My Response to the Election wasn't posted during the down time, so here it is now:

Since Tuesday I have run the gamut of emotions – shock, horror, disbelief, fear, anger, grief, and sadness. I am a 59 year old straight white male born in Chicago, yet I feel like a foreigner in my own country. I am having a very difficult time wrapping my mind around any reasonably informed adult of normal intelligence voting for a bigoted, misogynist demagogue so wholly unqualified and unfit to be President of the United States. Donald Trump is a sociopathological liar who took the already uncivil discourse of our national politics and dragged it down into a subterranean chamber of horrors from which any sane person should turn away in revulsion. He appealed to ignorance, bigotry, and the very worst impulses of the American people – and won.

I grieve for everyone who will be hurt by the grotesque fraud who will occupy the most powerful elected office on the planet. I grieve for our planet and all the living things upon it impacted by the degradation of ecosystems and climate change resulting from placing the avarice of fossil fuel extraction above the health of the environment which sustains life itself.

Part of me wants to turn completely away from politics, living what remains of my life as best I can without the anxiety and heartbreak of striving for economic and social justice only to see those hopes cruelly dashed upon the rocks of ignorance and hatred embraced by far too many in this once great land of ours.

Maybe, hopefully, the profound sadness I feel now will be replaced by a determined resolve to join with the millions of others who know this world can be made into a much better place for our children and the generations to come. Their future depends on us. Only love can, and must, conquer hate.