Oh, for the love of god, to all the white liberals who with one breath criticized BlackLivesMatter, then Ferguson, and the “I Can’t Breathe” movement, and who are *now* crying foul because a racist, misogynist has waltzed into the White House – SHUT.UP.

You are part of the problem. You have enabled this with your selective attention, with your continued willful ignorance to the actual state of affairs in this country. The world is not uglier than it was three days ago – you are only now waking up to what many of us have been saying all along. You are now being forced out of your bubble to actually look at the damage YOU  and YOUR party have caused with your arrogance and hubris.

It sucks, doesn’t it?

Misogyny exists. Racism exists, as I’ve been saying ever since I moved up to Portland and was confronted with it on a daily basis. White folks around me nodded, rolled their eyes, and acted as if I was just being sensitive.  They didn’t want to talk about it. We’ve forced the die-hard racists to hide, but all we did was sweep it under the rug, and go back to living in our nice comfortable little bubbles. Until the DNC, in collusion with the mass media, put forward a candidate that gave the racists a demagogue, and called them out of hiding. You can cry foul, you can say, “Deplorables! Racists! Misogyny! WikiLeaks! The Russians! FBI!” But again, you’re simply denying the part you played in this mess.

In your arrogance, YOU ignored the valid criticisms of your candidate,* ignored the reality of the perception that your candidate was corrupt, while those in our impoverished nation suffered and continued to be degraded and silenced with threats of being labeled as misogynists for voicing their concerns? You *laughed* and said “Damn right!” when your candidate said that half of Trump’s supporters were  deplorables, and then went on to say some were simply irredeemable. All under the hypocritical banner of “Stronger Together.” You cannot pay lip-service to unity.

The majority of white women voted for Trump. Sit with that for a moment.

You, white liberals, have ignored the working class who have suffered under the various bailouts that have left them bereft of their pensions, savings, and homes, and told them their voice was inconvenient. You labeled them, assuming that by their jobs, they were somehow worth less than you.  When they asked you and your candidate to address their concerns, you told them their troubles, their lives didn’t matter as your candidate selected Tim Kaine for VP, a pro-bank politician who had just finished saying that we needed to deregulate banks. Do you know how many people in those in the “Blue Wall” states lost their homes, lost their jobs, their pensions, while bankers and corporate rackateers walked away unscathed? As jobs are continually shipped overseas, so you can keep your commodities at a lower cost? Do you?  You can label people as”misogynists” or “racists” all you want, but HRC, the DNC, and YOU told them they don’t matter.  HRC and the DNC failed them, thoroughly, and failed them with a callousness that you are so deafened to, you didn’t even hear them as you trampled on them. You failed to listen. You told people who felt wronged by a system they felt was rigged against them that they needed to suck it up AND you told them you didn’t need them. Again, under the banner of “Stronger together.” Do you even know what those words mean? REALLY?

The DNC failed us. Main stream media failed us. Facebook failed us. Social media in general failed us. Pollsters failed us. We, together as a society, failed. We have been shouting into our echo chambers, ignoring the reality of what it means to be human – all the beautiful ugliness of it – in favor of living in a world of make-believe.  The middle class is continuing to shrink, the homeless population is growing, our medical and insurance system is a mess, voter suppression (on both sides) continues, the war on drugs has done nothing but solidify racial tension and inequity, the war on terror has done nothing but create greater instability (and shock! more terror!), privatized prisons are still a thing, and debtor prisons have once more become a thing. Flint still has poisonous drinking water and we still can’t come up with a solution to the oppression of Native American Peoples. The environment is going to hell in a hand basket, and despite a few flowery speeches, your candidate has shown us that the climate wasn’t one of her top priorities.

The world has always been ugly. It’s always been dark. It has always been thus, and will always be so. The problem is that you’ve just been IGNORING it and your denying the culpability and your over-simplification of the complicated machinations that is our society is NOT HELPING.

WAKE THE FUCK UP. THIS NEEDS TO BE FIXED, AND IF YOU ARE GOING TO BE STUCK PLAYING THE BLAME GAME, YOU WILL NEVER ACCEPT YOUR OWN COMPLACENCY, YOUR OWN CLASS BIAS, YOUR OWN PASSIVE RACISM LED US HERE.

I keep saying the same thing: talk to people. Talk to them, and listen. I’m met with the same thing all around, “Oh, they’re just ignorant. They won’t change.”  What I’m hearing when you say that is YOU won’t change. That change isn’t worth it, if you have to make a fucking effort. I’m not perfect, god, am I not, but if you won’t even try to talk to those who don’t think like you, talk like you, or look like you, you damn well won’t be a force for change. Change means listening. Change means making mistakes, and owning them so you can grow.

Keep telling other people they’re demons for not believing the way you do. Keep going down this line of dividing people, placing blame, not accepting that YOUR blame – you had your blinders on, and tied your dreams to a candidate whom you painted a hero, a martyr, and said damn everyone else – we don’t need you. Keep proving that the folks who wrote about liberal fascism and the liberal trend of ignoring inconvenient truths is a thing.

If I have to read one more white privileged person, who has never experienced true poverty, who has never been forced to eat food from a garbage can,  who’s never been in line at a soup kitchen, or been out of a job, and been one step from homelessness,  complain about the fact that certain peoples’ privilege led us here, I will scream.

You entitled, “enlightened” assholes led us here, and now you want to blame the poor and disenfranchised whom you’ve been ignoring as they cry for clean water, food, education, and compassion, you want to BLAME them? WTF?

Grow up. We’re all to blame for this. Stop pointing fingers and step up to the plate. Blaming the folks you’ve so conveniently ignored won’t fix this. You can, but only if you own up and start realizing this world is full of imperfect people, and that includes you. That includes your candidate. That even includes Trump and the minority of racist assholes that buy into the racist misogynistic BS he spews so readily. Trump didn’t fly in on an overwhelming majority, for fucks sake, he won because there was low voter turn-out, and he won with less total votes than Romney had when he LOST to Obama in 2012. He didn’t even win the popular vote, just racked in the electoral votes that he needed because your candidate didn’t feel she needed them.

You convincing yourself of your enlightenment doesn’t make the world a better place. Are you really smarter, better, or more enlightened if you use that enlightenment solely to prove to others that you’re better? That you shouldn’t have to be exposed to those poor downtrodden folks who haven’t had your luck, your privilege, or your access to healthcare and education, that all this is their effing fault, because you knew what’s best for everyone? Yeah, that’s awesome. Glad that worked out.

You want to show us how enlightened you are? Be a light that leads others out of the darkness, whether YOU think they deserve it or not. Where was this rage in Ferguson? Where was the rage when you learned that the US is deporting more people under Obama then under previous presidents? What does that mean about the families that have been broken up on his watch? Where’s the rage at our culpability at what is happening in Yemen? Or the fact that we’re sponsoring warring factions in Syria, some of which actually are fighting each other? One of which supports an Al-Quaeda faction?

Maybe now you can finally open your goddamned eyes, once you’ve climbed off your damned high horse.

I started this post in anger, an anger which mingled quickly with a terrible sadness.  I have allowed my voice to be silenced and marginalized because it was more comfortable than creating a stir. I tried to raise it politely, but was shut down, time and again, from actually speaking.  My voice was inconvenient. Irrational. I, with my poverty-ridden background, didn’t always have the polish, and I was simply a minority that could be ignored.

No more. I will not fall back into accepting this falsehood. I am filled with resolve. I will not let myself drown in my echo-chambers, comforted by my own righteousness. Nor will I fight this anger anymore.

As uncomfortable as it is, especially with my history of abuse, I will embrace my voice and I will embrace the anger I’ve held at an arm’s length my entire life.  Because I assure you, when faced with the inequity of our times, and the inequities of all the ages before us that we are so arrogantly trying to revise and which our present has made us blind to – hatred will not go away by ignoring it. Violence will not go away if you accept it as normal. I am tired of being complacent to your victimization of the powerless, when you could have fixed this if you had given a damn.

And, when I see wrongs, I will do my goddamned best to actually right them, address them, and get to the root of it, rather than making the world comfortable for you again, you privileged twats. This has always been the way the world is. It is always how it will be. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do something about it, in the time we have on this earth.

I’ve accepted my anger.  I will not let my voice be silenced because you think yours has more value. If you’re only in this when it effects YOU and you can’t ignore it anymore, and plan on going to go back to lying to yourself when it’s convenient – shut up and let those of us who actually give a damn about EVERYONE do our work. Me?

I will not go gently into that good night.
I will rage, rage against the dying of the light.

—

*Note: Not all criticisms leveled at HRC were valid. Only a moron would think otherwise. Some criticisms were misogynistic as fuck and should have been, and were, called on. At the end of the day, she is a person with all her flaws and imperfections, but by pretending they didn’t exist and she shouldn’t account for the errors that directly effect people? You didn’t help anybody. Thanks a fucking lot.