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RE: DIVIDED WE FALL - OUR FAILURE AS CITIZENS, AS MANIFESTED BY THE ELECTION - PLUS A FEW THOUGHTS TO CONSIDER AS WE MOVE FORWARD FROM HERE
I expect we will see political appointees within agencies dismantling the protections of our public lands, water quality, air quality, labor laws, food and drug safety, reproductive rights, and voting rights, while Congress gives tax cuts to corporations and the wealthiest.
Pollyanna, optimist, pragmatist, realist, pessimist, nihilist. I'm a gardener, so my natural tendency is an optimist. But then, the first thing I ever mail-ordered as a kid was the US Army book on Survival, Evasion, and Escape, so I've have pessimist tendencies, too. In my working life, I'm a realist and pragmatist in trying to ensure that people have good, quality water or are prepared for floods and drought. This week has been busy in making adjustments in strategies and tactics -- and that's just the start for the next few months, at least. I may not be optimistic, but at least I am, and will be, still working to make things better. And that means working with people of all stripes. But this election does have consequences.
I try not to be a pollyanna and think things will take care of themselves - some things don't. It takes real people doing real work. Like my grandmother used to say, "God may plant the flowers, but somebody's got to pull the weeds". I try not to be a nihilist and just say it's all just too messed up to bother with, let it crash. I think too many vulnerable people get hurt that way.
Politics is ugly and nasty because it's about control of power to make things happen -- we see that in tiny ways even about the direction and progress of Steemit. But it's less ugly and less nasty than making things happen by fascism, feudalism, or war - whether local, international, or anything in-between.