What can I say this morning?

Vote

We’re up early, sipping coffee, and getting ready to go to our local polling place and cast our vote. What an honor it is to have a vote! I take that responsibility very seriously. Not voting is unthinkable.

We watched President Obama’s campaign speech in New Hampshire yesterday. Then we watched the rally in Philadelphia. Positive, uplifting, filled with hope.

What a contrast with the dark, hopeless, angry rhetoric coming from the other candidate. If I was still sitting on the fence (impossible) that would have sealed the deal for me.

When a candidate says, as Trump did yesterday, that if he doesn’t win “I will consider this the single greatest waste of time, energy…and money” – you know he was never doing this to truly make a positive difference. He was never doing it as a public service.

It was all about ego.

Okay. I’ve said enough, and heaven knows I’ve written about this election many times over the course of the last year. It has been imperative to speak out. And if I’ve lost some readers along the way, so be it. This election is too important. Period. No regrets, not a one.

If you haven’t voted, do.

We’re going out to breakfast afterward to celebrate this day.

And I’m going to stop, breathe, and remind myself that I have the honor and privilege of casting a vote for the first woman President of the United States.

Happy Tuesday.

From our late afternoon walk on the trail, the walk that has to be moved up an hour now that it gets dark so early.

I cannot wait to vote tomorrow. We’re going early.

At the same time, I fear for this country. So much hatred, bigotry, racism, misogyny, sexism, and xenophobia has erupted during the course of this election, fueled by a candidate who is supremely unqualified for the Presidency and who will do and say anything to win.

Once Pandora’s box is opened, you can’t go back. What we’ve seen and heard has rocked the foundations upon which this democracy was built. There was an article in yesterday’s New York Times that addressed the way in which we are now viewed out there in the rest of our world.

It isn’t good.

From yesterday’s Washington Post  (in an article written by Greg Jaffe):

“After his speech, Obama spent a moment with J. J. Holmes, a 12-year-old boy with a severe case of cerebral palsy who had been pushed out of a Trump rally Saturday in Tampa…J.J. said that he had gone to the Saturday rally to protest Trump’s mocking of people who have disabilities. His mother, Alison Holmes, brought her son, who speaks only through a computer vocalization device. “The crowd started chanting U-S-A and pushing his wheel chair,” Holmes said…”We were put out by security, Mr. Trump kept saying ‘Get them out.'”

I wonder what Little Z would think of that?

Ever more sickening, ever more unbelievable.

Ever more despicable.

In my time on Twitter, I have caught more than a glimpse of those who live in the land of conspiracy theories. Any one of these theories – in fact, all  of them – are easily disproven with a simple Google search. Yet, these ‘believers’ choose to stay there and wallow in the muck of falsehoods and alt-right generated scenarios that fuel their anger and paranoia.

It boggles the mind – at least, my  mind.

Facts are a good thing. And there are any number of non-partisan fact-checking sites out there that can and do debunk this sort of thing. But the need for some to cling onto falsehoods in order to maintain their rage has been very much in evidence this year.

It’s impossible to reason with someone like that. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work. They’re living in an alternate universe.

I could write about what I’ve seen and felt during this election for a month of Sundays. It’s left me disillusioned and sickened and profoundly sad.

However, I can’t vote based on fear, though much of what I’ve seen leaves me fearful for the future of our country. I vote with love and hope. Not from a negative, but a positive.

We are battle scarred, all of us. It’s been long and exhausting and depressing. People aren’t sleeping. Stress is endemic. We are more divided than ever.

We need a break, but I fear we might not get one, as the animosity and resentment, calls of a ‘rigged’ election, and threats of an uprising are ever-present.

Do what you can in these last 24 hours. Then take a walk, hug a family member, remember the basic decency of most people, send out love, and, if you’re so inclined, pray.

Happy Monday.