Dark matters
What irony. My last post was on the sunny, warm, glowing happiness that comes with San Diego and its Great Ball of Fire, that spreads over the landscape virtually every day of the year. Then I came back up to our main house in Valencia and a week of welcomed rain and cold, with dark turbulent skies and roiling clouds. Being a Jersey Shore girl, I reveled in it.
By the time I had the photographs we took, walking around in the rain on Halloween eve, open in LightRoom, I was struck by the contrast. It gave me such a sense of foreboding. As if the set and the weather premonitored the coming upheaval we are experiencing this week.
You be the judge. What timing, no?
I had planned this title long before Election Day. It was going to be all about the importance of spending time in the dark, in our overlit, 21st century world. Our eyes need dark, just the way they do distance, to rest and be healthy. Ah, but it was not to be.
Nope, that idea will have to be developed in the future. Right now, I am marinating in the stupefying swill of the voting results.
I am going to say it here, one more time: the people who voted for The Man, were lied to. He and his right-wing cronies made promises they knowingly could not keep. Unfortunately, despite my candidate winning the popular vote, our antediluvian electoral college system handed the White House to this unqualified, unscrupulous man and a coterie of opportunistic helpers who merely want power and influence and money for themselves.
I know I have friends here who do not like my candidate. I contend you don’t know her, even though you think you do. She has been lied about aggressively for more than 30 years by jealous, resentful people who are not only against powerful females, but who cannot believe anyone wants to serve others without ulterior motives.
They are wrong. My mother is one such person. Her father, another. I watched both of them give a lifetime of care, selflessly, to others. I believe Secretary Clinton is another one.
Take a look at what we are in for right now. See the way Trump is going to “drain the swamp” and then think about the choice you made Tuesday. Read each description carefully.
So, OK, America, you are getting the leader you deserve. Let’s see what he does to us and most importantly, for us. I am saying it now: I told you so.
Images: ChezBeBe assets/Valencia, California, November 2016
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/or/
Beth Byrnes 
I am staggered by this result, Beth. I started a post about this earlier in the week, but I really don’t know if I can bring myself to hit publish. I am at such a loss- and I’m not sure that I can say anything that I haven’t said before.
I hope that many of the things that I fear won’t come to pass, but, as an historian, that hope doesn’t have a particularly strong precedential leg on which to stand.
Love to you. xoxo
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You have no idea how much I appreciate your thoughts, comment and love right now, Cole.
I have rarely seen my husband cry, but he did while watching Mrs. Clinton give her generous, gracious concession speech.
Myself, I was frozen in disbelief all night (we never went to bed, but stayed up comforting each other) and all of Wednesday. I finally cried last night when I saw Mr. Obama and That Man and heard the disingenuous words the latter spoke.
If you could stomach reading the list of people he plans to put in charge of this country, you will be sickened to your core, as I am right now.
I have never been so disgusted by the Democrats as I am right now. I feel they should have fought harder for what they/we progressives believe. And Mr. Sanders and Dr. Stein should have helped us instead of fighting us. They and Mr. Comey bear a lot of the blame for what just happened.
Trump lied to his fatuous voters. I wonder if they have the character to admit it, as the evidence unfolds.
xxoo
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I have started to see the list of the cronies to whom he owes favours and who will now be in charge of the institutions and organizations of the US. I am sick to my stomach. I can’t imagine how you are feeling.
I am reeling this morning from the loss of Leonard Cohen- we can’t afford to be without such voices, now more than ever. But I think I will post the piece I wrote about this mess and the failure of education and critical knowledge of history that led us here.
Perhaps doing so will help me cope with the sadness of the week.
You always have a place to visit here in TO, should you feel the need for an escape. Love to you and Geoffrey, both. xo
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Thank you Cole. We may take you up on that.
Just think about the role Putin played in this.
What is wrong with Americans?
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I loved the way your pictures carried me through this post, I confess, I probably wouldn’t have read it otherwise. It was written in a lovely voice and every word resonated with me though. It wasn’t the writing that I would have bypassed, it was simply the subject matter. It’s been two days of being bombarded with words about the election. BUT I loved this post and the pictures were my temptation to continue reading and now I’m glad I stuck with it because I’m with you 100%. We tried to tell them and they refused to listen to us. Now we will see what happens.
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Madeline, I almost completely stopped reading and listening, so sick was I of the aftermath.
What good does it do us now? I simply wanted to write a post as I do every other Friday and could not ignore what just happened.
I am a reasonable person who gives ordinary folks a lot of slack, but not this time. This was a monumental error, a catastrophe for this planet and every living thing on it.
Thank you for your kindness and support. We need each other. ❤
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❤
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I agree with you Beth. And yet…I continue to pray that something in Trump’s narcissistic brain will open up to the advice of the President’s Club – not just Obama, but all of them who so graciously mentored their successors.
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I am glad people are praying for this Susan. I am completely discouraged. Nonetheless, ‘not my will, but Thy will … “.
Thank you so much, Susan. I take heart in your faith and support.
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I think his Presidency will likely be two steps forward, one step back, but we have been there before. And after listening to a lot of people “on the ground,” like Michael Moore, the majority of folks who voted for him – including Bernie Sanders supporters – are not racists or white supremacists, but people who want change in Washington, people who have been forgotten by the system, people like the folks in Flint, Michigan who still don’t have drinking water. They are on the bottom rung of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; they cannot look beyond their own day-to-day survival. And in Trump and in Bernie they saw someone who saw their hurt and their pain, their anger and frustration over a system that didn’t think they were important enough to care about.
Let’s hope, as a deal maker, God will use Trump’s skills to create jobs, fix the ACA instead of dismantling it, and lift people out of poverty. The good news is, if God works through him, he’s rich enough not to be beholden to anyone. His ego is big enough to say, “screw you,” to anyone who tries to push him into a corner. And his mouth is big enough to tell the American people when congress tries to inject crap into bills that shouldn’t be there.
That’s why I’m praying he doesn’t surround himself with “yes” men like Gingrich, Christie and Giuliani.
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The people who voted for Trump have a rightful grievance, but apparently no idea of who caused these problems. They were largely, if not exclusively, caused by the Republicans — starting with Reagan — who sought to use the government as an ATM for their own fortunes.
The fact that the average person doesn’t know this is a sad commentary on our poor public education over the past 30 years, again, due to the Reagan lie that government is the problem instead of part of the solution.
Trump is not going to change. I don’t even bother to think of that. At 70, his attitude is fixed and solidified through ego.
The people have to change. We who have the good fortune to be giving and intelligent people, with a sound education, have to take this matter in hand and combat ignorance and greed.
That is where I believe God will enter the equation. He will strengthen us.
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Absolutely true, Beth.
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💕 lets just hope that his pompous attitude was for shock value to grab attention and that he settles down and initiates change that is good. Over here most consider him a laughing stock. I can only hope that good not email prevails… Beautiful photos lovely.
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Of course I didn’t check the words before hitting post….evil not email ☹️
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I hope you are right Jen.
I think a lot of what Trump did was simply to win, no matter how. Winning was his only aim. And it worked. He lied and cheated his way into the Presidency.
There is a lot of speculation that voters were purged from the voter rolls by various means, by the Republican party — the shadowy operatives who work sub rosa on dropping names from the lists of registered voters. As many as 7 million people were supposedly dropped in states with Republican Governors and their subordinates who oversee state elections.
Mrs. Clinton won the popular vote by a rising count now topping 400,000 votes. But the shenanigans on Election Day were enough to hand Trump the electoral vote. It’s disgusting and undemocratic.
But the problem now is, the traditional Republicans who want to simply slash taxes for the billionaire class here are really the ones who are going to govern, not Trump. Like G. W. Bush, Trump will largely be a figurehead and Pence, a dangerous radical conservative with very backward ideas, will be the puppet of the fossil fuel billionaires, the Koch Brothers.
America has failed to maintain the democracy our Founding Fathers envisioned. It is scary for those of us who believe in “rising tides lift all boats”, as Secretary Clinton does. This loss will reverberate for a very long time.
Thank you Jen. As these days unfold, the devastation and potential for destruction becomes more and more apparent. I hope the Democrats here grow a backbone and stop the destruction before its too late.
(Believe me, I hit the button all the time without noticing autocorrect, LOL).
How are you? I have to catch up with you and yours. ❤
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I’m still trying to process the result, Beth. Not so much now the fact that it happened but what is ahead under such a leadership and what people must do to prevent a backward slide in rights and liberty. It must be resisted. There and here.
As always, your photos are beautiful. It’s good to look on beauty after beastly.
Take care.x
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Anne-Marie, I cried again this week. I am very afraid for the world now that this dark cabal has taken over our government. I simply cannot understand why the American people allowed this. I do believe our election was sabotaged and the Republicans gleefully helped it happen.
All we can do now is get past this next four years and hope that sane heads will prevail again.
Thank you for your kind words, love and support. It is comforting to have friends like you abroad.
❤
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Those “jealous, resentful people who [lied because they are] are not only against powerful females, but who cannot believe anyone wants to serve others without ulterior motives” have a name, Beth: REPUBLICAN POLITICIANS.
NO – they most certainly do NOT have the character to admit that they lied as the evidence unfolds. They’ll spin it all as OUR “misunderstanding”– DT is “walking back” some of the things he said already.
As far as the millions of registered voters who didn’t BOTHER to vote – I resent every single one of them for *their* contribution to this horror.
I, too, am sick to my stomach. My post-election post can currently be found on the list of most recent posts on my right sidebar [“Can you Hear them NOW?”]
xx,
mgh
(Madelyn Griffith-Haynie – ADDandSoMuchMore dot com)
– ADD Coach Training Field founder; ADD Coaching co-founder –
“It takes a village to transform a world!”
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I am sorry I missed this until now, Madelyn.
Every single thing you said is exactly how I feel as well.
I am furious at anyone who put this group of people back in control of our lives.
Four years of this and maybe eight? Too horrible to contemplate. I keep hoping I will wake up and it will have all been a nightmare.
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And I as well. In fact, I’m hoping we will all continue to wake up at all.
xx, mgh
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