Please read the latest article by Joy-Ann Reid at the Daily Beast. She is a national treasure. Joy-Ann did not hold back on anything. She delivers a raw, sobering truth about the catastrophe that was unleashed on us by the Old America.
Last night, Old America and New America held an election. And Old America prevailed. And while Hillary Clinton and her supporters can take some cold comfort in her winning the popular vote, the fact remains that a majority of white men and women, college educated and not, rural and urban, Southern and Northern, Rust Belt and exurban, said yes to white nationalism, yes to anti-Muslim bigotry and the naked anti-Semitism of the alt-right; yes to hatred of immigrants; yes to the degradation and assault of women, and yes even to the elevation of Russia to global leadership. They made Vladimir Putin the leader of the free world.
Many of us, who are going to be in the cross chairs of this Old America have been warning about the real danger that our families are going to be in. We’ve shared our fears and thoughts in private conversations with friends and coworkers, on social media, anywhere where we can be heard but it was not enough for those on the same side with us to come out in enough force and not let this happen. Joy-Ann calls out the media for it’s failure as well and rightfully explains that without any remaining checks and balances all of the progress that was achieved not just during Obama’s term but for the last 100 plus years will be erased.
And the media? We have covered ourselves in inglory. By first treating Trump as an amusement, then as an opportunity, then as an impossibility, my profession normalized the American nightmare. By treating Hillary Clinton as merely the other side of a bad coin, and her bland political indiscretions as tantamount to criminality, we dragged down an eminently qualified woman to the level of an historically unqualified man. And then we were shocked—I was shocked, and shattered—when he defied all political logic and won.
Joy-Ann Reid is most concerned about the children who will have to endure the kind of abuse we tried to put behind us over the last several decades. Now, the bullies at school can not only taunt them by yelling “Trump” but these abused kids will have to learn to say Trump’s name to say alongside President Barack Obama.
How will small brown and black and Asian and Muslim and Jewish children go to school today, knowing that the epithet that mean kids use to taunt them—“Trump”—now is the name of the next president of the United States? That they will have to learn his name alongside that of our first black president, Barack Obama? What does that horrifying fact say to children of color?
There is so much more there so please read the whole thing. If will not help you feel better — nothing does today — but you can at least understand what is going to happen us.