Venting about the U.S. Presidential election

Photo from my Instagram Story last night:  My Jeep at the polls

America voted yesterday.  Despite Hillary Clinton winning more popular votes, Donald Trump won the electoral college... And on January 20, 2017, Trump will be inaugurated as our next President of the United States.

Photo credit: https://psmag.com/trump-vs-clinton-fighting-the-national-debt-ef127b9f5be6#.icgwa3p49

While I won't explicitly share on Garth's Blog how I voted, it's easy math: I voted for the Presidential candidate whom I thought had the best chance of stopping the LEAST MORAL/ MOST UNQUALIFIED candidate from winning (though none of the major candidates could claim much of a moral high ground).


Specifically, my conscience wouldn't allow me to vote for a man who...

...Is endorsed by the KKK, degrades women and graphically boasts about sexually assault, makes fun of disabled people, categorizes Mexicans as drug dealers and rapists, pushes for a ban on Muslims, racially stereotypes POCs and inner city residents interchangeably, threatens to abolish relationships with our international allies, disregards the validity of the democratic voting process/ peaceful transfer of Presidential power, changes his position on abortion out of political convenience, wants to deport every undocumented alien without offering any hope for a path to citizenship, cited "Eye for an eye" as a favorite Bible verse, and doesn't even read books.

Note: I have sources for each of the above.  But the list goes on and on.

Continued below, after a couple of my tweets...

Scripture was quoted by both Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine in their concession speeches.

Trump's Scripture quote?  "Eye for an eye."

— Garth Hamilton (@garth_hamilton) November 9, 2016

@kathleenRose70 Ha! Funny that the only Scripture which Trump could quote was the verse Jesus refuted.

— Garth Hamilton (@garth_hamilton) November 9, 2016

For me personally, last night seemed like a nightmare that I couldn't wake up from (or fall asleep to escape). I was shocked, discouraged, and depressed as the results of each state's votes were gradually reported live by the equally stunned cable news anchors. I wept for this country. I barely slept. And I continued to feel ill today, throughout my work shift at Delta Airlines.

Photo from my Instagram Story:  This morning's Delta breakroom was a mix of tears and cheers.

How could this have happened? My own loved ones may be direly affected by Trump's worldview and proposed policies. Woman and minorities may continue to be dismissed as second class citizens. And the United States may cut ourselves off from the nations that we should be reaching out to in cooperation for ending war, genocide, human trafficking, environmental neglect, hunger, and poverty.


Yet I do not look down upon nor judge any of my family and friends who voted differently than I did. We are all Americans.  Countless veterans have fought and died for our liberties, including choosing who will represent us in government.  And I am thankful for these freedoms.

Tonight in my youth group teaching, I challenged my students to support candidates whose lives look the most like Jesus Christ (Without even hinting about which Presidential candidate I voted for last night). I will be lifting up President-elect Trump in my prayers. I have hope for the future of this country, and for our world. And I am encouraged by the assurance that God still reigns on His throne.

Regardless of any election results, love and peace will ultimately win!

Twitterfied (Updated 11/29)

Twitter was just begging me to sign up last week to track the final day of the Presidential elections. After years of Twitter mockery, I finally caved in. My shiny new Twitter handle is @garth_hamilton.  Follow me at will.

Curious to read each candidate's tweets to their supporters on election night, I followed both President Obama and Mitt Romney. Incidentally, he with the most tweets won the election.  More power to him.

More interesting to me is the multitude of voices crying out to be heard during each Twitter millisecond. Each tweet, retweet, and reply is trying to find an audience. We have so much to say, but much of it ironically gets set adrift in a sea of selfishness and self-importance.

One of my early tweets about the new James Bond film was "favorited" by a TV personality that I really like but was not even following, and then he retweeted it to all 39,800+ (!) of his followers. Of course, some of those 39,800+ followers favorited my tweet and retweeted it to their followers as well.

As a new Twitterer, my brief but unremarkable flash of fame in the Twitterverse was unexpected and cool. Yet it did not yield a single meaningful human interaction.

Maybe that's not the point of Twitter.  I'm told it's about keeping up with current events. I'm told it's about following people you admire. Best case scenario: it's about conversation.

But in the end, perhaps we each just want to be heard.  With everyone talking, is anyone listening?

Update 11/28/12: 

Since signing up for Twitter, I've had some good times (making friends, posting concert pics from Winter Jam, getting real time score updates from my favorite sports teams) and bad times (having to change my password again after my account was hacked TWICE: on Thanksgiving, and then again yesterday).  I try to not tweet too often.

Update 11/29/12:

After that last update, I've now been hacked a 3rd time in the past week.  Google informed me that hackers attempted to access my Gmail account yesterday morning from Israel, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and Hungary.  Aside from the mass PlayStation Network hack of 2011, I've never been hacked before.  Are my nonsense passwords really that guessable?

Coming this extended Thanksgiving weekend on BlogSpot...

Baby Lena makes her debut TV appearance,

and the guys go backpacking into the Mt Hood Wilderness!