girlofprey

Seeing people genuinely blame Hillary Clinton and anyone who supported her for Trump's win is almost soul-destroying. Seeing people genuinely claim it all happened because of the economy, when - in Britain, and quite a few countries outside of America - worries about the economy and racism pretty much always go hand in hand these days is mind-boggling, and almost makes me want to despair of those people's abilities to have their political shit together in the next few years.

But anyway. Happy things:

1. My cat is amazing, and loves me.



2. My mother is also pretty good. She's been looking up things about the election in America, because she knows it's upsetting me.



3. I have been listening through my CDs recently, and have found many amazing songs I didn't even know were there. Most of them are either by women or about women, or both. Because that's how I roll apparently.
   
   "I was a child in Mississipi,
   But I am ashamed of it today"
   
   
   
   
   The Bessie Smith song that made me want to buy her album.
   
   
   
   
   Florence and the Machine are/Florence is a genius.
   
   "And I heard your voice,
   As clear as day,
   And you told me I,
   Should concentrate"
   
   
   
   
   So is Ruth Brown:
   
   
   
   
   This song is a little bit Christian for me, but it is genuinely uplifting, and I've found it quite helpful to listen to over the past week.
   
   
   
   
   This song genuinely makes me wonder why Erma Franklin isn't as well known as Aretha Franklin. More amazing songs, obviously. But still.
   
   
   
   
   These are not all songs I have discovered/re-discovered in the past few weeks, but they are all great and I love them and I wanted to share them.

Today, Sky News claimed that one of Trump's election promises was to "make torture great again".

Is that a thing?

Well.

I just want to crawl away and hide.

I got maybe 2 hours of sleep last night. I toyed with the idea of staying up - till we got the 'all clear' - but decided there wasn't much point since we wouldn't know anything till the morning. I woke up about 5 o'clock, then was just awake till I heard my parents puttering around downstairs. I heard the news on, and knew there would be a clearer idea, and I still wanted to sleep, but after about 10 minutes of waiting tensely I decided to go ask my mum what was happening. She gave me this look, and I knew. Then she gave me a 'it's bad news' face, and I really knew. She said it wasn't over, but not looking good. I laid in bed, trying to get back to sleep, but literally the only way I could keep myself from panicking was by forcibly counting sheep. It turns out I did that for three hours.

I don't know how this happened. I don't know how a day can be so different from the day that came before it.

I'm still trying not to panic. I don't know how people can be so full of hate. I'm still sort of angry and in blaming mode. Who do I blame? Bernie Sanders, a little bit, for the 'Bernie or bust' stuff - people who rely on the apocalypse to convince people they're right often get it. Anyone who voted third party - why? In this election, why? The news, a lot - because the news outlets that aren't outright owned by the right-wing media are generally, these days, a business, and it's in their interests to try to steer people towards disasters, because that makes for better headlines. It's in their interests to pretend serious things aren't that serious, that things like elections are hopeless, that the bad social things that are about to happen aren't that bad. So they can report on it when it all goes wrong. Anyone who voted for Trump obviously, but so many of them are crazy it's really the people who are like "well, he's a bad guy, but I always vote Republican/vote for my wallet" the worst, the actual worst.

( What I'm scared of. Tw for misogyny, murder, rape )

And even outside of that, I'm scared of what effect this is going to have on everyone else. Because every guy, every guy, who feels like grabbing a women's pussy is going to feel validated. Everyone who attacks people of colour or Muslims for having an opinion is going to feel validated. And I want to think "it's for four years, maybe it'll be fine, maybe it'll be over after that", but the truth is that if people don't outright take on right wing ideas, they're going to get used to them again, to allowing them. And we are going to lose progress. At best, we are going to lose progress.

I'm trying to think of any positives. Number one: he's incompetent, and apparently the economy took a nosedive when it even looked like he might win, so he might lose the support of the "we're voting with our wallets" people pretty quick. Although he'll probably just blame the rest of the world for being against America. Number two: when he actually has the job and isn't just speaking at his own rallies, people will probably be less likely to accept him constantly changing his story and not taking any responsibility for anything. Number three: he's such a shill and chases attention so much that anything that is genuinely unpopular with the American people, in practise, is probably something he's going to drop. Unless he gets mad and petty and decides he's just going to do it anyway.

I want to believe this is going to be okay. I want to believe he won't genuinely do anything that bad, this'll just be the 'Donald Trump show' for the next four years, and posing around is going to be good enough for him. But for the next four years, I think I'm going to be constantly waiting for the first nuclear strike. So. Yeah.

I could barely sleep last night, thinking about the election. But then I did sleep, and had a rather nice dream about Tom Cruise in a mech suit, and Matthew Broderick as the Ordinary Guy helping him stop a mercenary takeover of America and/or a small town. Who he also slept with. So that was nice.