America. Time has suddenly stood still. Rather than take two steps forward one step back - the way normal progress tends to work - we have chosen to take 200 years' worth of steps into a dark void. You, the angry populace, want change? You want to undo unwanted policies from a previous government? That is perfectly acceptable. However, in that process we must never set aside civilly accepted values of human decency.
Rather than America voting for change based on a political divide, we have chosen to vote on the raw emotion of anger. Whatever your anger might be, though - losing a job or seeing more "immigrants" on your doorstep - nothing, absolutely nothing, will ever justify electing a President who spews hatred.
The change we have instead elected is a brand new value system for America: prejudice, misogyny, bigotry, isolationism, fear, disrespect, anger, and hatred. We have told children that it is acceptable to mock handicap people. We have let men know you are allowed to grab a woman's genitalia whenever the mood strikes then brag about it to another man, dismiss it as locker room talk and then suffer no consequences. We have elected to teach a woman that you can become a lawyer, a Senator even, and work most of your adult life serving the public's best interests; yet you will still lose a job to a hollow, brash, bigoted white man.
America. This is the change we chose.
At my daughter's bus stop this morning a mom - who is Muslim - shouted at another mom about a misunderstood aside regarding Trump not actually following through on banning Muslims from entering America.
"You have no idea what it now feels like to be a Muslim knowing this man might ban us from entering the United States based on religion," was her shouted, furious response. There was pure, raw, unadulterated rage at already feeling segregated by Trump's vision of America. In the short hours since Trump was elected, the fissures and divide have spread to the school gates.
Other writers of better repute will be able to parse over details of today and beyond: the Dow Jones plummeting, every Mexican citizen feeling uneasy, and the potential rise of Putin; to name a few. I simply want to say:
America. Wake the fuck up.
Scores of empires and civilizations have collapsed dozens of times before America was anything more than a lump of uncharted land. America has to stop blindly beating our chests about how "we are the greatest country on earth," as if America itself won't ever fall by the wayside as a civilization, and realize by electing Trump we have made a mockery of the previous 240 years of US stature.
I am not one for hyperbole and doomsday predictions, but there is a justifiably very real and very tangible fear in the world this morning. How can America not see this, or not care?
America. You wanted a change, and now - aside from those who elected Trump - we all fear the consequences.