.' Instead he said, again: "Well I have to check with my manager to see if we can give you your money back." Again, I couldn't grasp the concept that this theater would force me to pay for a movie I didn't see! It just didn't make logical sense. Of course, I did get my money back, but the idea that the employee would even think for one second that I'd ACCEPT leaving the theater knowing I'd paid for a movie that I didn't see through no fault of my own or that the theater would think it was perfectly fine to do so was something my brain simply couldn't comprehend.

This is the feeling I have after seeing a quarter of the US population go to the polls to vote for Donald Trump. It doesn't make logical sense to me, and I can't wrap my brain around it. Surely after everyone heard him say that he grabs women by the pussy and that they let him do it because he's a celebrity, nobody in their right minds would vote for him! Equally disturbing is that after those comments became public, a former teen beauty pageant contestant said that Trump had barged into the teen contestants' dressing room while many were  half-dressed and topless. While they frantically grabbed their clothes to cover themselves up, he continued to enter the room and simply said: "Don't worry, girls. There's nothing here I haven't seen before!" What kind of example does it set for young girls and women of our country (and for the girls and women who live in countries where females are so oppressed, they have no rights at all and are abused and persecuted on a daily basis) to have such a person be in charge of what many consider the leader of the free world? Surely we don't want a president representing OUR country who has been recorded on tape making statements that prove how little regard he has for women and their rights? Correct?

As I said, the reality is that one quarter of Americans brought themselves to the polls to vote for Trump. This is 25% of our country. But 25% voted for Hillary Clinton who actually received more than 2 million more votes than Trump did. The added problem is that 50% of the population didn't vote at all. Trying to view our voting population as an optimist, at least the vast majority of people in our country couldn't bring themselves to vote for him knowing that this country's women have fought so hard for so many years for their freedom, only to see them being disrespected and even sexually assaulted by someone who could have the power to set them right back again.

Seems to me after hearing nothing but bigotry and sexism from Trump, even if you didn't like Hillary Clinton, it was imperative to go out and vote for her to ensure that we not let him gain the power to create laws that can hurt people and damage their lives when he harbors such prejudices for minorities, homosexuals, the disabled, and immigrants. Along with having  an utter lack of respect for women that has reached the extent of engaging in sexually predatory behavior.

Bottom line is, Trump did lose the popular vote, and by over 2 million votes which is a margin unprecedented in US history and exceeds the close margins in the elections of both President Kennedy and President Nixon. My first reaction to Trump winning the electoral college votes (even though this is not what the majority of individual people of this country actually wanted) was one of disbelief and confusion. Once I heard his comments on TV about "grabbing women's pussies" (adding that to the derogatory comments I've heard him say over the years, long before he ever ran for president, such as calling women "fat" and "ugly"), I just couldn't comprehend that these comments would not be a deal breaker for anyone who has a healthy respect for women. This is why those of us who voted for Hillary Clinton are "crybabies." It is because we fear the ways a man who is about to gain control over legal policies could hurt us when he holds this type of hatred for women. We're hoping that over the next four years, we will not be dealt something that we'll really have reason to cry about.