Well...

I know a lot of people are upset today. I'm one of them.

Some people are trying to understand how this happened--how a man who is a misogynistic pile of ignorance managed to win the White House.  I'm one of them.

I could point out that it is not often that this nation in modern times has let one political party have the White House for more than 8 years, and that the fluke in that matter was one George H.W. Bush, who likely won due to the seeming prosperity years of the man he'd been Vice-President for.

I could point out that there are many people in this nation who are sick of being told they are wrong, and most of them are white, male, and have an education that does not extend beyond the high school years.

I am not minimizing that there are lots of groups of people in this nation who have been and continue to be oppressed based upon how this country came into being and how the greater American culture has seen the world.

But I am saying that if you continue to tell people that they don't have a right to embrace their own history--good or bad--they are going to rebel. They are going to get angry. They are going to feel like they are not being heard. And they are going to do something about it.

So people got out and voted for a man who has no qualifications to be President because he told them that it was perfectly fine to be who they are. He told them that it's okay to be mistrustful of others, and being mistrustful of people is a common fear among all of us. He preyed upon their fears and their desire to feel better about themselves.

That sounds a lot like Germany, 1933 to me. For those of you who don't know, Adolf Hitler got to be Chancellor because the German people were sick of being oppressed as the result of the Treaty of Versailles. The strictures put upon the German people by said treaty were overkill, and these people were sick of being told that they were wrong simply for being themselves. Hitler was terrific at rhetoric and delivering it well, blaming the problems on a subset of people already living within Germany.

Sound somewhat familiar?

I hope I'm wrong. I hope that this is America, 1976, and we're just heading into four tough but survivable years. (I will point out that Jimmy Carter, one of the few genuinely decent men to hold the highest office in the land since the turn of the last century, got the office because he wanted to help people, honestly. I cannot be persuaded that this is why Trump wanted the Presidency.)

At the end of the day, my reality is fairly simple: I am a middle-aged female in a country now run by a man who thinks that, should he find me attractive (never have I been grateful for being overweight before), he can grab me in the nether regions and have his way with me.

If you think that's an extreme case, the pending litigations of rape and reports of inappropriate conduct against the man 49% of you elected president (Secretary Clinton won the popular vote, folks) might persuade you otherwise.

That tells me about his character. Trump is good at rhetoric. But he is a horrible, terrible human being who makes Bill Clinton (many of you may know I do not like that man) look like Mr. Rogers.

I am not part of a minority of race or ethnicity. But I am a woman.

And I feel a bit like I am now a person with fewer rights today than yesterday. And that more of those rights will be threatened in the next four years.

I did not agree with many of Hillary Clinton's policies. I'm not overly fond of her. But I also think that she is a better leader than Trump who is far less inclined to take slights personally. And now this man has the Pentagon to go shoot at people who slight against him.

We are a country divided. And reality is that we have been for years and years. This man will not unite the nation--in fact, I'm not sure anyone will. But somehow, we have to find a way to work together--something, ironically, that Hillary Clinton was famed for in the Senate, getting people to work together.

I know that it might ask for a great deal to get Leslie Jones and Bill O'Reilly to work together, but there is something that I am fairly certain we all agree upon in this nation: the future of our children and giving them a solid nation and a prosperous future.

If we can take anything from this, can we take the idea that education is the only way forward?