What You Have Lost

I respect every citizen's right to choose who they will in an election. The purpose of a secret ballot is to ensure we can all choose who we want, without undue pressure from spouses, poll workers, the government or special interests.

I respect your right to choose. I do not respect your choice. And because you made that choice, Americans-who-voted-for-Trump, I can not respect you either. You have lost not only my respect, but a whole lot of other thin veils you've been using to hide the true-you.

You have lost the right to claim you're a "Christian." You opted for a man who has broken almost every one of the commandments. He has coveted (thus the 3 marriages, each with a mistress he took while married to the previous wife). He has disrespected women time and time again, loudly, proudly, and unrepentantly. I'm pretty sure his mother is a woman, and his wives, daughters, employees, colleagues. He shows no regard for women, including his mother, through his words and actions. He worships gold and wealth, the most false of idols. He has willingly and knowingly signed contracts then reneged on payment--cheating, stealing, and lying in one tidy package. Keep the sabbath? The man doesn't even attend church. Idolatry, blasphemy, theft? Check, check, check.

Until you can find the passages in the New Testament where Jesus said to throw out foreigners (oh, wait, he preached exactly the opposite!), to accumulate wealth, especially at the expense of others (uh-oh, again, your choice did the exact opposite), to belittle and berate the poor, the disabled, and anyone who is different...until you show me those passages, until you actually read and comprehend the words in the New Testament, you have lost the right to hide behind your cloak of "Christianity." You voted for a person who is the antithesis of everything you claim to "believe in."

Actions speak louder than words. What his actions show is clear. What your actions show is that your choice had nothing to do with faith, belief, morality, or Christian-values. It shows you've been duped into believing that "Republican" means "Christian." So you vote mindlessly for a candidate who represents all you claim to oppose. You chose hatred over love, greed over charity, racism over inclusion, and words over deeds. You have lost the right. Don't you DARE claim your Christianity to me. That only adds liar to your already clear actions showing what you are.

You've also lost the right to claim anything related to fiscal responsibility. You lost the right to claim any decision based on helping the economy when you selected a man whose wealth has come from running businesses into the ground, declaring bankruptcy and walking away from his financial obligations, scot-free, leaving his mess to the taxpayer and small businesses to suffer the damages. How will that make the country great again? By driving us into bankruptcy borrowing from his allies, Russia and China? Leaving us indebted to them and walking away after four years, so someone else can once again clean up his fiscal mess? So that we're obligated to countries we've claimed to oppose because of human rights violations, their form of government, their anti-Christian policies? Yes, sure. That's going to help the economy (that has slowly been recovering after 8 years of Bush putting two wars on a credit card that we've been paying off over the past 8 years under Obama--the fiscally responsible one who ignorant people blame for the mess the previous administration put us in.) 

If that's the reason you gave for your vote, as a way to justify that choice, I'm sorry, but you've lost the right to claim that you're a "fiscal conservative," or that you care about the economy at all. What your vote shows is that you don't care how or where the money comes from, just get it. Compromise our values, throw away integrity, borrow from China and Russia, use bankruptcy as your fiscal recovery plan for the country. If you think your vote was about the economy and you don't see the idiocy of electing a businessman whose repeated strategy for "success" is bankruptcy, then you're just not very bright. If you do see that, then it's clear your vote wasn't about fiscal responsibility or the economy, it was about your own hate and fear.

Those who claim they voted because of Benghazi? Please. Unless you also voted against both Bushes, W after the 13 embassy attacks killed 60 people under his watch and against Bush SR after the attacks during the Reagan administration when 5 embassy attacks killed 48 US citizens, you're a liar and a hypocrite. If you don't see the hypocrisy, you're just stupid. What your vote clearly tells the world, is that you latched onto any excuse you could to cling to your party, to find a way to justify an unjustifiable decision. Whether you needed that justification to rationalize your misogyny or your sheepish obedience to party, or to justify your racist opposition to anything associated with the Obama administration, who knows? Who cares. Unless you were equally mortified, belligerent, and actively opposed to those in power in the previous, more egregious instances of attacks and deaths at embassies, we can all see you're just grasping at straws. You didn't vote against Hillary because of Benghazi. You voted against her because you embraced the GOP's brand of hatred. You voted for exclusion and for war.

If you claim your vote was in the interest of national security because of Hillary's emails, as above, unless you voted against the George W Bush administration for using private email servers, unless you were outraged by that, and by Rumsfeld and Chaney's blatant lies to Congress and the American people, just stop. You're again grasping at straws to justify your misogyny, hypocrisy, and hate. You're blindly following your party dogma, against common sense, critical thinking, and mountains of evidence.

If you claim to be "pro-life," there's just no sane or reasonable way to support the GOP platform that condemns children to hunger, disease, poverty, and a poor education to lock them into a continuing cycle of poverty. Face it: you're pro-pregnancy, and after that, you're pro-punishment and suffering for children and women. Unless you support expanding and improving affordable health care, easy and inexpensive access to contraception, more school-lunch programs, welfare, public education, then you aren't pro-life. You're pro-pregnancy, pro-punishment, anti-woman and anti-child. If you are truly pro-life, you won't  have an abortion yourself. You'll teach your sons to respect women and not have unprotected sex. You'll teach your daughters about how their bodies actually work--using biological facts (no, we can't just "shut that down.") For the many, many "friends" and family members who I know had or paid for their girlfriends' abortions and are now vehemently "pro-life," you're despicable human beings. You got yours. You were able to move on and have a better life, marry the person you're with now, have the children you have now BECAUSE you had the right and opportunity to take control of your body and your future. And now that you've used that right, you don't want anyone to have it. (And no, I won't tell anyone your secret, but just know, people know what a hypocrite you are. Just don't preach your pro-life nonsense to me.) 

Please, for the love of God and country, those of you who voted for Trump, stop making weak excuses and rationalizing what you did. I know it hurts to come face-to-face with the truth, but all the evidence is there. The rest of the world sees it. Your fellow Americans see it. Your vote tells us all we need to know about you. You no longer have the right to claim morality, Christianity, responsibility, or common sense. You have embraced hate, ignorance, and fear. I am embarrassed for you and ashamed of what you've made of our country. I am sorry for you. And I will never again respect you.