“I’m just tired of all of this. I want the America back that I grew up in.”

A common thread in conversation lately, that quote above is from someone I follow. The person who said it isn’t important; what is important is the sentiment. Sometimes the context is the disgusting way our elected representatives are behaving, how it’s becoming “normal” and how we’re in the process of being desensitized by all the horrible things that are thrown at us daily that, on their own, would have required the involved parties to resign immediately. That is, before last year, before we jumped on the fascist express train to Moscow.

Sometimes the context of the change they want is making America great. Again. As if it ever was.

Today, Alabama votes for a guy who thinks getting rid of all the amendments after the 10th would “eliminate many problems.” The Amendments after the 10th?:

The 13th in 1865 was for the abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude.

The 14th in 1868 prohibits states from interfering with privileges and immunities, requires due process and equal protection, punishes states for denying vote.

The 15th in 1870 gave all races the vote.

The 19th in 1920 gave women the vote.

The 24th in 1964 abolished poll taxes.

I should probably also mention that the guy from Alabama, Roy Moore, said he thinks America “was great at the time when families were united — even though we had slavery.”

“United?”

You guys are whining about a dark night. It’s rough, huh?

Don’t get me wrong, here. This is rough. Change is always scary, but this kind of change, all these intentional steps back toward the Stone Age, or at least back to the pre-Civil War Era, are scary as hell. It’s less scary for you boys, though. Backward is familiar for you. It’s “simpler.” You knew where you stood. On top.

Suck it up.

The racism and hate are out of the bag. We women didn’t do it; you did. Your ignorant, white fearmongers flipped the fuck out because we had a black man as president. It probably didn’t help your fragile egos that he did a pretty damned good job, too, better than you would have. A bunch of you boys just couldn’t handle that, could you? Gotta feel special so you poked and prodded, spun tales of spooky brown people and unChristian ways, dug for whatever racism and latent bigotry you could find, and sure enough, it bubbled up and oozed, sometimes even flooded, into the public discourse. You’re not even a little concerned that we fucking have Nazis marching in the streets of America.

Nazis, FFS.

I’m not sorry. Well, I am now while we’re dealing with it literally every day, and I hate that we’re going down the same road Europe did 80 years ago as the world watches, but I won’t be sorry once we’ve dealt with it. Assuming we do, you know, step up and fix this. We can’t keep hiding this ugly side, letting our people run around gushing about “pride in their heritage,” ignoring their code for wishing they could go back to the vile practice of owning other human beings. We can’t keep letting these old, ignorant notions rot away our society, at our brains, infecting our young people. Better that it’s out into the light, but don’t whine that you wish it was back in the bag.

While you were freaking out about the “Kenyan Muslim” —  oh, yeah, we know some of you fools still buy that Shinola, holding tight to the lies so you don’t have to face facts — you went so far in the opposite direction that you’ve given the party of Grabby Old Pervs a gift that keeps on giving. Literally. They are helping themselves to our – yours AND my – cash, retirement, health insurance, etc. They’re stuffing their pockets full as they make a “mess” (create such a deficit) that they can “fix it” by cutting our Social Security and Medicare. It’d be hilarious that you dumb fools got played except you let them play me, too. It’s not just me. My child will have to pay for your arrogance and your stupidity.

You gave the Grabby Old Pervs, the party of getting up in my uterus and everyone else’s bits (unless they’re straight, white, cisgender men), free reign. They do like making other people’s genitals their project, in too many ways, not just grabbing and legislating and setting up bathroom monitors to check what’s in everyone’s pants. Anyway, the GOP, with your blessing, decided to pick someone who is the opposite of President Obama, a man who was intelligent, patient, educated, deliberate, compassionate, faithful, and honorable. I cannot say 45 is opposite on all of those counts since his daddy did buy him an education, technically, but in every other way 45 is the opposite of Obama; your new mascot, Trump, is the personification of all of the worst traits and proclivities a human can have balled up into one repulsive human being.

In that choice, you added sexism into that cauldron of bigotry you stirred. You added rape and sexual harassment, a self-professed sexual predator. By choosing to add that last ingredient to your hate stew, you boosted the strength of the “third wave” of feminism to a point where I don’t think you’re going to get to take it back. Some women who kept their silence in order to survive, were forced to speak up. By putting that steaming pile of hate and ignorance who had already abused them personally on a pedestal, by suggesting this is the person who should lead the country and the world, you forced them to come forward and tell everyone who Trump is, hoping someone would listen. They didn’t want this. You left them no choice.

I keep reading that 2017 was the year of anger for women. Anger very often comes from fear of the unknown, from helplessness, powerlessness. The thing is many of us have, for the first time, in the midst of all this upheaval and bullshit, the hate and bigotry and meanness, our first glimmer of hope. We watched women (and men) speak up and be heard. Not enough of them are believed, but enough that we see hope, enough that others of us are willing to risk the exposure to live it all again and again, hoping for the reward of shedding our victimhood and gaining some of that power we keep hearing about for ourselves. Just a little. This long dark night you think you’re in now, boys? the one you want to get out of by going back in time? We live this shit; it’s always night for women and people of color, for the LGBTQ and non-Christians in America. You think we’re angry now? You think this is new?!

All this toothpaste isn’t going back into the tube. You can’t go back.

You made that bed, invited the bigots and racists and sexists and rapists and pedos in with us. Welcome to the long, dark night. Suck it up, boys; the only way out is through.

I read where the “Handmaid’s Tale” is available on Hulu. I’ve not had the strength to see it. Yet.

Link: “Brave Enough to Be Angry” – by Lindy West for The New York Times

Link: “Trump accusers renew sexual misconduct charges against him, say it was ‘heartbreaking’ to see him elected” – by Mark Berman and Frances Stead Sellers at The Washington Post

Link: “2017 was a year of female rage” – by Jessica M. Goldstein at ThinkProgress

Link: The Nasty Woman ~ A Ghost Tale – by Ginger Murray

Link: Live Your Life; Leave Us Out Of It – by E. Brooks at Gray Matters

Link: Never Trust a Republican – by E. Brooks at Gray Matters

Link: Poor White Me – by E. Brooks at Gray Matters

Link to original tweet from Clint Smith.

Snowflake photo from The Nature of Things.

#Through #SometimesTheOnlyWayOutIsThrough #MeToo #NeverTrustARepublican #RightSideOfHistory