You Get What You Ask For?

As I watch the President-Elect appoint a cabinet that looks to be very white, very male, and very conservative (which at this point is not actually conservative any more), I think to myself well the next four years are going to be a shit show of protests, demagoguery, and men not understanding the world around them. I immediately think well this is what Trump voters wanted they are getting what they paid for. Except we are all getting what they paid for. We the other voters who I am sorry for all her flaws, all the trappings of elitism, all the issues with her transparency, voted for the better candidate for our country.

I don't actually care why people voted for Trump, you did and that is all that matters. If you are one issue pro-life voters, the angry, the poor, the rural poor, or the religious conservative who feel as if world has moved beyond them, for the most part all of you have voted against your own values. I say I don't care about the reasons for your Trump vote, not in a dismissive manner, not in the way that I don't understand or care to understand why they are angry, afraid, or disgruntled. I say I don't care because it does not matter, this demagogue, hustler, sell out, and flimflam man is now in power and he will use it and is using it to destabilize and further corrupt our government and country.

Let me talk about fear and anger. I am a middle aged gay man who works a pretty shitty menial job and don't actually get paid to my ability or for what I do. I get anger, fear and anxiety. I am afraid one day I won't have a job or prospects for one, I have a college degree, for all the good that it has done me, which has only saddled me with debt. I don't feel safe in my own community. I get anger. I get fear. I don't get projecting that anger on people who have nothing to do with it.

I get being attached to an issue so much it informs your world view, I don't get voting against the interest of the people in your life that you love and support because of that issue. I don't get stating that you will fight for me if it comes to that. What you did in a voting booth, was to undermine me, and many many other people. You wouldn't have to fight for me if you had made a different choice. If people feel like I am judging them or I am being unfair, I am sorry but there is too much at stake and too many people lives in the balance, and you helped to do this. What ever comes in the next 4 to 8 years is on your heads. I rest it squarely upon your shoulders, I need people to fight for others because it is right, not because I am angry. You turned your back on me with your vote why would I think you will come out to protest for me.

This isn't Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union, but we could look like modern Russia, or Turkey, or China, which can be devastating for people of color, LGBTQ, the urban and rural poor, and religious/non-religious minorities. Donald Trump looks and sounds like like Vladimir Putin or Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he will try to do the same things they do. Attack the press and minorities and blame them for our countries problems, attack the freedoms of Muslims, Black and Hispanic peoples, LGBTQ people. In doing this he undermines the freedoms of everyone. 

I AM AN AMERICAN. I AM ABSOLUTELY ENTITLED TO ALL OF THE FREEDOMS AND RIGHTS OF ANY OTHER AMERICAN. 
My government shall not infringe on my rights. 
Your vote has, I repeat, your vote has, endangered this very simple statement. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.