Grief. It is a horrible thing. My grief today is unlike anything I’ve ever felt. It wasn’t this bad in 2000 when Bush stole the election from Al Gore, one of the politicians I have admired most in my lifetime. I turned the TV off last night around midnight and tried to get some sleep. When I awoke, I thought I had to be hallucinating. This cannot be. Someone is going to find something to undo this travesty. But no, it’s real, and we have to deal. So to try to make myself feel better, I have to get my feelings out there, somewhere. I don’t care if nobody reads this diary, I don’t care if nobody agrees with it. I have to write it.
These are the people that I blame for this tragedy.
#1 Bernie Sanders — Yes, Bernie Sanders. He stayed in too long when he knew he had no chance of winning the nomination, and in doing so he contributed to the “not trustworthy” bullshit that destroyed this election. I know there are a lot of people on this site that love him, but right now, he bears part of the blame for this disaster. He divided us when we desperately needed to be united. He was never a real member of the party, and in joining it he destroyed it. The country is not ready for the kind of socialism he advocates, he never could have defeated Trump. In fact, he would have galvanized Republicans *for* Trump. He damaged Hillary beyond repair. Our glitzy convention, her great performance in the debates — all for naught because Bernie divided us before those even happened. I saw Kos in a post suggested Sanders as chair of the DNC. If that happens, I will do something I have never before contemplated doing and drop my party affiliation. Sanders is not a Democrat. He never has been, and he is partly to blame for this result.
#2 Comey — Worse than J. Edgar Hoover. While Hoover destroyed individual lives directly, Comey manipulated a national election handing the Presidency and the Senate to the same party as the House. Millions of people will lose their health insurance, millions of others will be persecuted because of their race or religion or who they love. People will die because of this. Comey has committed genocide.
#3 Cruz, Rubio, Jeb and the rest of the Republican primary opponents — their egos kept them from working together to prevent this result. Trump is not a true Republican. He is not the conservative beacon they all tried to be. 0Had any of them been actual men about this, they would have coalesced around one person to oppose this jackass in the primaries, and he would have lost the nomination. Instead they all split the Never Trump vote and made it mathematically possible for him to win.
#4 The Media — for not recognizing early enough that they were enabling Trump, that they were sensationalizing stories like Hillary’s emails that were bullshit, that they needed to go deeper into the substance of why people were supporting Trump. And they needed to dig deeper and force him to release his tax returns. The media contributed to the “Hillary’s not trustworthy” meme by repeating it so often, even when trying to dispel it. More interested in headlines, they paid no attention to their responsibility to inform us rather than bait us. Their actions enabled whoever the hackers are behind the Wikileaks emails, they enabled Comey to destroy us, they failed at their job. They created Trump, and now he owns them.
#5 The Pollsters and Prognosticators — how the fuck did this happen? How did they not learn from Brexit? And all of you who picked on Nate Silver for being cautious, yeah there’s that. Nate was closer to reality than the rest. We look as bad today as the unskewers of 2012.
#6 My fellow Democrats — for not banding together. We allowed ourselves to be divided by bullshit. Those who boo’d at the convention, the Susan Sarandon’s, the “Never Hillary”’s within our own party. Our party did not support our own nominee. Hillary gave her heart and soul to us, she withstood the most vile hatred for us, and we failed her. When will we ever learn?
#7 The apathetic among us — you all know them. They are the guy that sits in the next cubicle who says it doesn’t matter and he doesn’t vote. They are the woman who claims she is a Republican even though she is pro-choice and pro-LGBT-rights and pro-health-care, but she’s a Republican because her parents were and she doesn’t want to learn anything about the issues, she just votes straight Republican. I hate stupidity. And there is a lot of it around.
#8 Single issue voters, like pro-life and guns. Nobody is going to take your guns. Nobody rips babies out of the womb the day before they are due. Get over it.
#9 The women that voted against Hillary — really? I mean REALLY? You voted for a man who thinks of you only as a sex object that he can have for the taking and ranks you based on your appearance? I know that there were women in history who were against suffrage for women, against the ERA. There have always been Phyllis Schlafleys in our country. But Trump, you voted for Trump? You voted for a man that thinks he can molest you simply because he is famous. WTF! Why are women so stupid? My sex allows itself to be oppressed, and it disgusts me.
#10 Myself — for not learning from the 2000 result that I can never trust the media, the polls, or my fellow Americans, and for not realizing that there is far too much misogyny still in our society. I got my hopes up really high that today I would be celebrating the first woman POTUS only to have my hopes dashed by men, especially one crude asshole woman-hating jackass of a man. And I especially blame myself for not moving my nest egg into a safer investment option in time.
Now I have to find a way to get through the day. Having stated my blame, I have to find a way to get past the grief. I have to find a way to get to sleep tonight, and to wake up tomorrow and the next day and the next and survive this hell.
UPDATE — To those of you telling me that I *have* to change one of the people on my list, or add, or whatever — I don’t have to write a damn thing differently. I really hate loathe and despise when someone tells me I *have* to do something, like I’m a stupid woman and I don’t know my own feelings. This is *my* grief diary. Do not tell me in the comments who I should remove from my list or who I should add or how *I* should feel. Write your own diary, do not dare tell me what to write in mine.