On the New Era

He is my president.  That’s the horrifying part.

We only get one president at a time, and he’s the president for all Americans.  Barack Obama was the president for all Americans.  George W. Bush was the president for all Americans.  Bill Clinton was the president for all Americans.  Every one of them, in an unbroken line stretching back to George Washington, was the president for all Americans.  Donald Trump is the president for all Americans.

So all of you with the “not my president” hashtags, t-shirts, and memes?  You can stop that now.  Really, it’s just silly.

Of course if someone would explain that to Trump, that would be much appreciated.

Because he clearly doesn’t believe it.

I see a lot of butt-hurt Republicans complaining about how so many of us are protesting Trump, how we haven’t just rolled over and accepted the agenda, existence, and supporters of that nylon-haired vulgarian as the Only Way To Exist.  They call us immature.  They call us unpatriotic.  They demand that we “get over it” and accept the new order of things. 

They forget how they acted when it was the guy I supported who won.  They forget the protests they made, the threats they made, the violence they committed, the mindlessly fanatical ideological resistance they launched to anything he did even if it was something they had written (hello, ACA?).  They forget that they threatened us with “Second Amendment Solutions” – a code phrase for treason – and how some of them acted on that threat.  They forget, even if I do not, the excuses they made for those actions.

They forget that the Donald has clearly demonstrated that while he may be my president, he does not consider me to be his citizen.  That he regards people like me as his enemies.  That he intends to punish me for not toeing the line he draws.  That he expects me to fear him.

And then they wonder why we’re protesting.  They wonder why we’re not rolling over.  They wonder why we’re not going to “get over it” or even accept that “getting over it” is an appropriate thing to demand in this situation.

Irony is people waving Confederate battle flags telling Americans “you lost, get over it.”  Not that this group is particularly adept at irony.

But they are right about one thing.  He is in fact my president.

And that means I own his sorry ass.

He works for me.  He is my public servant.  And I will hold him accountable.

I will hold him accountable when he treats my fellow Americans as second-class citizens because they don’t look, speak, vote, dress, worship, love, bank, or act like him, when he treats them as anything other than Americans, and when he privileges his own over the rest of the nation.

I will hold him accountable when he stands in violation of the Constitution, in contempt of the law, and in defiance of human decency.

I will hold him accountable for his hand-picked subordinates, for their ignorance, for the grotesquely unqualified nature that they share with their boss, and for the damage they will do to this country as they enrich themselves at our expense.

I will hold him accountable for his petty vindictive actions, for his pandering to the worst elements of American society, for his rampant authoritarianism and his kowtowing to foreign dictators.

I will hold him accountable.  And I will act on what I see. 

I will be better than him and his supporters.  I will not stoop to their treasonous level of threats or violence.  But I will act, and I will not be intimidated.

I am an American.  These colors do not run.  I will not fear my president. 

He should fear me.