Stay or Leave? A Question for all of us

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stay

I’m going to stay right here, thank you very much. 

I woke up with such sorrow in my heart. And then in walks my husband with,”Where are your feet?”

I see a lot of posts about leaving, California succeeding, etc. People are bereft and for good reason–they are fearing change and the future.  When my husband asked me that I was lost—thinking ahead about my health insurance and that of our daughters–I have 13 years until medicare, they have lifetimes–preexisting conditions were reasons to refuse insurance before ACA. Maybe this will mean a dropping of prices across the board but prices will have to drop on every thing from bread to chemo to aspirin to travel to sheets for this to work. The pharmaceutical companies are thrilled with the election results.

So I ask

What are you going to do with all that energy that is coursing through your veins right now? Let it fester or use it for good?

I will not leave. This is my country too, and I will rise up to fight for what I believe in–access to health care, equality among everyone, a clear path to citizenship, my daughter’s reproductive health choices, love is love, planned parenthood, slowing down climate change.

If we leave, we leave it to an unknown future. If we stay we have a say in how it goes. Who knows–we have to look at the checks and balances that were put in place by the founding fathers. They are there for a reason. We have a congress and senate that did not stand 100% behind their candidate. They are supposed to answer to their constituents. We must trust that they are human beings, and being such, have opinions and knowledge.

The one thing we do know is our future president has no clue how Washington works. Quite honestly, Clinton may be the only presidential candidate in recent history who had an idea of that. Every president is surprised when they reach office how hard it is to get things done. Trump has never run anything where the fate of someone other than himself matters. He has not had a moment where what he does means life and death–truly life and death.  Hopefully that will give him pause and make him take stock. I know people wanted change–it is clear by our election. Maybe the combination of Trump and Congress will make some change that is good. Maybe they will figure out something that works better than ACA. Hopefully it will not get repealed across the board but will get adjusted and changed.  Hopefully the preexisting condition thing will not change.

The question remains, Who will be in his cabinet advising him on the multitude of things he knows nothing about. This is not an insult. It is merely fact that a man with no security clearance is about to learn how much he does not know. Stephen Colbert made a good point last night when he said that we aren’t supposed to pay this much attention for the next four years. The race for office should not be in our every day life that much. In truth, because of so many easy avenues for knowledge, i.e. the internet, we are very much aware of the journey to The White House that took place over the last two years. We need to get back to everyday life.

But I digress. We need to stay –we need to fight for what we believe in. We need to rally our troops to mail and call and show up at our representative’s offices and speak and write and make sure our voices are heard. The democratic process works and we are governed by the people for the people. So a group with different ideas than mine have been heard. This one is scary –it feels that much is threatened. But that is still no time to turn away. The fact that America has lasted this long is astonishing. Jefferson said something about a revolution every 25 years making a clean sweep and starting fresh. We haven’t had that.

This election divided the country. 150 years ago we fought a war with people and guns because we were divided. We are not those people anymore. We have a way to talk across political lines, a way to galvanize groups to make sure we are heard peacefully. We are grown ups –we can talk like grown ups –we can change things.

I know I need to really grow my vegies in my backyard. I know I need to create a budget and stick to it. I know we need to fire Melania’s speech writers and I know we need to stay centered and supportive of all our members of government and of our democratic process and make America “One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

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