{"id":44244,"date":"2016-11-10T22:35:42","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T02:35:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=44244"},"modified":"2020-07-27T22:36:06","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T02:36:06","slug":"is-election-backlash-getting-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=44244","title":{"rendered":"Is election backlash getting worse?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Amidst reports of massive protests<\/a> in major cities to oppose the election of Donald Trump, I can\u2019t help but have a knee-jerk reaction of \u201cdamn, these people mad.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 Then my thoughts go towards the protests that are happening in cities that are in states that went red, like Chicago, Cleveland, and of course, Atlanta, and feel this empathy over the fact that it seemed like within all states, regardless of outcome, the major cities or largest metropolitan areas within them, went blue.<\/span><\/p>\n

Places like Seattle and San Francisco can at least take solace in the fact that their states agree with dissenting populous, but those upset in blue cities in red states, it sucks to know that no matter how much they tried to create awareness over the importance of voting blue, there\u2019s just simply too much red around them to contend.<\/span><\/p>\n

If there ever was a time for blue collar middle-Americans to feel empowered, it\u2019s now, since their massive numbers very much toppled and overcame large, liberal cities and their loud and influential populations and basically decided the election.<\/span><\/p>\n

Or maybe it was sheer apathy<\/a> that tanked the expected result, but that\u2019s sadly not really out of the ordinary.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Anyway though, protests erupting almost immediately after the election of the next president; has that happened like this before?\u00a0 Serious question.\u00a0 I\u2019m 34 years old, therefore I\u2019ve been alive for eight elections.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t tell you without Googling it who the president was in 1982, because I\u2019m definitely no U.S. history expert by any stretch of the imagination.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll throw out the Reagan administration, because I was far too young to recollect anything about that time.\u00a0 I remember Bush #1 winning in 1990, because you don\u2019t forget a name like \u201cDukakis.\u201d\u00a0 I remember when Bill Clinton took office in 1994, but wasn\u2019t aware that he actually defeated #1 in the process, and I certainly remember when Clinton won his second term, because Norm Macdonald\u2019s Bob Dole<\/a> impression made me remember the whole election.<\/span><\/p>\n

If I can remember the first time I ever saw controversy regarding the presidency of the country, it would have to be the 2000 election where Al Gore lost to Bush #2, and it took days of lawsuits, recounts and other stall tactics before W was declared the President of the United States.\u00a0 I had turned 18 that year, and was eligible to vote, but didn\u2019t, because let\u2019s be real here, I was still trying to figure out my own life much less make an educated guess towards who should be president of the country.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have memories of being 22 and watching a flustered W trying to debate with John Kerry in 2004, and thinking that I was witnessing a real life president actually showing glimpses of tilting on a globally televised debate.\u00a0 The pluralizing of \u201cinternets\u201d became a meme before I even really knew what a meme was.\u00a0 In spite of Kerry\u2019s cool demeanor and the popular opinion that a Democrat is what the country needed to get away from war games that W was playing, Bush still won his second term, and it was the first time that I saw people actually upset with an outcome of a presidential election.\u00a0 Not to mention the first time I\u2019d seen so much gloating from W supporters, and sour grapes from Kerry guys, in the form of passive-aggressive bumper stickers denouncing the other.<\/span><\/p>\n

I did not vote in this election, because I was still probably too young and ambivalent to the world around me.\u00a0 Plus, I don\u2019t think I was registered to vote yet in the state of Georgia, and figuring out how to do an absentee ballot in Virginia would\u2019ve been rocket science for me then.<\/span><\/p>\n

That is, until 2008, when the country saw a black man run for President.\u00a0 Never had I seen a country become so divided, and with age comes awareness and perception, and I remember the thesaurus of words being used to say \u201cblack guy\u201d without actually using the word \u201cblack.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m ashamed to say that I didn\u2019t vote in this election, not because I was ambivalent, but given the divided circumstances and that I was in red state Georgia, I simply didn\u2019t feel that my vote mattered.<\/span><\/p>\n

But I remember seeing people literally partying in the streets, celebrating on<\/em> Peachtree Street, at like 11 pm, after John McCain had conceded the race to Barack Obama.\u00a0 People around me, actually seemed to be happy, but I wasn\u2019t blind to the massive number of people who didn\u2019t like Obama for a litany of political reasons but really because he was black.\u00a0 Granted, this also ushered in an era of the not-so-veiled racism, and apparel makers who actually took the time to manufacture and distribute paraphernalia to denounce the president and not anything else that might actually be fashionable and\/or functional.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The butt-hurt over the result of the election from those having supported the loser was higher than it was the previous time.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure if it was just improved perception with age, the fact that I was getting to a point where my generation would be those beginning to take power of the working world and that I should care, the racism of the country, or a combination of all of the above.<\/span><\/p>\n

Things didn\u2019t seem to get much better in 2012, when Obama defeated Romney for his second term.\u00a0 However, things didn\u2019t seem to get any worse either, as the level of passive-aggressive and poorly-veiled racism kind of stayed the same.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t really a fan of either candidate, since I wasn\u2019t really impressed with how the country was operating under Obama, and I didn\u2019t really believe Mitt Romney was going to be any better of a choice.\u00a0 But I did my civic duty and actually went out and voted for a change, regardless of just how irrelevant I thought it might have felt.<\/span><\/p>\n

One thing new-ish during this time, was just how much social media had grown and evolved; it wasn\u2019t just for the tech-savvy anymore, just about everyone in the world had a Twitter account and\/or Facebook page.\u00a0 Opinions were posted and shared at the blink of an eye, and the commentary about the election took to a virtual arena primarily.\u00a0 Some good, most bad, but tons of gloating for Obama supporters and even more outcrying the defeat of Romney.<\/span><\/p>\n

Which brings us to present day: Trump d. Hillary.\u00a0 I fully understand why people are upset over the election of Donald Trump, and I think they have every right to feel scared or pessimistic over the future of the country.\u00a0 Frankly, I don\u2019t feel that the country is headed in the right direction as well, and I remember the speech by Jimmy Carter where he referenced that Americans felt that the next five years would be worse than the previous five.\u00a0 Except I feel that at this rate, we\u2019re currently in like year 6-7 of being worse than the 6-7 before it, but at least we\u2019ve passed the 50% mark of non-voters compared to the 2\/3 that Carter cited back in 1979.<\/span><\/p>\n

Look, I\u2019m not pleased with the election of Trump as much as the next moderately liberally thinking American.\u00a0 But protesting?\u00a0 I know that protesting has been tremendously en vogue throughout 2016, with there being a Black Lives Matter protest just about every other week, and depending on where you live, every few days, but the circumstances are a little different here.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think protesting against Donald Trump is going to accomplish anything, and a guy who hasn\u2019t even sat at his desk in the Oval Office is going to be hard to impeach without having actually done anything as official President yet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I know when the day is over, every protest is defended with the notion that they\u2019re done to create awareness, regardless of what happens, but protesting the election of Donald Trump seems kind of pointless to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why not protest against middle-America?\u00a0 Or the idea of mindless voting?\u00a0 Or accusations of sexism, for being so against a female candidate?\u00a0 Or the electoral college?\u00a0 All of those played critical roles in how Donald Trump got elected, and protesting them, might actually stand a better chance of slapping wrists and making people stop and think to think better of their choices in the future.\u00a0 Trump himself isn\u2019t going to give two shits about us plebes protesting his existence, because what\u2019s done is done, and he\u2019s President whether we like it or not.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Unless he fucks up on a catastrophic level and gets impeached, such is going to be the case until 2020, and hopefully by then, more Americans can get over their sexism, racism, and off their asses, and make some intelligent, educated choices over who should be in charge of the country instead of Donald Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n

But until then, I think protesting, is kind of pointless.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amidst reports of massive protests in major cities to oppose the election of Donald Trump, I can\u2019t help but have a knee-jerk reaction of \u201cdamn, these people mad.\u201d\u00a0 Then my thoughts go towards the protests that are happening in cities that are in states that went red, like Chicago, Cleveland, and of course, Atlanta, and … Continue reading Is election backlash getting worse?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[176,83,165,105,49],"class_list":["post-44244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-murica","tag-observations","tag-politics","tag-rage","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44246,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44244\/revisions\/44246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}