OK, the election is over.  I really can’t believe that I live in a land where there is such a thing as a President Trump.  But here we are, and here I am.

Almost from the day I started this blog, I have decried the voices of hate that (I thought) used the anonymity of the internet to express their bullying, angry, insulting selves.  They would express it on Yahoo comments, on YouTube comments, on the comments on your local online newspaper.  If there anything the internet taught me, it is that people are a lot more mean in their hearts than I ever imagined.

And now Trump has brought the meanness out in the open and legitimized it, to an extent that Rush Limbaugh could only have fantasized.  The meanness will no longer be confined to internet comments — the mean people are now unleashed to express their anger and hate in all sorts of public forums.  Trump has given them a free pass.

I fear what’s ahead, and I am not alone.

I admit that I have withdrawn from the political posts of my Facebook friends since the election.  I just can’t read any more about Trump’s children or Trump’s transition team or Trump’s lawsuits.  I have been done in by the events, by the zeitgeist, by the hate.

I watched the Charlie Rose/Jon Stewart video and, though I love Jon Stewart, I disagree with him that this nation, as populated, is the shining star of democracy he proclaims.  Hateful, selfish people don’t want democracy.  They want their way.  And they live here.  The Walking Dead of Democracy.

I will never support anyone who wants to deny their fellow travelers in this democracy their dignity, their right to observe their religion or lack of it, their right to live as the gender that they know themselves to be, their right to be free of harassment because of the color of their skin or the neighborhood they live in.   This more than anything is what is depressing about President Trump and his adherents.

It feels like the playground bullies have won.  I have to step away from the playground.