Political BS.

Dear Donald Trump,

I can’t bring myself to put the words of “President” and “Trump” adjacent to each other because I don’t think you really wanted the job as much as you wanted the notoriety, so please understand when I refer to you as “Mr. Trump”. I still respect the office of the President of the United States, probably more so than some of the folks in your administration. I also have respect for when I’m visiting a location other than my own home and I don’t put my feet up on their couch. But I digress.

I want to thank you, Mr. Trump, for kicking my apathetic little butt and helping me find my way to education, protest and standing up for my beliefs again. Because of your empowerment to those that enjoy and embrace being racist, homophobic, religious-phobic and the like, I no longer tolerate people telling off-colored jokes about minorities in my presence. I reject those that make homophobic remarks even though “they have gay friends”. Instead of being silent, I speak out. I speak up. You have empowered me.

My internalized self-homophobia, something that I have lived with for much of my life, has dissipated. At 48 years old I am no longer afraid to be a gay man. I won’t be bullied. I won’t be afraid of who I am. I won’t be ashamed of who I am. I am the gay man that God intended me to be and anyone that can’t give me or my family the respect we deserve has no place in my life. I’m no longer afraid to say “no”. I’m no longer afraid to sever ties that were damaging, lest I settle for second best. I’m worthy of top prize, and you made me realize that.

I care about the LGBTQ community again. I no longer see gender as binary. I care about us and what will happen to us, all of us, under your administration. I’m not going to sit on the sidelines and let others speak for me. I will not tolerate my rights being determined by a bunch of old, white men who have no interest outside of monetary gain and power. I have found my voice. I will lend my voice. I have found my passion again. I have found my fire. The weekend after your election I participated in a protest for the first time in nearly 30 years. I’m sure it won’t be my last.

But most importantly, I know what the United States of America can be and I will fight and do everything I can do to make our country of the people for the people. All people. I have no fear. I am not afraid of being heard. I will do everything I can to keep you in check. I will join the chorus of voices that proclaim that we should be building bridges, not walls.

So thank you, Mr. Trump, for making me realize I can’t sit back and just let things happen. It’s time to bring this folly to an end and I believe those wheels are fully in motion.

And I’m going to do everything to make sure those wheels turn faster and faster.

Look, I’m not a fan of the current presidential administration. I’ll be the first to admit that. I didn’t think Hillary was a great choice in November but I thought she was the best choice at the time. The majority of voters in the United States agreed with me but logistics made things swing the other way and here we are three and a half weeks into a Trump presidency and it’s a dumpster fire at best.

The thing is, I just want what’s best for our country. We need a stable government in Washington. A raging dumpster fire led by a man that has no idea what he’s doing does not lend itself to stability. Talking about international affairs in the restaurant of a golf club does not lend itself to stability. I could go on about lies and the spinning and all that but anyone with a three-digit IQ can see through the spin.

The problem is that there’s a whole bunch of folks with double-digit IQs out there.

These folks see this as a glorified football game or reality show. One side might resoundingly beat the other side, no matter the cost, even if it means destroying the country as part of the process. The Republicans should be doing what’s right for their country, not what’s right for their party. With all of these ties to Russia coming to light, if Hillary was sitting in the big chair right now the Republican party would be bending over backwards to get her out of there as quickly as possible. But Speaker Paul Ryan is trying to move forward and not even really interested in pursuing an investigation until he obtains more information (which, last I knew, was the purpose of an investigation).

Look, I think Trump should be out of there and I’d be willing to bet some money that the man is not going to make it through his four-year term, but at this point I just want some solid answers and more importantly, a stable government that isn’t consumed by raging partisan politics as teams line up on either side of the aisle. We need to work together to make this better, even if it means making some tough, unprecedented choices along the way.

Don’t pick a side. Choose to do what’s best.

Keith Olbermann released a video outlining the 50 craziest things Trump has done as president. Some of these things are quite horrifying, for example, turning off standard recordings of communications when Trump called Putin.

That’s quite interesting.

This. Just this.

Imagine coming home to the U.S. from a wonderful trip to the beautiful city of Montréal. As you make your way through customs, the agent asks you for your phone and password. Your passport is no longer good enough. He then takes a moment to flip through all your contacts, looks at your Facebook contacts and interactions, sees if you have Twitter and then takes a glance at your email. Perhaps before handing you back your phone and granting you access to cross the border, he peruses through all your photos. If you don’t do this you can’t get back home. Would you, as an ordinary American, be OK with this? Because there is speculation that we are about one and a half steps from this sort of thing becoming the norm.

I think this is awesome. Freedom of speech is awesome. Let’s continue to keep our country awesome.

Photo courtesy of NBC News.

I will not be watching the inauguration tomorrow. I will be working hard at my job, strengthening the company I work for that connects Americans to one another and earning money to support my family. I will strive to solidify our future which may be plagued with uncertainty due to the change in presidential administration. We are outside of the “norm” and must do what we can to make sure we are protected no matter what legislators try to do. 

I believe that a good citizen contributes more than you take, works hard, earns your way and builds your own existence. Good citizenship, good morals and good values all make the true wealth of a person. None of this is inherited or given to you through handouts. I don’t care what color, sex, creed, race or sexual orientation you are. I don’t care who you pray to or if you don’t feel the need to pray. We all have our own set of beliefs and abilities. And we should use those abilities to learn, to grow and to be our absolute best. And tomorrow, I will be doing what best makes me a good American.

So yesterday I saw this tweet go by on my Twitter stream.

I tweeted back at Rosie O’Donnell with a response. Honestly, I feel like folks are just disregarding the intelligence from, well, the Intelligence folks in D.C. because they were told that it’s all fake news.

One of my biggest criticisms of the Democratic Party is that they seem to have no fire, no feistiness, no desire to be on the offense. I have heard very little about any sort of investigation into the claims that Russia influenced the elections or their ties with Trump and/or associates. This is frustrating. The Republicans spent millions and millions of dollars to go after President Clinton over Monica Lewinsky. The Republicans have spent millions and millions of dollars to investigate Hillary Clinton endlessly. The Republicans have spent millions and millions of dollars trying to stop anything and everything that President Obama did during his term.

The Democrats need to get their act together. Now.

I received many tweets hurled back in my direction in response to my response to Rosie’s tweet. Most of them were unkind. Several were just downright hateful. The majority of them carried common themes: “Trump won, get over it”, “you’re a stupid liberal, cry your liberal tears”, “stop being a special snowflake”, etc. All but two of the responses were from accounts with less than 100 followers. These folks apparently created accounts just to troll folks who speak out against Trump.

I now understand why Trump won the presidency, especially if I heard the voice of “the people”.

I mentioned this in a tweet right after the Golden Globes last week, but Viola Davis was asked what she thought about the election of Donald Trump as President. Her response nailed it. We need to work to make our country a better place by starting with the people.

We have a long journey ahead of us.

I told Earl this evening that I was losing hope. He reminded me that there is always hope, it might just not be where we are looking for it. I revised my statement and said that I see no hope in the next Presidential administration and I certainly don’t believe that the next president has any vision of hope. Darkness pervades the country right now.

It’s a struggle, but we must remain as part of the light.

While I do not support the burning of the American flag in any way, I will always defend a person’s right to the First Amendment and freedom of speech. President-elect Trump wants to either jail or strip citizenship from those that are exercising freedom of speech. Imagine what he would want to do to a woman that exercises her right to choose. Again, I do not support flag burning and I personally believe that abortion is the wrong choice 99% of the time, but I will fully defend the right to freedom of speech and a woman’s right to choose. Thank god he wasn’t running things at the American Revolution. All of the patriots and Founding Fathers would have been in jail, or worse.

This tweet from the President-elect is very telling. It tells of a leader who believes in more of a dictatorial role. It tells of a man who has a very narrow view of what American citizens should do, how they should act, what they should say. It shows a line of binary thought, everything is black or white, there’s no room for gray, no room for color, no room for compromise.

When people defend their vote for Trump and say, “but he’s going to drain the swamp and clean up Washington!”, were you willing to give up freedoms to accomplish this? Were you willing to change the very fabric of what makes this country great just because you didn’t like her, her pantsuits and her sense of entitlement? If you’re willing to give up freedom of speech, if the speech doesn’t fit what you define as proper, then this country is in more serious trouble than I realized.

In 1783, George Washington proclaimed: “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”