I feel ...
Ashamed. Depressed. Angry. Forlorn. Tense. Disappointed. Forsaken. Abandoned. Wary. Fearful. Apprehensive. Dumbfounded. Dumbstruck. Amazed. Worried. Flabbergasted. Downcast. Devastated. Disillusioned. Abused. Embarrassed. Concerned. Disenchanted. Fucked. Frightened. Irate. Inconsolable. Lousy. Despondent. Petrified. Rage. Repulsed. Traumatized. Thunderstruck. Threatened. Unwanted.
Donald Trump is an abhorrent human being not worthy of being president. But my emotions are not directed at him. They describe how I feel toward almost half of my fellow voting Americans and how they have drifted away from the ideals upon which our nation was founded and advanced.
Even if Joe Biden ekes out a win, the election means much of what America has meant to me and the rest of the world has been shattered, perhaps beyond repair. Nearly half of our electorate is either too ignorant or bigoted to choose science over a charlatan. Too selfish to embrace the idea of equal opportunity and treatment for all in education, employment, enfranchisement, housing, health care.
From my perch in mostly affluent upscale Westchester I cannot claim to identify with the everyday concerns of voters in Iowa, Michigan or Nevada. I’ve been to almost every state in the Union but have lived in only two, New York and Connecticut.
Still, given a choice between a gentleman and a thug, I cannot comprehend how 67 million chose the latter. Sixty-seven million preferred chaos over calm, repulsiveness over respect, evil over education, grifting over grace, hate over humanity.
I feel ashamed of and for our country.
