<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@film_girl" class="u-url mention">@<span>film_girl</span></a></span> You can be angry over the election and you will get over that. The thing is the next 4 years will bring a constant stream of issues to be angry about. It won&#39;t really go away.</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mstdn.social/@noksucow" class="u-url mention">@<span>noksucow</span></a></span> I think it can be all those things. We need top to bottom reassessment. Which is basically what happened post 2004.</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://babka.social/@levjoy" class="u-url mention">@<span>levjoy</span></a></span> this this this. I’d like to think there are more that are. People we just didn’t do the work to reach. But you know what, that also might be a cope.</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@phaedral" class="u-url mention">@<span>phaedral</span></a></span> maybe we need to be better and smarter about how we work tho. Because this hasn’t worked. I’m not saying we need to do the autopsy now. I can’t event contemplate it at this point. But we have to reassess our tactics and our leaders if we ever want the work to produce positive results. And that starts by acknowledging that we lost. We lost. And there is no sugar-coating that. Our work was not good enough. Our work was rejected.</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@film_girl" class="u-url mention">@<span>film_girl</span></a></span> Yes, and also, W’s 2004 campaign was largely about hating a vulnerable minority (in that case, writing a ban on marriage equality into the Constitution). And that won him a landslide. Sends a message</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@film_girl" class="u-url mention">@<span>film_girl</span></a></span> <br />I noped out of a Teams meeting when a supervisor started their motivational speech by saying, “Whether your horse in the race won or did not win yesterday…”</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@film_girl" class="u-url mention">@<span>film_girl</span></a></span> Today, for me, feels much like the day, decades ago, when I realized all of democratic voting was a scam and that not one political party has MY BEST INTERESTS at heart. I am disabled and require $1,000 pair of glasses every few years. I live in Canada and have never received this money from the government. My mother had to pay for my glasses all my life.</p>

<p>In a lot of ways, today doesn’t feel like 2016 to me - it feels like 2004 (which was my first election). The despair and heartbreak I feel today feels like that. The anger too. 2016 was a system shock. But 2004, the electorate decidedly rejected the values I held dear in favor of a proven con man and cadre of cronies and criminals. And there is something much more painful about that reality. When you have to acknowledge your work and your values weren’t enough. And maybe your tactics were wrong.</p>

<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mastodon.social/@film_girl" class="u-url mention">@<span>film_girl</span></a></span> Goes both ways. If my coping mechanism is to offer warmth and reassurance and try to close ranks and build together, that&#39;s surely might as much as it&#39;s your right to wail and gnash your teeth.</p><p>The work is never enough, it was not enough before we got here and it will not be enough when we are gone, but we do it anyway. Sometimes we do it undismayed, sometimes we do it with our eyes streaming tears. But we don&#39;t quit.</p>