So, just to confirm: politics ARE or ARE NOT allowed in the forum? So far on this thread we have references to "liberal crap", "deplorables", the evils of liberal education, and even the right-wing dog whistle term "cucked."
Here's my experience of Vietnam. I was a little kid. Before my mom met my step-father, he enlisted (was not drafted) and was a sergeant in the Marines. During that time he saw, did, and commanded others to do the most appalling acts of human atrocity. Because he himself was commanded to do them. He torched villages that had not been evacuated, shot women and children who were fleeing the U.S. soldiers on foot, used napalm, etc. etc. The rest of his life he struggled with deep suicidal depression, alcoholism, and inflicting abuse on others. He could not sustain healthy human relationships, and no PTSD counseling was ever offered to him, so he made the lives of everyone around him miserable. What a snowflake, right? And for what - to contribute to the deaths of around 2 million civilians in a failed war that achieved nothing. And people still say they would have been proud to fight in it.
And here's my experience of the psychological effects of the 2017 election. My mother is nearly 80, sharp as a tack and one of the strongest people I've ever known. Her life was not always easy, but she "pulled herself up by her bootstraps", got an education, a good job, and raised three kids mostly on her own. After the 2017 election she was profoundly depressed for two reasons. The first is that when she was younger my mother had been sexually assaulted a number of times, and her first sexual experience was being raped. So it was deeply upsetting to her that the country had just knowingly and willfully elected a man who bragged about grabbing women by their genitals. The President of the United States should be a role model, someone to make everyone in the country feel like he's on their side, and that he cares about them. For someone who was raped and sexually assaulted, Trump somehow did not quite fit the bill, and it felt to my mother as if a guy just like her abusers had been elected to lead the country. Before passing judgement on the women who were so upset that they needed counseling after the election, imagine for a second if your mother or daughter or wife had been raped and how they might feel about electing a President who made such remarks.
The second reason she was so upset is that her father (my grandfather) fought in World War II. He drove a tank, saw combat in Italy where he was forced to shoot an adolescent boy who was about to fire on him, and he helped to liberate concentration camps in Germany. He was a hero, and his medals and photos are stored in his old army trunk. He was also of Spanish origin - his family came to the U.S. in the 19th century, from Spain. His dark skin meant that he was constantly a victim of racial profiling and comments, and he was constantly called a beaner, a Mex etc. One of my mother's earliest memories is driving across country after my grandfather returned from the war in Europe. They stopped at a cafe' for dinner and were refused service. They were told, "We don't serve spics here." My grandfather who just came back from fighting for this country, couldn't get a meal because his skin was too dark. Another snowflake, huh? So when the country elects a man who makes the kinds of comments Trump makes about Hispanics, defends Arpaio, tries to cancel DACA etc., it feels to my mother like the country is in charge of the oppressor.
My grandfather and my mother are as American as any white Republican, but they have not been treated with the dignity, justice, and equality that America stands for and that should be our common rights.
