Now that Trump is POTUS, I guess it's time for me to fold as a liberal activist. After all, we are now in the era of fascism and corporate elitism, so I am nothing against all of that. All of this phony, shrieking, frenzied and hypocritical Christianity makes me want to vomit. The most that women like me can hope for is a peaceful ending to a long and exhausting life being left out on the margins, constantly underestimated, and undervalued. You know the situation is truly bad when you look around at the ramblings of your sister women and you see remarks like, "I just don't understand what the marches were for," or even more bizarre, "I am just hoping that Trump will find Jesus." That kind of helpless sounding crap is exactly why we are in this mess looking at a freaked out Barbie standing in front of the White House so messed up she looks like a meth addict that slept in a dumpster. We have a man in the White House that speaks freely and unapologetically about grabbing women by the pussy, and many of my classmates and one-time rebels are not even offended. They act like they accept this nonsense. I ask myself, "What the Hell happened to the fiery and independent girls I grew up with? How in the Hell did they get so brain-washed and comfortable in their phony, stupid, and meaningless lives? Why don't they throw down and refuse to accept this bullshit? What happened to their self-esteem?" 

All of them, and this is no lie, are better people than me. They have to have some dignity, anger, fire, or even outrage left somewhere....but where?

Honestly, and this is no exaggeration, I long for the days when I could count on a bona fide White House reporter telling me we were about to "liberate" Iraq, rather than look at this mess that signifies nothing but total ignorance stretching farther than the Texan yard line. I didn't believe any of the George Bush crap, but at least it was somewhat logical (well, not really). I thought it was a mistake we could maybe someday understand (I still think it was just the murder of 100's of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens). It was a lie that we could maybe someday forgive (uh, no). But now things are getting even more bizarre, and all of my students are upset; I do not know how to comfort them. They are Muslim, Christian, brown, white, black, Jewish, and innocent. But even though they are completely unable to control this decision, I see people making fun of our millennials like they have something to do with the greed and global warming, war and murder. Some of the millennials are in college "cry-ins" because they now have a president that has doomed their world to the dark abyss of corporate profits, slaughtered on the alter of global climate change, and he and his cabinet figuratively and concretely represent the mistakes of our generation, mistakes that will now never be rectified because of corporate, fascist control.

I am sickened by the display of ignorance, especially the ignorance I see from the once forward thinkers I grew up with. We all suffered an uncertain, even rough upbringing, even if our parents had some money. We all learned to cope with an uncertain fossil fuel economy, and we all have our dark and frightening stories about home violence, hunger, or even death. But now, many of my former people, after years of faking it in local churches, want to act self-righteous. They want to forget where they came from. They want to overlook Vietnam and Iraq. They make up red-herrings (Obama is taking our guns; the Mexicans are coming) to distract them from their real problems: the environment, religious fanaticism, corporate greed, cruelty to women and children, genocide, and government surveillance.

I think rather than write, I might just take up knitting those cute, little, pink, kitty, hats. At least then I could be doing something that people understand.