Christiane,
As your father, I am writing to you to tell you how sad I am at the result of this election. I am further dismayed that you influenced your mother to vote for a man that has no business being president of this once great country. We obviously have different views of what makes a country great, so when you posted that now America will become great again, I ask you when is that period where you believe it was great? The way I see it, it was perhaps back to the ‘50s when Donald Trump stated that he wished we were in the good old days when you could punch some protestor in the mouth and get away with it - when white men ruled and blacks and others were disenfranchised -when disabled Americans weren’t allowed to go to school until Hillary Clinton got them included in the education system - when McCarthyism ruined thousands of lives with false claims of the spread of communism by simply knowing someone who had attended a communist party meeting and causing many fine people to have their lives ruined by innuendo and association with those ‘good’ people that your mother re-posted on Facebook in her brilliantly crafted coverup for bad decisions in her life.
The ‘50s were a great time for white America, but that is not our country now! That’s why Mr. Trump didn’t win the popular vote. He has no mandate and there are already protests across the country in major cities, even in the rainy weather that was NYC several nights ago. The man is a snake oil salesman, as he will never deliver on over half of his campaign pledges and promises. From ‘lock her up’ chants about Hillary Clinton, she has become an honored public servant for her years of service. That almost sounds presidential, but if he picks that pithy Mayor Giuliani as his head of the Justice Department, will he go after her for the numerous crimes they claimed she committed and got away with? In America, I thought you could only be tried once, but I guess she has yet to be tried - after multiple investigations failed to indict her. She has been smeared by the right for decades and it worked. When the 'great' Ronald Reagan was President, under his watch 241 Marines were killed in Lebanon, yet Democrats didn’t blame him, but four people died in Benghazi and the furor never has ended by the hypocrites whose memory has failed them (old white men)!
I believe Donald Trump’s ideas for America are dangerous and most of them will never come to pass - that is said with the full realization that he has a better chance of passing all of his agendas with all branches of government under his power. The wall will never be built - Congress will never authorize funds for it and Mexico will never pay for it, so unless he decides to build it himself, it ain’t getting done. How does that make all of you Trump voters feel? Will he deport 12 million largely Latinos? NO! Watch how that promise fizzles. Will he bring back coal? NEVER! Coal is about all those people who voted for him will get in their Christmas stockings for the next four years. Any intelligent observer knows that coal has been replaced by the results of fracking. Will he repeal ‘Obama’ care - probably. That is the worst move he could make for those millions of Americans who have healthcare as a result of that law, including your sister Dana and your brother Phil. Great of you to vote for someone who will make them no longer have healthcare. That is probably the worst result of your vote for this man. Whatever they try to replace it with, will likely give back to the insurance companies the right to not cover previous health conditions and once again impose limits on what those insurance companies will pay for, unlike what Obama care provides for. Phil will never be covered for his epilepsy. Why is Obama care not working? Because the Republican states did not bother to implement it, but in those states where Democrats were able to properly provide the infrastructure for it to succeed, it is working. So, to claim it was a failure, is just the self-fulfilling result of those who didn’t want it to succeed in the first place. As for the Supreme Court, it’s a travesty that President Obama didn’t get to make that final seat one of his most middle of the road picks. Now we will be stuck with that awful decision of Citizens United that keeps dark money in politics. You must think that’s a good thing, because that’s what you voted for. Finally, he claimed in his campaign he would get rid of the Common Core and his son advocated for choice in education (code word for charter schools). The Common Core is something Mr. Trump has no idea of the merits of and his position was mainly to offset Jeb Bush’s former advocacy of it, however, his son’s comments were an assault on public education. The main mandate of charter schools is to make money, so that alone means students are not considered first. Teachers are teaching out of their license areas and charter schools cherry pick their students to obtain their supposed higher education results - no ESL learners or Special Ed students are included, as that requires multiple regulations to be followed, including two or more teachers in a classroom, which is too expensive to take on if your primary objective is to make money. It will be the death knell of public education, as the meager funds left over will not be enough to pay for educating the most expensive students who need the most resources. It will be a dark day for American education when they run the show.
As for the things that need to be done, let’s hope that at least the infrastructure of this country, which is falling apart for too long because of the do-nothing Congress, will at last be taken care of. That will not be Trump’s idea (Obama could not get his ideas approved by that least productive Congress in history), but if he can get it done, that’s one thing I look forward to. There is one other position which even I, who agreed with President Obama on almost everything, am grateful that Donald Trump is against - the TPP trade deal. Note that most Republicans were for that and voted in favor of it - including his running mate Mike Pence. My problem with it is its hidden contents that nobody has ever talked about when Obama claims that those who oppose him have never provided a reasonable argument against it. Even Donald Trump has never articulated this reason for being against it. It’s the provision that allows foreign corporations to sue the United States if they feel our laws are obstructing their ability to compete in this country. Their case will be heard by an international tribunal that will not consider our laws when they rule in favor of these corporations and basically destroy the sovereignty of the United States in the process. That reason alone is why it should never become law.
Speaking of Mike Pence, if anything should happen to Mr. Trump while he is in office, this out of the mainstream theorist will be in charge of this country. Have you any idea what some of his loony tunes ideas include? He believes in conversion therapy to try to get gays to conform to his version of sexuality. He has stated [a policy that anyone with HIV should undergo this therapy to get them to change their behavior before they get any medication for their illness! This is a discredited and potentially harmful form of anti-gay therapy. In March, Pence signed a bill into law requiring burial or cremation for aborted fetuses. Pence signed a 2015 bill permitting Indiana business owners to cite religious beliefs as a reason to refuse service to gay and lesbian customers. During his 12 years as a congressman, Pence voted against nearly every piece of environmental legislation. Pence voted to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases. Pence voted for opening the Atlantic up to offshore oil drilling. Pence wrote an op-ed arguing that "smoking doesn't kill.” Let’s hope Donald Trump lives out his term!
I fear for the future of this country - especially the gutting of the EPA and ignoring of the impending dangers of climate change, the stacking of the Supreme Court for decades into the future, the loss of the possibility of reasonable policies of providing free tuition for city and state public universities and even reducing of interest rates for those saddled with onerous student loan debt, plus that godforsaken pipeline that will probably now run through middle America and represent a threat to not only the environment, but especially the drinking water for those who voted for the man who will be responsible for poisoning their water when the pipeline leaks, which eventually will be the story of his presidency. I hope that I am wrong and that there will not be a revolution in the streets by the majority of Americans who did not vote for this amateur (apprentice). I will wait and see how the worst days of democracy unfold in the next four years. Time will tell who voted for change that helped all of America and not just the Trump family and the white tribe of Americans! Just remember, those ‘great’ days of the ‘50s were followed by the even greater decade of the ‘60s! Those are the thoughts of your Father, who as an educator of high school students has failed to educate you, his daughter.