Welcome to Trump’s America

Just stop with the “all liberal Democrats think all white men are racist, bigoted women haters” and “Donald Trump as a racist, misogynist, bigoted buffoon is a myth manufactured by the liberal media” and other such bullshit victim stories. If you voted for the guy, OWN it and stop trying to pretend all the people who are hurt and afraid and pissed are ridiculous and hysterical and out of their minds, and you have no idea where they got the idea that half the country hates them and wants them gone. Because if you didn’t vote for him because of it, you sure as hell voted for him in spite of it. To the vast majority of Americans who are in one of the groups he targeted with his hateful, mocking, bigoted words and actions, that sure feels like you’re condoning it. And the underlying message in that is “You don’t matter, and you’re not welcome.” How does that play out in the real world? It means that on a small, overcrowded plane from Detroit to Harrisburg last week my 12-year-old Latina niece Sunny (and Gus Petersen and I, and everyone else around us) had to listen to the neo-Nazi behind us in his swastika jacket rant loudly about LGBT people serving in the military and his other unwelcome and unsolicited opinions about minorities. It means that yesterday kids at the 90% white middle school Sunny and Conner attend decided it was a good idea to build a human wall to keep the kids of Mexican heritage from getting into school and/or to their classes and lockers yesterday. These are just two personal stories that hint of the shitshow your guy unleashed by making that kind of crap normal and OK through his words and actions as he told us how he’s going to “make America great again.” How people don’t understand or care that fear, sorrow, anger, and unrest is the fallout from that is beyond me.