On Sunday, as I was returning to my pew post communion, one of my fellow parishioners, Susan Schuette, reached out her hand to me and asked if everything was alright? She had noticed a dearth of postings since Election Day.
Wednesday, the day after the Election, I had cataract surgery [which went very well] and it gave me the perfect excuse to be at home with the blinds drawn, to not listen to the news, to eat comfort food and to binge watch on Amazon Prime. I ate enough mashed potatoes with gravy AND butter for a family of five.
In the slightly hungover state from the relaxants they gave me while working on my eye, I sought to absorb the absolute fact the Donald Trump, television reality star, billionaire real estate mogul, orange tinged with the magnificently weird hair, was President Elect.
Rejoicing is being had on the right while the left is shattered and, quite frankly, totally at a loss as to what has happened.
My dear, dear friend Sarah, known since we were three, and I spoke today. She lived for seven years in Franco’s Spain and feels we are moving in that direction, to be living in that kind of fear. A social worker, her Hispanic clients are terrified, if undocumented they fear a door to door search for them. If documented, they simply fear being profiled and harassed or worse.
Events since the election have fueled all our fears.
At an Episcopal Church in Maryland, the times for Spanish language service were torn down, replaced by graffiti that said: Trump Nation. Whites only!
At the University at Pennsylvania, incoming African American students received emails from a group called “Mudmen,” announcing a “Nigger” lynching every day.
In Wellsville, NY a dugout was spray painted with the words: Make America White Again, with a swastika.
The swastika seems to be a much used symbol for those who are doing these things.
It has been reported in St. Louis a group of high school students marched through their school halls with a Trump sign shouting, “White power! White power!”
A Muslim woman at the University of Michigan was approached by a white man, demanding she remove her hijab or be set on fire.
Ah, yes, the milk of human kindness…
When asked what I think, I say that I expect the next few years are going to be experiential.
A friend phoned me on Thursday and we talked about the election and he said, well you don’t have anything to be worried about. After all, Pence is the one who is going to be running things after all.
Pence is homophobic. Mentioning that to my friend, I said I did not feel safer as a gay man in America since this election. Some of Trump’s supporters say unpleasant things about us though Trump did say in an interview with Lesley Stahl for “60 Minutes” that gay marriage was the law of the land.
He also told, in a bit of milk toast sort of way, that his supporters who might be doing anti-Semitic actions or harassing Hispanics to stop it. It didn’t sound all that forceful.
The New York Post has called “fake” incidents of hate crimes since the election. Maybe they would have happened anyway. I’m not convinced.
It is a sobering time. It is now my responsibility to be vigilant and to work against moments of hate. It is my responsibility to work to restore a more liberal voice in this country and I will. I’m not sure how but I will find some way to do it.
Republicans own the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives and 32 of 50 gubernatorial posts. They have the run of the land. Let us see what they do with it.
And let us be prepared to be the loyal opposition.
At Christ Church Episcopal on Sunday, safety pins were given out. They are to say to those who are frightened because of color, sex, race, religion, disability that you are a person they can be safe with.
Mine will be worn tomorrow. It maybe I will offer them to my students. It is my hope we all continue to be safe and that we are not falling into my friend Sarah’s fear that we are living in a time that will evolve into Franco’s Spain.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 11 15 2016 What George Washington said…
November 17, 2016It has been a spring like day today in Claverack; the temperature scraped sixty degrees and it was possible to walk around with only a light jacket. It was delightful and I reveled in the day. Patches of yellow leaves float like Ophelia down the creek.
In this hard time, I have very little to say.
There is a popular blogger I follow named Shelly Palmer. He wrote a blog today that I read and then tweeted but what was most important for me was that we, the Republic which is the United States of America, has been through times like this before and we have survived.
This is what George Washington wrote to a friend about why he did not seek a third term as President.
“The line between Parties,” Washington wrote Trumbull, had become “so clearly drawn” that politicians would “regard neither truth nor decency; attacking every character, without respect to persons – Public or Private, – who happen to differ from themselves in Politics.” Washington wrote that, even if he were willing to run for president again, as a Federalist, “I am thoroughly convinced I should not draw a single vote from the Anti-federal side.” For Washington, the nation’s political parties had soured discourse and created a climate in which, as he predicted in his 1796 farewell address, “unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.” Referring to the Democratic-Republicans, Washington wrote, “Let that party set up a broomstick, and call it a true son of Liberty, a Democrat, or give it any other epithet that will suit their purpose, and it will command their votes in toto!”
The times we are living in have been experienced before and we will survive what is coming and will, hopefully, emerge as an even better Republic than we are today.
It is what I pray for at church on Sundays when I light my candles for all the things for which I have said I would light candles: myself, the family of a friend who recently passed after a horrific battle against brain cancer, the daughter of a friend whose daughter has traumatic brain issues, for my family, for peace in this agonized world.
It was a tradition started when I was in high school after a group of us went sailing; a storm came up and we had to swim to shore when the boat capsized. All of us, except one, were Catholic and we walked to our parish that night and lit candles for our survival, which was not assured. People waded out into the water to help us to land, exhausted as we were from the efforts of swimming too far with inadequate lifebelts, through waves that had been unmatched.
So I now will light a candle for the Republic every Sunday I attend church and pray we survive this time that seems so riven.
Let us find hope in the fact our Republic has been through times as troubling as this and has survived.
Tags:George Washington, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Media, Politics, Shelly Palmer, The American Republic
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