Post Election Fallout, Authors React

Tuesday, just two days ago, America elected Donald Trump, a racist, sexist, homophobic misogynist to be the 45th president of the country. Those of us who voted for Hillary Clinton, in the hopes that a woman would break the final glass ceiling and unite our country to foster better jobs, schools and healthcare, are completely devastated.

Because this is a book blog, I've excerpted the words of some authors I know on Facebook, and I'm posting their responses here. These authors are saying not just what I am feeling, but what so many women are saying in the wake of this horrible election.

Judith Tarr: I will be losing my health insurance. There is no sign of any viable replacement, and there is no indication that whatever does replace the flawed and rickety ACA will be an improvement. Most likely I will have to return to the old choice between mortgage/living expenses and insurance. I call it the "Bankrupt or Die" plan.

It's also quite likely that Medicare and Social Security will be on the table, and changes made that will not favor low-income, noncorporate, pensionless people like me. But that's speculative. What I know, today, is that the majority leader of the Senate has stated that repeal of the ACA is an immediate priority.

And that's my life on the line, and the lives of 20 million other people. Already I have heard of a person who committed suicide because they could not see a way ahead without their insurance. There will be more. There may well have been more already.

Do not tell me it will be OK. Do not ask me to give the incoming administration the benefit of the doubt. Do not votesplain or politicalsplain me. Do not for the love of little green men rant at me about Evil ACA.

 Litsa Dremousis: Hillary won the popular vote. 2) According to MSNBC, 46% of all eligible voters didn't vote. Childish  cretins.

3) According to several reliable news sources, 52% of white women voted for Trump. Thanks, idiots, for taking your daddy issues to the ballot box. I've said this since college: women are the only oppressed group that consistently ally themselves w/ their oppressors Too many white women prefer to be liked instead of respected

6) Does any informed person really think the stratification of wealth *improves* under a POTUS who has never demonstrated the slightest interest in working class Americans until he needed them as a voting bloc?

7) This is why we need well-funded schools. Which is self-evident in most industrialized nations. Whites w/out college educations overwhelmingly carried DT to the White House. They honesty believe him. This is heartbreaking eight different ways.

8) I wrote this two days ago, but this is the crux: any analysis that omits sexism, racism, and xenophobia is meaningless. We still haven't moved past our twin foundational sins: the enslavement of African Americans and the genocide of Native Americans. We are, very much, a nation of institutionalized racism.

9) President Obama was far better to this nation than this nation was too him. Sorry our POTUS who is Black insured your kids. Yeah, definitely dismantle that legacy. Let's all go back to dying in emergency rooms from treatable illnesses. Let's allow insurance companies to turn us away for pre-existing conditions. People w/ disabilities and chronic, degenerative illnesses were just told to go f--- ourselves.

Charis Books and More/Charis Circle, Atlanta, Ga.: "Stories, above all

else, remind us when we feel heartsick and broken that we are not alone.

Books are, inherently, objects of hope

http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz30721964. Books and the arts build on the lessons of the past and reach towards a future of possibilities. Books teach empathy and foster connections. At Charis we do this work with you, organizing for intersectional feminist justice, with books as our building blocks.... You are not alone. We are going to write the next chapter together with ourselves as possibility models. We are the ones we've been waiting for. If you need a place to be today, Charis is open 11-7. Today we mourn and share our stories so that in the days to come we may organize, fight, and love one another better."

John Scalzi’s take on those who voted for Trump: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2016/11/10/the-cinemax-theory-of-racism/

Mysteron, a commenter on John Scalzi’s Whatever blog, noted this: 

Mike Pence (Trumps Vice President):
* believes electrocuting gay people can turn them straight. He believes women who have miscarriages deserve to be punished.
* Remember the news story about a bakery being able to discriminate against gay customers because they (the bakery owners) were religious? Pence made that okay.
* Pence believes that if a girl is raped and becomes pregnant it is her duty as a woman to birth that child.
* MIKE PENCE DOES NOT BELIEVE THAT CIGARETTES KILL PEOPLE
* MIKE PENCE SAID THE DISNEY MOVIE MULAN WAS EVIDENCE THAT WOMEN SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED IN THE MILITARY.
* Pence has forced woman to watch their aborted or miscarried fetuses be buried and/or cremated
* Mike Pence does not believe in funding an HIV/AIDS vaccine because he says all the gay community needs are “better values”
* Mike Pence believes that working mothers stunt their children’s emotional development.
* Pence does not believe in Global Warming. Pence also does not believe in the holocaust because “the ovens were too small”
* Pence believes that people have been “talking too much” about racism in law enforcement and that it is not an issue
This is the man Donald Trump expects to do the “heavy lifting” in his administration, and who will be president of the Senate for the next four years.

THIS–THIS RACISM, THIS MISOGYNY, THIS ANTI-SEMITISM, THIS HOMOPHOBIA, THIS BIGOTRY, IS WHAT YOU VOTED FOR. IF YOU VOTED FOR IT, YOU APPROVE OF IT.