I liked President Barack Obama. This is no hagiography; dude made big mistakes. But at the very least, you got the feeling that he cared. That he set his rather substantial intellect to every task and gave a shit about the effects of the decisions he made.
It's tragic to have gone from someone so clearly thoughtful as president to someone so clearly thoughtless; to have gone from someone with clear moral compass, to someone clearly amoral; to have gone from someone brilliant to someone so fucking stupid.
But an even more baseline tragedy of having gone from Obama to Trump is the vision. Obama's vision of American exceptionalism hews equally pragmatic and optimistic. The promise of America, in Obama's worldview, is to continually strive to be more perfect. Not perfect (because that's impossible) but more perfect. Obama thinks we as a nation can keep getting better.
And the way that happens is by opening America up to the people who've been historically excluded from it - people of color, LGBTQA people, disabled people, women, etc.
So we bounced from a leader with a worldview of pragmatic optimism, who believed in the generosity and expansiveness of American culture to a leader who recklessly longs for the day when he and people just exactly like him were the only people America was for.
But, you know what? Fuck that. Fuck Donald Trump and his ugly racist, misogynist worldview. In a word:
First things first, we're all gonna get on the phone on Monday and call our MoC and tell them DREAMers get to stay. If you're lucky enough to be repped by a Dem, tell them "no continuing budget resolution without protection for DREAMers." If you're repped by a Republican tell them that if the government shuts down because they couldn't come to an agreement on keeping the DREAMers here, you'll hold them responsible and not the dems.
Why? Because those 800,000 Americans make America better.
Next things next, we're gonna do everything we can to rid Congress of the blight of Republicanism. That is no longer a functioning party. They are all of them, every single one, enabling the Racist-in-Chief and his doddery, reckless path to recreate an America that was terrible for the majority of people who lived in it.
Every last one of us is gonna walk out of the voting booth in November just like this:
