Today is a very, very depressing day. We all feel terrible. At least Dominica and I (and the kids) know that we are leaving the country before all of this takes place officially, but we are going to be embarking on a new degree of the “International Trump Apology Tour” when we head out for Europe again in January. If we thought that it was bad and embarrassing before, this is going to be so much worse. Now we have to apologize for the entire country. [Edit: In January we were out of the country for one entire hour before having someone confront us about the situation!]
Our entire day was pretty much taken up by political discussions, crying (not kidding) and trying to figure out what this all means for the real future and how it affects our life plans. I always felt that it was likely that Trump was going to win, however it happened, so this is not coming as a shock to me in the way that it seems to be to so many people around me who really did not believe that he could possibly win the election. So I am much more mentally and emotionally prepared for it all. This is going to be a rough four years, and I have no feeling that this will end at four years (or eight) and totally expect that in January we will have the final peaceful transition of power in American history. I truly believe that we just witnessed Gaius Julius crossing the Rubicon and this is the end of the republic in America. Not that that is all a bad thing, the Republican form has proven to be very, very bad and democracy clearly has not worked in a country of this size. But this is not how it should have been torn down.