9 MILLION AMERICANS CHOSE NOT TO VOTE.
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Rural Voters Played A Big Part
In Helping Trump Defeat Clinton
http://www.npr.org/2016/11/14/501737150/rural-voters-played-a-big-part-in-helping-trump-defeat-clinton
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BLACK VOICES:
The Incredible Reason You Might Start
Seeing Safety Pins Everywhere
It’s a tiny gesture, but it speaks volumes.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/safety-pin-trump-brexit_us_58251b53e4b0c4b63b0c11a9
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Safety pin + my Mom’s sterling silver earring that she made in her 20s.
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In the wake of Donald Trump’s election,
many groups in the U.S.,
including African Americans; refugees;
Mexicans and of Mexican descent;
differently-abled; Muslims
and
women,
are feeling scared and uneasy.
So while protests rage on across the country,
one movement is using a simple yet powerful symbol
to show their support for anyone who is fearful of
what is to come.
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By fastening a safety pin to their clothing,
people are declaring themselves allies to groups
who have been maligned by Trump,
to show that they stand in solidarity
with
anyone who might be afraid.
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Please click on link below:
https://catherineljohnson.wordpress.com/2016/11/09/687-trump-becomes-president-elect-america-is-stunned-distressed-will-a-phoenix-rise-from-the-conflagration-trump-ignited/
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THE
“2016 AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION BALLOTS”
SERIES
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The 2016 Presidential election revealed TWOTWO Americas.
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The Republican candidate, a renown bully, went rogue from his party’s decorum.
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Bullies “smell” vulnerability.
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The Republican candidate became
the voice piece and the “parasite”
of
white male laborers*
and
the once dominant and now obsolete
white patriarchal social structure/institution
of
White Male Privilege.
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* Please note the % of women who voted
for the Republican candidate.
Refer to the Pew Research link embedded below.
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My experience, primary research,
of the structure/dynamic marriages
of white male laborers is a rigid,
paradoxical and circumscribed system.
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The husband/man rules the household
and
the wife/woman is obedient to the scripted gender roles.
Yet, paradoxically, she is the fierce protector of his ego.
She excuses his threats,
locker room banter
and
emotional abuse as his right.
She does not hold him accountable for his abuses nor excess.
She denies the potentially deleterious/ fatal
effect of his behavior on her and the family.
She prides herself on “standing by her man”.
His behavior is deemed as “normal”
– HER man being a MAN.
It is “normal”.
It is a validated role-play that previous generations have modeled.
It is a template of security that life is predictable
and
is predicated on the practice
of a LOYALTY/ NO MATTER WHAT template.
Change is feared and held at bay.
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Of course, not all households are defined by real or the threat of domestic violence.
Domestic violence is not contained by any one socio-economic class.
Domestic violence occurs in relationships of rigid dominance/submissive roles
where the submissive is not deemed as worthy by the dominant
and, in turn, the submissive is subject to the dominant’s verbal/physical rage.
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The only risk is when this LOYALTY template
is questioned by the wife/woman- the submissive.
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I spoke to thousands of households in a RED state for the Clinton campaign.
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The Republican candidate’s rhetoric was the daily language
experienced and lived with in these households.
There was NO practice of dialogue, negotiation or conversation.
The marriages were based on a patriarchal- dominant/submissive- system.
PERIOD.
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The most prevalent response from a RED state
woman voter ( 30 + years of age):
“I need to take this call in the other room!”
In a whisper she tells me:
” I am voting for Hillary Clinton.
I CAN’T tell anyone!
I can’t tell my friends,
I can’t tell my family
and I, certainly, can’t tell my husband!!!”
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The above is WHY I state
the REACTIONARY REVOLT
was rooted and fueled by
WHITE MALE LABORERS.
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The majority of wives/women stood by their man
and voted on how he voted
and/or
how he told her who to vote for
PERIOD.
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The Republican candidate exploited their fears
and inability to articulate
their seething anger + resentment
of being held in contempt, scorned and parodied
by contemporaneous American society + media.
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They were coined/labeled as the candidate’s “deplorables”.
They embraced the label
and
were emboldened by its communal/tribal nomenclature.
A team.
A front.
A social/political movement.
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The Republican candidate went beyond,
off the charts of protocol,
of what is tolerated in common speak
in his vitriol of specific demographics of America.
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His base was exponentially galvanized/electrified
at his UNFILTERED, loose cannon delivery.
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The Republican candidate’s fanatical support base
“dug in their heels’
– nothing would sway them to be objective
and
analyze the actual toxic ingredients of his character.
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The Republican candidate became their needed “BIG DADDY”
who wore kevlar
and
was immune/vaccinated
to be held accountable
to his hate, xenophobia and fear-mongering.
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He became the swiveling hips “rock-star”
of a specific demographic of white men
– a social phenom that wasn’t detected
on the radar
because it was without a lexicon.
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The “clinging to fear and guns”
(quoting Obama during his first primary debates)
was their battle cry!
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The Republican candidate became a parasite on them
and they fed off each other.
However, in a “host/parasite” relationship,
the “parasite” is ALWAYS the winner.
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His supporters came out in droves
– many registered to vote for the first time
in their adult lives.
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The Republican candidate possesses
no real world crisis experience
nor empathy of the “lives of others”.
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His life story and his existence has been
a hermetically-sealed experience
defined by managing/manipulating/editing
public perceptions.
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He is a celebrity- a virtual media creation.
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He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
A proud tradition/ legacy of working class is NOT his story.
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He is no enlightened Buddha.
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The Republican candidate “smelled” HIS opportunity to win
in THEIR despair of eventual extinction.
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He did NOT offer adaptations/ innovative solutions
to his support base to adjust
to the realities of their socio-economic lives.
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The Republican candidate seized their despair
of their extinction
due to a rapidly changing world
of inclusivity and diversity.
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He seized their fear of extinction
and loss of identity
rooted to corporate America’s capitalism
– on-going practice of doing business
in a global economy driven by profit margins
where the concept of indispensable workers
and their pensions plans
is not a factor in the economic matrix.
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The Republican candidate’s behavior
– past and present-
was excused; rationalized; justified
and/or
blamed on others
by his blind faith supporters.
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Behind Trump’s victory:
Divisions by race, gender, education
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/
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ALL of the above, of course,
The President-elect’s campaign
echoed Germany’s 1938
and
the rise of Hitler.
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The Germans’ identity was decimated
by the definition of WW I’s post-war Treaty of Versailles.
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Hitler was declared a buffoon by the media of the time.
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Similar to America’s present day reality:
Hitler was mesmerized by his ascent
as is the President-elect
of the United States of America.
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Ultimately,
Hitler’s rise/ reign revealed
it was a fulfillment of his misaligned personal hubris
and
not a vision of binding/ healing/ resolving
the German’s
psychological injuries of being decimated
by a post-WWI changed world.
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Hitler and his cabinet of drones
did the unthinkable to humanity
in his lust for grandeur.
His need to specify AUTHENTIC Germans,
and manufacture an Aryan race,
destroyed
and
murdered millions of lives
to fulfill his own mesmerizing vision
of his own reflected psychopathic narcissism.
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Hitler seized/ used the nation’s brokenness and rage
and Hitler, as the “parasite”,
plummeted, scourged and descended
the German nation and Germans
into Hilter’s own hell/ Sieg Heil.*
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*(Hail, my leader!), or “Sieg Heil!” (Hail victory!).
It was adopted in the 1930s by the Nazi Party to signal obedience to the party’s leader,
Adolf Hitler, and to glorify the German nation (and later the German war effort).
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Yes,
the candidate
who a citizen BELIEVES in,
supports + votes for
changes/alters
the nation’s and the world’s
trajectory + future.
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YOUARENOTME #1 Catherine L. Johnson 11/09/2016
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YOUARENOTME #2 Catherine L. Johnson 11/09/2016
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Voices:
What Trump’s victory tells us about women
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2016/11/10/trump-election-white-women-sexism-racism/93611984/
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REDMOVESPINK #8 Catherine L. Johnson 2016
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Garrison Keillor is a revered American icon of Americana and its virtues.
He was PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION.
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His recent post-election Washington Post Op-Ed,
unknowingly,
reveals the WHY of the seething anger and resentment
of white male laborers
by his adjective Over-The-Top contemptuous
description of “THEM”.
“Them” = the President-elect’s host and support base.
Keillor’s editorial is SNAP/synapse to explain/understand
WHY there was a REACTIONARY REVOLUTION.
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When a WE v THEY duality is set up,
the THEY are the scorned/mocked/ less than
in this dominance/ submission dualistic equation.
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And, when THEY cannot fight back in words,
THEY will in action.
THEY did.
THEY voted.
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The THEY’s REACTIONARY REVOLT is now the world’s.
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When another is psychologically injured,
it is NOT advised to pour salt
into their psychic/lacerated wounds.
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The WE did NOT listen.
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Listening and a dialogue heals.
Call and response.
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The sublime universality of Gospel,
the Blues and improvisational sonics
are all based on listening
– which is the path of light moving forward.
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The WE’s did NOT listen to the THEY’S suppressed rage and pain.
The THEY voted: YOU ARE NOT ME!!!
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Please note the disdain, the mockery,
the contempt of the THEY in Keillor’s Op-Ed.
THAT is the WHY of the 2016 Presidential Election:
the WE are WHY.
One shared reality exposed by Keillor:
WE/THEY are BOTH sucker-punched by this President-Elect.
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This is NOT Lake Woebegone.
The woe has just begun.
We cannot drown.
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We, as America and Americans, will float, swim and RISE.
WE/THEY will listen: call and response and a NEW lexicon of our shared humanity will take shape.
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I am still picking up ALL my teeth from the sidewalk.
I called a RED state for Clinton- 4 hours each night,
I heard the drum roll and smelled the funereal pyre
of a demographic that was going Jurassic
– and, their anger was spit palpable.
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Opinions
Trump voters will not like what happens next
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Garrison Keillor is an author and radio personality.
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So he won. The nation takes a deep breath. Raw ego and proud illiteracy have won out, and a severely learning-disabled man with a real character problem will be president. We are so exhausted from thinking about this election, millions of people will take up leaf-raking and garage cleaning with intense pleasure. We liberal elitists are wrecks. The Trumpers had a whale of a good time, waving their signs, jeering at the media, beating up protesters, chanting “Lock her up” — we elitists just stood and clapped. Nobody chanted “Stronger Together.” It just doesn’t chant.
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The Trumpers never expected their guy to actually win the thing, and that’s their problem now. They wanted only to whoop and yell, boo at the H-word, wear profane T-shirts, maybe grab a crotch or two, jump in the RV with a couple of six-packs and go out and shoot some spotted owls. It was pleasure enough for them just to know that they were driving us wild with dismay — by “us,” I mean librarians, children’s authors, yoga practitioners, Unitarians, bird-watchers, people who make their own pasta, opera-goers, the grammar police, people who keep books on their shelves, that bunch. The Trumpers exulted in knowing we were tearing our hair out. They had our number, like a bratty kid who knows exactly how to make you grit your teeth and froth at the mouth.
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Alas for the Trump voters, the disasters he will bring on this country will fall more heavily on them than anyone else. The uneducated white males who elected him are the vulnerable ones, and they will not like what happens next.
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To all the patronizing B.S. we’ve read about Trump expressing the white working-class’s displacement and loss of the American Dream, I say, “Feh!” — go put your head under cold water. Resentment is no excuse for bald-faced stupidity. America is still the land where the waitress’s kids can grow up to become physicists and novelists and pediatricians, but it helps a lot if the waitress and her husband encourage good habits and the ambition to use your God-given talents and the kids aren’t plugged into electronics day and night. Whooping it up for the candidate of cruelty and ignorance does less than nothing for your kids.
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We liberal elitists are now completely in the clear. The government is in Republican hands. Let them deal with him. Democrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, traveling around the country, tasting artisan beers, and let the Republicans build the wall and carry on the trade war with China and deport the undocumented and deal with opioids, and we Democrats can go for a long , brisk walk and smell the roses.
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I like Republicans. I used to spend Sunday afternoons with a bunch of them, drinking Scotch and soda and trying to care about NFL football. It was fun. I tried to think like them. (Life is what you make it. People are people. When the going gets tough, tough noogies.) But I came back to liberal elitism.
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Don’t be cruel. Elvis said it, and it’s true. We all experienced cruelty back in our playground days — boys who beat up on the timid, girls who made fun of the homely and naive — and most of us, to our shame, went along with it, afraid to defend the victims lest we become one of them. But by your 20s, you should be done with cruelty. Mr. Trump was the cruelest candidate since George Wallace. How he won on fear and bile is for political pathologists to study. The country is already tired of his noise, even his own voters. He is likely to become the most intensely disliked president since Herbert Hoover. His children will carry the burden of his name. He will never be happy in his own skin. But the damage he will do to our country — who knows? His supporters voted for change, and boy, are they going to get it.
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Back to real life. I went up to my home town the other day and ran into my gym teacher, Stan Nelson, looking good at 96. He commanded a landing craft at Normandy on June 6, 1944, and never said a word about it back then, just made us do chin-ups whether we wanted to or not. I saw my biology teacher Lyle Bradley, a Marine pilot in the Korean War, still going bird-watching in his 90s. I was not a good student then, but I am studying both of them now. They have seen it all and are still optimistic. The past year of politics has taught us absolutely nothing. Zilch. Zero. Nada. The future is scary. Let the uneducated have their day. I am now going to pay more attention to teachers.
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Post-election protests of the President-Elect occurred nationwide- and, are on-going.
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Hard week.
Our world lost Leonard Cohen as well.
Yet, his beauty and his expression of humanity is
Y/OUR ship to cross these dark waters ahead.
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Hallelujah
to ALL the seekers/explorers/ innovators
to whom the questions are the siren calls
and
the internal sea of imagination
summons up azure oceans
of courage
and immense luminosity
to ignite/launch the voyage
to uncharted
visions of deep love, joy + celebration
of y/our
humanity
– without fear.
YES! YES!
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Artists, NOT entertainers, are NECESSARY to tell the oracles,
the truth RAW + FORWARD which is beautiful always.
ALL WAYS.
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R. I. P. Leonard Cohen.
Thank you for leaving your forever, generous, sacred beauty for the waves of future generations.
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CATHERINE L. JOHNSON 