Trump that Bitch?

Just as Obama's presidency has deeply offended white supremacists and caused a resurgence of lively xenophobia in America, Clinton's impending presidency is bringing out the long-quiet depressed white guy who just hates women.  Why?  They wouldn't sleep with him, left him, weren't good to him when he needed it?  His mother did him wrong?  These sentiments that have come into public life are troubling and far too private really to be on T-shirts and election posters.  The loss of civility, and respect for reason, are devastating losses.  How can we come together as a nation when people talk this way to each other?  Are we headed back toward the civil war, when the south refused to accept Abraham Lincoln as their president and seceeded?

I am flying to Tennessee on the day after the election.  The town where my parents live--Oak Ridge--is not your average southern town.  It has a national laboratory in it, full of elitists with education Pile High and Deep.  Oak Ridge has so many scientists that the general world view of assimilating new information and coming up with new, reason-based theories, is part of the town culture.  Tennessee itself is not really fully southern, having been split by the Mason-Dixon line and with families on both sides of the civil war divide.  Still, I am curious to see what I will find the day after the election.

Bitch.  I have been called this.  Always by men.  Always by men who wanted me to do something other than what I chose to do.  Always by men who were unable to control or manipulate me.  They hated that I had a mind of my own.  They wanted me to bow down to their will.   I am not bitchy; I do not strike out for vengance.  I want only the same freedoms that men themselves expect, without having to be called names.  Without being told "calm down honey".  Clinton is in for as many years of verbal abuse as she is in office, plus some.  I thank her in advance for her strength and restraint in the face of the onslaught.  I am grateful that Obama has modeled for all of us the finest in human decency.  You dudes out there who say he is divisive: you are projecting.

I am not for "trigger warnings" and the extremes of political correctness that some youngsters seem to be demanding in college.  Buck up I say, and realize that some people take for granted what is exceptional to you, and vice versa.  Learn to self-soothe, to calm yourself in the face of alarming or disturbing realities or even art.  If you must protect yourself from certain things, do it yourself, do not expect the rest of us to tiptoe around you forevermore.  Friends are kept away like slugs when you are surrounded by eggshells.  Life is rich and lucious and sometimes the spice burns.  Eat it anyway.  Feel the feelings and realize that feelings are not you, they are something temporary that passes through you.  This too shall pass.  Racists: our first black president is about to step down and thousands of us will miss him terribly.  Sexists: our first female president is about to win.  Get used to it.  Whatever the reason for your bias, it is not acceptable.  We're moving on.

These interesting times are about to get even more interesting.