Donald Trump

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Truly, I didn't think I could be more appalled, more disgusted, angrier, sicker to my stomach than I have been. I didn't think I could loathe and disdain and eschew in every single way a person like I do Donald Trump.

And then today, yet another veil on Trump's vile character was lifted, pulled away to reveal a level of character so seedy and ugly that I am, despite all the evidence suggesting I shouldn't be, shocked. 

You probably all saw or heard the 2005 hot-mic recording of Trump going on about how many women he has hit on, aggressively approached, kissed, grabbed. Some were married, Melania said "it was OK." 

In Trump's words: 

“I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait,” Trump said. “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the p**sy. You can do anything.”

The commentary goes on and on. It is repulsive.

Not surprisingly, he has deflected blame back to the Clintons. "Bill has said much worse to me...Hillary enabled his cheating and attacked his women....This is just potty talk..."

More unbelievable are the women who continue to support Trump by saying, "at least he's not a criminal." "It's just locker room stuff."

Really? If a man spoke to your daughter or granddaughter or you like that, you'd be OK with it? Sexual harassment isn't breaking the law? 

Gross are the men laughing and cheering and grabbing their crotches and saying, as the stranger who wrote on my Facebook wall this evening, "Welcome to every guy conversation when girls aren't around! Woman say way worse with their girl friends. If U say different you are full of shit!"

That person? He is no one I ever want to know. No one I ever want my children to know. No one I ever want to associate with in any way. Those women who still don their Trumpette shirts and cheer for the man who grabs p**sy because he can? They make me sick. They are turning their backs on generations of work and death and progress that women before them soldiered through and suffered.

Trump has no major newspaper endorsements. Perhaps more astounding, a number of conservative papers have endorsed Secretary Clinton and/or urged voters to NOT vote for Trump. The Dallas Morning News, The Arizona Republic, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, USA Today have all come out in support of Clinton. The DMN has supported every Republican nominee since 1940. The AR, founded in 1890, has NEVER endorsed a Democratic candidate. Until now: Clinton. The SDU-T has not supported a Democratic candidate since it's founding 148 years ago. Until now: Clinton.

Papers like these "have taken a stand even at the expense of losing subscribers at a time when newspapers are barely staying afloat. Some have received death threats." Regardless, they are standing up for what is right, for what is best for this country, for the greater good instead of any individual beliefs and desires otherwise. 

They stand alongside the nearly 100 evangelical leaders who recently beseeched "their fellow Christians to vote against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who, they write, 'has fueled white American nationalism with xenophobic appeals and religious intolerance at the expense of gospel values, democratic principles, and important international relationships.  Sometimes historic moments arise when more is at stake than partisan politics ― when the meaning and integrity of our faith hangs in the balance. This is one of those moments.”

They stand alongside the group of 30 former Republican members of Congress who two days ago publicly came out against Donald Trump. "It's the largest group of former Republican elected officials to officially announce their opposition to the current leader of their party."

We should all be this full of integrity and honor. I am doing my part. This is not a country of which I'm proud or that makes me hopeful. I want better for my children (who I had to ask to leave the room tonight while we watched the news story about Trump's recording) and, frankly, for myself, peers, parents, and everyone who has worked so tirelessly for greater tolerance and a greater nation.

In the meantime, the fabric of our nation is unravelling. I feel a hopelessness about future unity that I've never felt before. How, when perfect strangers will say I'm "full of shit" for speaking out against such grotesque treatment of women and stand up for a man who brags about sexual assault, will those who agree and disagree come together? Truly, I don't know.

Something in our political system has to change. Campaign finance, timing, the electoral college, voter repression, gerrymandering...without real and substantive changes towards fairer everything, I fear this democratic experiment we call America won't last long in any healthy state of being.

A blue day

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I feel blue today despite the fact that it was such a beautiful one out there. Despite the fact that I talked to many friends, have vases of fresh flowers in my home, and look forward to my mom, sister, and nephew coming on Wednesday. 

My eyes are itchy, my hair lacks luster. I am glum and flat. Alarmingly, my writing well feels dry. I have been short with the kids all afternoon; they were beasts yesterday, just unlikeable little twerps, and I think it took something out of me. It feels that way, but I can't be sure. I do not like days like this: they feel discordant.

Have you read this book? Or any by Oliver Sacks? He is one whose death I still mourn. Like Alan Rickman and Christopher Hitchens and Nora Ephron and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Nanny. Their absences in this world feel palpable to me, like holes with sieves for bottoms. Even when some openings clog, the others remain free and the filling slips through. 

I feel lucky that Dr. Sacks, a neurologist and author, wrote and shared so much with the world before he died last year. This book has thus far been an absolute delight. It's like sitting on a soft couch alongside a dear friend whose fascinating life keeps unspooling before you. How is there still more to learn? you wonder. How did you fit so much living into your life? you muse. What a gift you are. you aver.

I find Sacks' authenticity and approachability, his very self, captivating. He's one of those I'd seat at my table if I had my dream dinner party. 

In any case, I've been glad for his company today and again this evening after I made a beautiful and awful dinner.

I guess it wasn't awful but it wasn't particularly good. I threw half of this swordfish away-too fishy- and took comfort in a pint of Talenti's scrumptious Pumpkin Pie gelato. I'm not much of an ice cream girl, so that it was my refuge (plus Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher; I love him) really says everything you need to know about today.

The election cannot come soon enough. Surely that's sitting on my shoulders. I didn't even think about that until earlier today and only then when prompted by a comment I heard or read. Which was it? It doesn't much matter.

What does matter, desperately, is next month's outcome. Inspired by a friend's campaign involvement, I somewhat rashly agreed to go to Pennsylvania later this month to canvass, drive folks to early voting sites if need be, whatever.

This is not in my comfort zone, y'all. Not at all. But I won't be able to sit with myself if I don't act, and so, in three weeks hence, I'm hitting the pavement. I think I'll be scared at first, but that's growth. I hope my boys see a mom they're proud of, learn another way to get involved, stand for something, and lean into discomfort (I stole that phrase from Jack's 3rd grade teachers; I love it.) regardless of age.