text: Bonus gratitude: Colorado citizens volunteered in record numbers to act as election judges in this election cycle, including many volunteers in the 16-35 age group. As citizens of a representative democracy, we will ever get the government we deserve by exercising our franchise in whatever way our consciouses dictate. Knowing so many Coloradans understand this fundamental truth makes my heart happy.
  I'm grateful that our country has reached a point where we will elect a BIPOC woman to the Office of the Vice President. When Kamala Harris took the stage to give her victory speech wearing a white suit, I wept with pride and joy at her accomplishment, and reflected with gratitude on all the women who paved the road she walks on.
  I'm grateful to live in a state whose population voted to enact a state-wide Paid Family and Medical Leave Insurance program to ensure Coloradans who experience personal or family medical issues will continue to receive a partial salary when they're off work. This program is expensive - .9% of a worker's wages, matched by their employers - but Coloradans passed it with a margin of almost 15%. This was a mandate on supporting the well-being of others, and I'm so grateful to live in a state that cares about such things.
  I'm grateful that in spite of the obstacles put before him and the lack of collaboration from the previous president, President-Elect Joe Biden will be sworn in on January 20th, 2021. He was not a perfect candidate by any stretch, but he was a smart and civil candidate, with the character needed to heal our great national divide. If I wasn't an atheist, I would pray for his success.
  I'm grateful for the vaccines that are becoming available for those in our population who are at the greatest risk. Science is an amazing thing, and vaccines are the single greatest achievement of humanity in the history of the world.
  As ever, I am grateful to the friends and family who lift me up when I stumble, catch me when I try to fall, look out for my physical and mental wellbeing, and can be counted upon to show in word and deed they are kind, considerate, generous, moral people of good character. I'm so lucky to have all of you in my life, now more than ever.
  I'm grateful that the dumpster fire of 2020 is over, and look with hope and optimism to the new year and a opportunity to do more and be more of the person I want to become, unencumbered by a deadly pandemic or the poison of the last election cycle.
  The Colorado Secretary of State certified Colorado's 2020 General Election results yesterday, and then published the statistics regarding how Coloradans turned out:
  If you're a visual learner, the SOS office also has a handy document with all kinds of charts and additional detail on the statistical values above.
  According to the WashPo, Colorado's voter turnout was fourth in the nation at 75.5%. Only Maine, Minnesota and Wisconsin turned out more voters as a share of the voting eligible populations. That's a record, but that still means 25% of eligible voters in Colorado didn't turn out to vote either via drop off ballot or in person. Boo! 25% of us don't give a damn! (Mandatory voting, anyone?)
  In my own county, the voter turnout was higher than the Colorado average. Douglas knows how to encourage citizens to vote, and then makes it easy for them to do so.*
  Unaffiliated voters had the largest number of votes cast, and we're also the largest percentage of active registered voters at 40.9%, 10+ points above both the Democrats (29.95%) or the Republicans (27.31%). People are tired of the two-party system here in Colorado, and I think this trend holds nationwide. This makes my heart happy.
  More women than men voted in the 2020 General Election, in every age category. Please don't tell me you need me to explain why this was the case.
  Younger people (18-34) represented 26.8% of the votes cast and the 25-34 age range returned more ballots than any other cohort. This also makes my heart happy. I'm sick to death of old, white, rich, CIS-gender, straight men having almost exclusive control over the decision-making process for our country.
  *NOTE: Colorado's drop off/mail in ballot program is considered the Gold Standard for this type of process. Not so coincidentally, it was first deployed in Douglas County under the leadership of County Clerk Merlin Klotz. After the new process was deployed, Douglas County ended up with the highest voter participation rates of any County in the nation. So the SOS decided that they needed to get them some of THAT, and therein lies history. Please note that Mr. Klotz is a Republican in a largely Republican county. Election integrity isn't a Republican thing or a Democratic thing, or an unaffiliated thing. It's a Democracy thing, so sit down and STFU about imaginary voter fraud. There is no evidence that it's true, all the cases have been tossed into the dumpster fire that is the tRump Presidency by responsible Judges, and the Loser's attempts to coerce election officials into disenfranchising their entire populations have fallen on deaf ears. IT'S NOT TRUE. And as the Georgia Secretary of State, an elected Republican official says, "Truth matters, especially around election administration." I remember a time when the Republican Party as a whole actually believed that, and I hope they throw tRump into the dustbin of history and return to their pre-Reagan intellectual roots. But leave the racism with tRump, please.
  You'd think by the title of this post I'll be talking about tRump and his pathetic refusal to admit his loss and proceed with the peaceful transfer of power to President-Elect Biden. You'd think that, but you'd be wrong. I'm past being shocked or even surprised by that misanthrope's behavior, and so will probably never write about it again. He lives for attention to stroke his ego and massive inferiority complex, so like Mary MacGregor in Rob Roy, "I will think on you no more."
  I read that approximately 300 counter-protesters showed up to the MAGA March on Saturday, and - surprise, surprise - violence ensued.
  Here's the deal, liberals. This "Million Man MAGA March" or whatever they called it consisted of tens of thousands of die-hard, incendiary, violent tRump acolytes. These were the true believers, the Proud Boys lunatics, the frothing at the mouth hero-worshiping cultists that consider tRump the second coming, the racist non-critical-thinking brain-washed followers, the believe anything he says enablers. There certainly wasn't a million of them, but the ones that were there were convinced the election was "rigged" and "stolen," lack of evidence to the contrary. They believe the lies and the spurious claims without question or analysis, and here's the thing: You will never change their minds, no matter what you do, no matter what evidence you present, no matter how many election legal challenges are thrown out of court, no matter what happens. You will never, ever change their minds. The most you can hope for is some publicity for your cause, and even that's a double-edged sword, as shown by the coverage of the altercations.
  Why, exactly, was it necessary to personally confront these people as they railed against reality? To rub in the fact that Biden will be our next President come January 20th? To try and force them to admit their hero is, in fact, a big fat loser? To gloat? What possible good would come of that strategy, especially if you incited violence?
  Here's the thing. If you think tRump was a classless, lying asshat of a President, and his supporters don't know how to act, why are you yourself acting in such a way that echoes his cult members' behavior?
  From where I sit, the time has come to try and rebuild. As I said in my post-election blog post, I have hope for a Biden presidency. I think bridging the division in our country is the one of the primary tasks of the next four years, and I think liberals have an obligation to lead in this. It's up to us to behave fairly, respectfully, and compromise with the loyal opposition. I'm not talking about the tRumpism cult of personality members - they will never try to find common ground with people they oppose. I'm talking about the individual citizens who voted for tRump for what they believe are economic reasons, or policy reasons, or single-issue voter reasons. I'm talking about the reasonable conservatives who held their noses and voted for tRump because they couldn't bear to vote for a Democrat. I'm talking about those who continue to be misled by tRump's lies, and may be convinced he was nothing but a grifting demagogue if presented with the evidence. Why are you deliberately antagonizing these people by inciting violence against people who are "on tRump's side" on national television?
  You're not helping the cause. You're hurting it. If you have ANY expectation of tRump voters accepting defeat graciously and moving on to focus on governance, then you have to be gracious winners.
  I have thoughts and feelings about the election because of course I do. It's been hard for me to describe my feelings in an articulate way, so as is my custom, I've come to HCDSM to write in order to clarify my thoughts and get a handle on my feelings. This is how I calm the bagful of cats that resides in my brain.
  Please note: I am not looking for a debate, or for trolls to come and inundate my space with their whataboutism and all lives matter obtuseness and her emails and conspiracy theories and other general fuckery. Questions or comments posed in good faith will be answered in the same way; shittiness in the guise of a question will be met by the Shovel of Doom.™
  When CNN called Pennsylvania for Biden/Harris, I cannot express my relief. It literally felt like I had dropped a weight I'd been carrying around for so long I'd forgotten it was there, and then I cried, more than once, in both relief and joy. And if I, a middle aged, CIS, straight, white woman who is a member of the 10% felt that way, I cannot even imagine how BIPOC felt. Well, actually I can, as expressed by the (normally) articulate and thoughtful Van Jones of CNN:
  I’ve worked in male dominated fields my entire life. And when Kamala Harris took the stage to introduce President-Elect Biden in her white suit, I wept. She's my age, and she's the first woman elected to the Office of the Vice President. Women still have so much work to do to achieve equity in this society, but she broke a pretty big glass ceiling, Nothing but respect, Madame Vice-President Elect.
  I am still registered as unaffiliated. There has been nothing in the last four years (or in this election cycle) that has convinced me to change my mind on this score. Just because I'm a liberal doesn't mean I'm a Democrat, and I have some serious issues with the way the DNC has constructed their platform and selected their candidates. I also have some issues with the current Speaker of the House, who decided it was better to deprive the American people of the relief they so desperately needed in the Time of Covid so she could score points against a President she hates. She failed in her duties to her constituents because of an emotional, partisan response, and that's just not okay. Get your shit together, Nancy - you lost some credibility with that move, and you'll have to work pretty hard to get it back.
  Speaking of losing credibility, after the last four years, I am absolutely furious with the GOP. I have voted for Republicans in the past, even after I left the party, but right now, that seems like a pipe dream. After the entire GOP tacitly accepted tRump's constant violations of the law, his racist policies, his hateful rhetoric, his bloody incompetence, I will never again vote for a Republican who was in office during tRump's administration unless there is documented proof that they showed some moral fortitude in trying to stop tRump's egregious behavior. A short list, to be sure. The list of Republican candidates I'll consider will get longer as time and attrition removes the cowards from office, but for now, fuck you, you line-towing, immoral, party first lickspittles. When push came to shove and the time came for you to prove that your constituents, the rule of law, and the concept of character is what mattered to you, you failed in the worst way imaginable. You are without honor and courage, and your oath to the ideals you swore to uphold have been suborned by your own ambition and greed. Fuck you. Character matters, and you proved, over and over again in the last four years, that your character is fundamentally flawed.
  I am shocked and saddened that the margin of the Biden/Harris win wasn't higher, but really - I shouldn't be. If the tRump presidency has shown us anything of value in the last four years, it's the flashlight it's shone on the deep, dark corners of American white supremacy. From a statistical, systemic perspective, there is only one way to interpret the data: white America as a group is racist AF, and white people who try to vote thoughtfully, who try to vote only after educating ourselves with reputable sources, who try to vote with empathy for the well-being of others, are far fewer than we'd like to believe. The data doesn't lie, and the bottom line really is that if you choose to vote for a mean-spirited, racist, bigoted bully, then you're supporting mean-spiritedness, racism, bigotry and bullying as cultural norms for our country. At the very least this constitutes passive racism in my mind. To the tune of 70 million Americans. Angels and ministers of grace, defend us.
  There is so much work to be done. The destruction of our historical and current system of white supremacy will probably take generations. But this is positive work; work that proactively makes our society better and more equitable; work that is rooted in love and empathy, and supports the well-being of all of our citizens.
  The anticipation and commitment to this work is invigorating and positive in a way that the work of the last four years wasn't. For the last four years I've written countless letters to my Congressional representative and Senators and I've made donation after donation to organizations and groups who support fairness and equity in public life. I've marched and I've railed. But that was work that felt like sticking my finger in the dike - I only wanted to stem the tide, to keep things from getting worse before an electoral solution could be found.
  The work of my lifetime will be incredibly difficult, and so, so worth it. After we decompress for a bit, we will start working on a plan to be more proactive in our contributions. We need to research how to be better allies to BIPOC communities, and then act on those findings. We need to help police our own cohort, and call out racism and white supremacy when we see it. No more "passes" based on age or region, no more remaining silent in order to keep the peace. I have benefitted from the white supremacy of our country every day of my life, whether I asked for it or not. I owe it to BIPOC communities to use some of that privilege to support the equity of those who have been denied what was freely given to me based solely on the color of my skin and my socioeconomic status.