“When there’s no way out, you just follow the way in front of you”
-Stephen Mitchell
11/8/16- the day reality died. The day my future died. The day when logic succumbed to emotion. People will say that Clinton was a weak and scandalous candidate, but that honor belongs to our new president Trump. Yes, Our president; I will not tit for tat and further erode our democracy. He has 75 outstanding legal proceedings including the veterans he conned with Trump University. Others might say Bernie would have saved us, but he was an alternate path to the same destruction.
Trump won because the digital age is not grounded in our world. Social Media provides us with a snow white mirror to reaffirm our beliefs. Even if the factories come back, it will be at Chinese wages. Less regulation is less protection for us- the laborer. When I graduated during the previous recession, I knew it would permanently impact my lifetime earnings with a 10% decrease. Now 5 years into my first ten in the workforce: the years which define future earnings. I am faced with the fact, I may not have work and will never achieve the middle class of my parents.
Self pity is not attractive, but it is a good vehicle for self reflection. How have my own choices brought this day. I live in a major metropolitan area like many of my generation. Attempting to make a living through entertainment like many others as well. But what good is fun if we have juries falling under the law and order effect and a reality star in chief. We can love “Unreal” but do we do anything to change its inspiration. There is no such thing as a harmless guilty pleasure. How we are is who we are.
We need to not call but be the better angels of our nature. Return to reality and remember the world beyond the screen. A place of terror but also of sublime wonder.
Hope is an easy word to say and in my despair I put my faith in the Lord. I am blessed to live in the time of Francis. Today, I think of something he said this summer while visiting Poland. “Dear young people, we didn’t come into this world to vegetate, to take it easy, to make our lives a comfortable sofa to fall asleep on. No we came into this world for another reason to make our mark”. It is time for us those who believe in our country and the values for which it stands to make our mark.
-E.C. Fiori
The Radical Centrists 