We are still in the age of clutching things. We humans like to clutch. Our belongings, our pearls. Our ideas. Our instincts to gather and protect were selected long ago — so the idea that resource collecting is at the heart of our concerns today, is a tough pickle to swallow, compounded by the behavior’s hidden influence on all other human doctrine.

"OK.  To start off, I want to open up the discussion with a simple question.  Was a vote for Donald Trump a racist act?  If he ran his campaign on racist rhetoric was the act of voting for him a sign that you are a racist as well?"

We are still in the age of clutching things. We humans like to clutch. Our belongings, our pearls. Our ideas. Our instincts to gather and protect were selected long ago — so the idea that resource collecting is at the heart of our concerns today, is a tough pickle to swallow, compounded by the behavior’s hidden influence on all other human doctrine.

Like me in high school, we aren’t learning that that smugness doesn’t win elections it merely makes us feel warm and fuzzy as if our ineffectual resistance will be noted by future historians as somehow significant when figuring out how to persuade those out in the world of real, flesh and bone humans separate from the avatars of the digital world that perhaps we might be able to work together for the better of everyone.

…that, while the election of 2016 (and likely 2020) signaled some dark times for the country, this is nothing more than White Male Supremacy's Last Stand. It's angry, desperate, and wholly unpopular. Those of us who rail against it should simply stay the course and avoid sabotaging ourselves with infighting.

Who can we blame for the election of Donald Trump as president? Here is a short list of scapegoats and why any one of them deserve all of the blame. All of it.

“I’d like to think that I’m an optimist but it may just be that I’m stupid.”
— My mother

The 2016 election was not an anomaly.

We want to believe it was. We were so goddamn certain that Hillary would win. Even Trump didn't really believe his almost impenetrable brand politics was capable of actually taking the Big Chair. It felt, and feels, like a huge step backward. Here we were, planning out our road to Universal Healthcare and Environmental Rollbacks while casually ignoring the drone strikes on civilians and the eight-year refusal to prosecute against those bankers who put us in the Recession—and suddenly, the fucking guy with the orange spray tan, bad hair and loud, unapologetic, insult-laden maw won.

Let's be amazingly reductionist for a moment.

There are 100 people.
25 of them voted for Trump and the existing Republican Party.
27 voted for Hillary (but only 18 of them wanted her as the candidate...)
2 voted for candidates outside of the two-party system.
10 couldn't vote (mostly through voter obstruction.)
36 simply didn't vote at all.

What are the potential strategies to moving in a direction perhaps less poised for complete and utter disaster under a continued regime of GOP controlled governance?

So... Donald Trump is president.  Then, there were protests.