Thursday, November 10, 2016

Like a Death in the Family

We got to sleep around 4 AM Wednesday morning. Up at 5:30 as usual. In that hour and a half, I managed to have an extensive nightmare involving pieces of my body falling off. "I need you to take me to the hospital!" I encouraged some shadowy figure. No help for me. Maybe my Obamacare had been repealed.

Those first moments after waking are easy; the edges of the room take shape, dog bodies are imposing on parts of my body or leaping ecstatically at the thought of breakfast. And then comes the realization, like a slap in the face, and it's Election Night all over again.

I am the biggest pessimist in the world, but the worst I anticipated was our losing the Senate. That we would lose everything didn't enter my mind. Here are the losses that could immediately impact the people in my little world:

  • Money for environmental work in Afghanistan and Pakistan
  • That coveted internship at the Department of Education
  • Retirement investments and Social Security
  • Affordable health care and decreased pharmaceutical costs
  • Access to birth control and women's health care
  • Some kind of a fair tax code
  • Incentives for solar and geothermal energy
Not to mention international accords and, oh, the planet. And the work we've been doing around the state on developing a plan to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act seems to have been a genuine waste of everyone's time.

Sleep, wake, slap! Sleep, wake, slap! Day 2 of Life in Trump Nation.

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