Look. I get things done. That’s what I do. It really is pissing me off I have to take the time out of my busy, busy day to set you guys straight. You need to fall in line behind me. That’s it. I’m giving you the opportunity to have everything you have ever wanted from a President, and you’re acting all butt hurt every time I tell the truth. Stop it. America has spoken. They like what I have to say and we’re going to give it to them. They want America to be great again. So be great. Man up. Like me.

Enough with the politically correct. We’re done. I thought I was clear. Political correctness is over. It’s lame. We aren’t doing it. And really, who cares about minorities? They’re minorities! We win the election with the majority, not the minority. Minorities don’t matter. Do the math.  We’re the majority. This country, which is great, was founded by great white men like me. Movers and shakers. Guys who loved the game. And I run the biggest game in town. I run AC. I run Vegas. I run New York. Come January I run DC. I run the world. I am the game, the game is me, and we’re playing it my way from now on.

So stop it. Every woman who gets their panties in a bunch over something I say is not going to ruin the election for us. Everybody knows that women are great. But they raise children or they’re hot. That’s a woman’s value. Let’s cut the crap. No one is going to listen to any woman who is not hot. Stupid Hilary is not hot. Which is great for us. Fantastic. Most people in this country automatically will disqualify anything she says because she’s not hot.

Black people are ok if they shut up about being black. I know they’re black, ok? Again, irrelevant.  Some black guy who gets pissed off at me is not going to ruin the election. Actually it’s great. When you hear a black guy be angry, everyone who counts knows he’s a thug. That’s actually a win win for us. The more angry black guys, the better I’ll do in the polls. Guarantee you.

Speaking of angry black guys, that smartass in the Oval Office makes me sick. Am I not saying what all of you have been saying for the past 8 years? What an arrogant prick. Anyway. His time is over. The one thing you guys have done right is block his Supreme Court nomination. Way to go. Fuck him.

These LGBT people, or whatever letters they are. Not bad people.  I love lesbians. Gays are good interior decorators. I had a great one do my apartment. Otherwise yawn. They’re really not that many of them. Not a problem.

Don’t even get me started on these Muslims. I can’t believe you guys didn’t have my back with that tool at the DNC. This really, really upsets me. His son…and please. Let’s be real. That bitch found the one Muslim soldier hero in the whole country. There can’t be many of them. Anyway, his son dies in Iraq 12 years ago and he tears me apart. And instead of you guys backing me up, and telling people I have read the Constitution, everyone is all over me. The wife was just standing there. How am I supposed to know she can talk? We have all agreed, right? We have agreed these Muslims are the problem. That’s how we win the election. If you act all sensitive to Muslims, how are we supposed to get anything accomplished? This is not brain surgery. Everyone knows Muslims are disgusting, vile people. We don’t need them here. My point is this. Stay on point.  Muslims are bad. Simple. Other than Saudis they can just go blow themselves up in the desert. We need the Saudis. Except for that idiot Prince Whathisname who was mouthing off to me the other day. We need their oil. Fine. But we don’t need to be nice to most of them. So stop it. Who cares? Americans don’t want us to be nice to Muslims! Listen to Americans. Do your job.

Speaking of jobs. Quit worrying about offending the Mexicans. Alright? Again. Nobody cares. I know Mexicans, believe me. Disgusting. You forget how many of these people I’ve got working for me. Newsflash. They can’t vote anyway. This is a non-issue. We are going to build that wall. I’m not kidding about that. Then we’re going to hire real Americans to patrol the wall with big guns.  It’ll be great. People will love it. Between the wall and the patrolling we’ll create all these new jobs. It’s going to be beautiful.

One last thing. This Putin stuff. Putin is a very smart man. He knows how to get things done. He takes care of haters. And I’m going to take care of haters. I’m writing an executive order to make hating a crime as soon as I’m in office. The Presidency needs to be respected. Somebody needs to get on this issue. Make it a part of the Patriot Act. Do it.

All you guys have to do is back me up. Again. Just do your job. I am your wet dream. I am everything you have ever wanted. But you need to fall in line. I don’t like it when people make me look bad. It’s unprofessional. Anyone who doesn’t fall in line now is going to find themselves kicked straight out of DC this January. I guarantee you. Quit apologizing for who you are. We’re great.

 

According to Miriam Webster, the simple definition of the word progressive means “moving forward.” I for one find this highly ironic, as the #BernieorBust movement seems absolutely incapable of doing so.

I don’t even know why I’m bothering to write this. According to my friends on social media who are part of the #BernieorBust movement, I am one or all of the following: stupid, lazy, an ostritch, Republican, part of the problem, Fascist, a traitor…all because I am now willing to vote for HRC.

Fine. Who cares. If you are so myopic you must think of me this way, there’s not a whole lot I can say to change your mind.

But I am going to state, as clearly as possible, why, after voting for Sanders in the New York primary, I am now willing to put my full support behind HRC.

As a progressive, I think I am responsible not just for voting for the candidate who best represents my values, but for the values of all of us that live together in this country. The Republican ticket, with the new edition of Pence as Veep, is unconcerned with protecting the rights of African Americans, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, and women. Actually unconcerned is charitable. As a woman I feel like a campaign is being waged against me.

There is a huge difference between HRC and Trump.  HRC is not going to nominate Supreme Court Justices who are at war with minorities and women. It’s unbelievable to me that I have to state the obvious. I have read posts of Sanders supporters who have scoffed at the idea of the Supreme Court being a worthwhile reason to vote for her.  I do not understand how anyone could ridicule a vacancy on the Supreme Court. These are the people who will make laws that will effect generations of people in the future. How is it possible that your heads are that far up your collectives asses? And yet they are.

I recently watched the documentary “Trapped”, about the TRAP laws recently overturned by the Supreme Court (thank you very much) which were designed to prevent women from their legal right to abortion. If the vote had gone 4-4 instead of 5-3, the laws would have held.

In one segment, a doctor was in tears because she could not provide an abortion to a 13-year old rape victim due to TRAP laws.

Really, I could care less whether or not you vote your conscience.  It is unimportant to me that you feel good about your vote. When I cast my vote, I cast it not just for myself, but for that 13-year old girl who is too young to have a voice. I owe her. I also cast my vote for my LGBTQ friends.

I live in the real world, not the world as I think it should be.  Bernie Sanders and/or Jill Stein are not going to win the general election.  And for the faction of you who insist upon saying, “We TOLD you that if you didn’t nominate Bernie we’d leave the Democratic Party, and now you’re getting Trump, which is what you deserve!” Don’t tell me. Tell the little girl who was raped and had to carry a baby to term against her will why you are willing to let the future of the Supreme Court be handed over to a reality TV star whose vice-president is the single greatest political foe of Planned Parenthood in this country. I’m sure she will appreciate your voting with a clear conscience as more important than the outright torture she had to endure at the hands of right-wing conservatism.

I’m proud to have voted for Bernie. I think his influence on the Democratic Party was sorely needed, and he best represented my beliefs. I think his, and our, work will continue.

I am not willing, however, to throw the baby out with the bathwater, or cut off my nose to spite my face.  I’m moving forward. So is Bernie. For those of you who cannot, and who insist upon calling me every pejorative name in the book, I’ll say this. When you call yourselves progressives, I say bullshit. I find your petulance insufferable.

In 1983, a jury found that the man who had raped me in a bathroom (while I was passed out in the throes of alcohol poisoning) guilty. Of fornification. In the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1983 it was illegal to have sex if you were unmarried. So he was legally determined to be a fornicator, not a rapist. I did wonder at the time why I wasn’t charged with fornification also if all that had happened was consensual, albeit illegal, sex. Then I watched as the judge declared that the fine for the Fornicator would be $100. His uncle reached into his pocket, pulled out the money, and victoriously slapped it on the table.

I have to tell you.  It was a very bad moment in my life.

I think of my seventeen-year old self sometimes with a sense of detached wonder. How on earth did I press on without the tools available today? The term “date rape” was not even in the vernacular.  DNA testing, which would have helped me a lot (he denied touching me until literally the day of the trial) wasn’t available. I was given many, many dubious glances, by the cops, prosecutor, family members, friends, let’s just say, everyone, because I was drunk. I was drunk. How dare I say I was raped.  Outrageous. My father, who I know would have happily put a bullet into the head of the Fornicator, had been dead for two years. My fifteen-year old brother did offer to beat the guy to death. As I write this I am moved by the courage of children. Mine and my little brother’s.

I cannot say I didn’t have any support. I did. It was support with reservation, though. It was “Well if you have to do this…”. But I carried on, because I knew The Fornicator would strike again and I thought it was my responsibility to stop him.

Oh boy.

Years later, a trained professional once told me that people who are rape survivors are not necessarily the best people to change rape culture. Because (and this is very true in my case) the amount of anguish that seeps up from my unconscious mind every time I rehash what happened to me is so overwhelming it’s life threatening. Sadly this is not hyperbole. Other people, this therapist told me, other people have to make the changes. People who are not so damaged by it.

Ok. Well. It’s thirty-three years laters, folks. And what happened recently regarding the sentencing of the Stanford rapist illustrates to me that not much has changed at all, really, since the uncle of the Fornicator paid the $100 fine. A member of the machine which is our judicial system said, “Oh. Poor rapist.” So the victim of the Stanford rapist was failed and here I am, failed again. Not to mention the millions of other women who were failed. Furthermore, after reading her letter, I am struck that the trauma of a rape trial is still as damaging as it was thirty-three years ago. Something is so wrong when the trial of a perpetrator can be more damaging to the victim than the crime itself. I cannot speak for anyone else, but this was true in my case. I was still me before the trial. The trial changed me in ways that thus far seem to be irreversible. When you are on a witness stand for three and a half hours and a defense attorney calls your rapist your “lover of the moment” (oh yes he did) over and over, and the law requires you to sit there and take it, believe me.  You change.

I changed. Rape culture, although better now than in 1983, hasn’t changed enough. Although one thing I will say is different now is that according to social media, many of you are not dubious, you are outraged.  You share posts! You sign online petitions! You Tweet!

I am not moved by your outrage. Not at all. I just feel plain old rage. Because although there are many differences between 1983 and 2016, the END RESULT IS THE SAME. The Fornicator was a white college boy and so was the Stanford rapist. They seem to still be exempt from appropriate sentencing. I would prefer that you would actually take action to change legislation. Which is a little more involved than Tweeting and bitching about it at Starbucks.

Effective change is not an online petition to remove a single judge. One judge ain’t the problem. The judicial process is a delicate machine. We cannot rely on this process as it is because it involves human discretion. Because we live in a rape culture, if one part of the machine…a cop, a lawyer, a prosecutor, a juror, a judge…just one of them thinks “Poor Rapist” the machine breaks down and you get a sentence in 2016 that is so similar to one in 1983 that someone like me has to write a blog post about it when what I should be doing is staying off social media to prevent my PTSD from reactivating and ruining my life once again.

Take your outrage. Do some research about sentencing in your state. Call your legislator. Write an email. Demand mandatory sentencing without parole for all rapists. If your lawmaker does not change the law, take action to shut this country down until the law changes. Mandatory sentencing worked well for New York State when they made a law that read if you are convicted of illegal handgun possession you will spend a year without parole in prison. Now. If only rape would be taken that seriously in every state.

How long should a mandatory sentence be? Here’s a thought or two. One of the most painful things to me as I read the letter the victim wrote to the Stanford rapist was the palpable intent that woman had to make him understand what he had done.  How it affected her. And I found myself thinking, “He doesn’t care and he never will.” I also thought how this is just the tip of the iceberg.  She has the rest of her life to live with this. The isolation that it brings on cannot be overstated. From my experience, I will tell you that surviving a rape and trial is rewarded with a life sentence of isolation. You are damned if you talk about it and you are damned if you don’t. Victims are sentenced to life. Rapists do not care about that. So they need a deterrent.

I want rape to stop. Lock the door and throw away the key.

I know. It’s a little harsh. Poor rapist.