The day after election day, I awoke with an ominous feeling...

[kentuck]

...which I have never been able to shake.

In my gut and in my heart, I knew that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Something had happened and it was going to be very, very tough for our nation to survive.

Donald Trump has acted just as I thought he would act - like a wannabe dictator. I thought we would be lucky if we made it six months. It is a stroke of luck that we have survived for nineteen months.

Robert Mueller has exhibited the patience of Job as he has investigated every nook and corner of Donald Trump and his associates, especially his Russian associates. As the recent book by Craig Unger, House of Trump, House of Putin, shows, in much detail, is that Trump has been doing business with the Russians since at least 1984. Unger reports that the Russians bought up five apartment suites for $6 million dollars in the Trump Tower in 1984.

The investigation continues. I suppose I don't have the patience of Job? I would like to see this case go to the Supreme Court, as soon as possible. We have to know whether or not our Judicial System is still working?

On top of seeing this case go to the Supreme Court, it would be preferable to see Mueller request that a Commission be created to further study this invasion by Russian cyber warriors, in my opinion.

This Commission would be created by Congress and would be delegated to continue the Mueller investigation to its conclusion. The Executive Branch would have no control of the Committee. It would be bi-partisan in members and independent in statute. It would only dissolve once a final report had been submitted to the whole Congress.

It's going to take a long time to fix this mess...

[roamer65]

1. The feeling is the impending death of the American republic.

[Achilleaze]

4. republicans too busy counting their fatcat tax breaks to give a shit about American security

republicans are betraying America with their submissive complacency.

[kentuck]

5. Well, that's one way to say it!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. And what are the chances that the Congress would do any of this?

Slim to none, or

ZERO.

Your ideas are excellent, but I don't see any of them happening.

[kentuck]

3. I know, Peggy...

...but it's all that I can do, at this time.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. Please forgive my disparaging remarks, my dear kentuck.

[kentuck]

7. :-)__-%

[NRaleighLiberal]

8. My wife and I felt it driving home from watching the returns at a friend's house.

We KNEW - right then and there - the election was stolen - hacked - and we were in a different dimension of reality in the US.

[kentuck]

9. That is the most difficult thing to try and understand...

...the alternate reality - a different dimension. How could they rationalize in such a way? Even if their stories never matched reality or simple facts, they could find a way to rationalize in their own minds to make it acceptable and "truthful". Not only was it delusional, it was deceitful delusion. They deceived themselves.

[Totally Tunsie]

10. Yup - I hit nauseous at 9:30 election night and have never recovered.

[2naSalit]

11. Same here...nt

[nancy1942]

13. Ditto.

[honest.abe]

23. Me too.

[Tumbulu]

32. Me too

And my best friend died over it, it broke his will to live. And my old fashioned normal fiscally responsible BIL had a stroke.

No, it’s really a huge deal.

[Boomerproud]

12. I don't honestly know whether we as a nation have reached the tipping point or already passed it

but watching Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, Rachel Maddow et al saying night after night "This is NOT NORMAL!!" hasn't changed a damn thing (I'm not blaming them). I have no answers any more.

[jeffgad]

14. The Day After

I have a selfie in my white shirt with my “I Voted” sticker that was taken on election day. The next day I fell from the roof. I woke up about a month later, and it wasn’t until around Christmas that I figured out Trump had won. I literally woke up to a new world. I have no memory of November-December 2016. Recovered from the smashed hip, broken face and TBI, but experiencing depression for the first time in my life. Don’t know why I posted, I guess the date rang a bell.

[3catwoman3]

17. I am so glad you survived.

And so sorry about what you had to wake up to.

[Blue_true]

15. I didn't awake because I never got to sleep. My throat was raw and my eyes were bloodshot. nt

[zentrum]

16. Same here.

It was a sense of heavy falling. The floor had just fallen out and there was only a kind of abyss.

[ZeroSomeBrains]

18. I remember that night well.

I went to bed shortly after hearing the numbers from florida michigan and Pennsylvania. I tossed and turned thinking of the supreme court and never slept. In some ways it has been worse than I imagined it could be but we at least still have each other and have to remain engaged to take the house and senate in november.

[Aristus]

20. Welcome to DU.

Thank you for sharing your story.

[ZeroSomeBrains]

24. Thanks a bunch!

[Aristus]

19. When California's electoral votes went to Hillary, and they still weren't enough to overcome

Trump's electoral lead (I kept thinking: "But she's killing it in the popular vote! She's killing it in the popular vote!), I fell into a kind of trance, rocking back and forth like a scared kid.

I barely slept that night. The next day, I didn't last longer than an hour at work, and told my boss I was going home for the rest of the day. I went home to Mrs. Aristus, who had the day off anyway, and we held each other for hours in a kind of stupefied daze...

[Raine1967]

22. This sounds much like Me and my partner.

I was bothered as hell that Virginia too so long to come through for Hillary.

and then everything fell apart around us.

Something felt very wrong that night.

[Raine1967]

21. I went to bed in disbelief. I woke up

ad before I got out of bed, I asked my husband in the room next to our bedroom, "is it still true?".

He said yes. We were wrecked. We could barely talk to each other for about 5 days it was so devastating.

This election result made 2000 between Gore and Bush fell like a walk in the park -- that one felt stolen, this one felt very very off. I was shook.

This election was not normal -- to be really honest it was more abnormal that Bush V Gore.

[triron]

25. Yep. I sensed something very disturbing had happened.

[Kath2]

26. I know.

My girlfriend and I watched the returns late in disbelief. When it was final she walked out on the porch to smoke. I told her she had to give me a cigarette. We went back in, hugged and cried. So awful.

[catbyte]

27. I didn't watch tv for a full month after 11/8/16. It was kept permanently tuned to

the classical music channel. The vile hacking of DU just made it worse. It was a full 6 months after the coup d'etat was complete (1/20/17) that I was able to watch any tv news at all. I'm still not feeling normal.

Something dark & dangerous happened on 11/8/16 and we are still in danger. I've been pissed off at elections before (beginning when I was 12 & Nixon was elected, lol), but I never felt a sense of evil & dread the way I felt when I woke up the morning of 11/9/16.

I don't think things will be fixed in my lifetime. I just hope there are younger, tenacious patriots out there who are willing to right the terrible wrongs that were committed on November 8, 2016, afterwards, and continue to this day.

[kentuck]

28. I feel like the Judicial and Executive have taken power from the Legislative

We need the Legislature (Congress) to take a stand for the people.

[Tumbulu]

33. I agree

And I mostly still listen to classical music.

[catbyte]

35. Me, too. I don't watch 1/10 of the tv I used to. And I don't miss it at all.

Baroque music is much better for my psyche these days.

[Awsi Dooger]

29. I gave up at 9 PM

All the tweets from a Florida elections expert were ominous. He was stunned, after being upbeat an hour earlier.

I'll never forget when he tweeted that Trump was pulling higher numbers than any Republican in 20 years in something like 48 Florida counties. They were all the rural counties.

That was game, set, match. It meant the trend would transfer elsewhere, to all the pivotal states.

I took one look at the New York Times online forecast of Michigan and realized it was hopeless.

The networks didn't catch up to reality for at least another half hour.

***

Trump has been much more of a lowlife than I ever imagined possible. I don't know how anyone could have predicted this level of lies and deceit. And I knew all about the Roy Cohn devotion yet I still didn't think this was possible.

The one aspect that has not surprised me is the lack of remedy. I refuse to watch Rachel Maddow and get caught up in false hope. I feel bad for all the posters here who have been suckered.

Our system simply isn't designed to cope with a president and party sharing this level of treachery, and fully in power.

[Hoyt]

30. Got sick shortly after 7PM when Kentucky votes came in and Clinton was not doing as well

as expected. Then, DU got hacked, so no words of wisdom or empathy.

It’s actually been much worse than expected. While it was clear trump is a callous racist/bigot, and his supporters are the worst in our society, I hoped he’d sort of rise to the occasion when he realized he was Prez. Chit no. As much as I despised george war bush, there were a few things that were a surprise — refused to go after immigrants despite pressure, and signing Medicare drug bill. Latter is not perfect, but it’s better than no coverage.

[ismnotwasm]

31. I went to bed early. I knew it was over

I’ve been pissed off ever since, and plan on staying that way.

[Garrett78]

34. I was deeply depressed for several weeks.

Now I'm just in a constant state of anger and disgust. Impatiently waiting for November 6.

[ecstatic]

36. Me too. nt

[The Genealogist]

37. That election night was one of the worst nights I'd had in years

I started drinking about 9:00 or so, I think. It was worse than a nightmare. I couldn't tear myself away from watching the numbers come in, either, as if the whole thing was going to reverse itself somehow. It was the same kind of feeling I've gotten when told someone close to me has died. I could barely function the next day. I think the thing that got me through the next few months was to focus on the fact that President Obama was still in office for the time being.

I too figured things would go much further south much more quickly than they have. I'd have guessed we'd been in at least one major war by this time.

[mnhtnbb]

38. I feared the fix was in weeks before the election

because holding Merrick Garland up made no sense otherwise.

I had tried to get my husband to return to a plan we'd made during Bushie boy years to have a small retirement home in a tropical place foreign country that we could use in winter, sell our house in US and have apartment or small condo here. If things went South with the election, then we'd have an escape hatch. Bonaire was our choice in 2015, it had been Panama in 2005. We went to Bonaire, made an offer on a place, and on the flight home my husband changed his mind. Refused to go through with it. When Trump actually got the nomination, I told him if he wins you have to at least agree that we move to Hawaii. Get as far away as possible from gun nuts, bigots, racists, and Trump supporters without leaving the country.The day after the election I started setting up our go look at Hawaii trip. About a week later I was ready to book the trip when I realized it would be Bonaire all over again. I asked him point blank and he said no he wasn't going to move.

There was something else at play going on with him, which I knew but he wouldn't acknowledge, and I realized we were stuck. I have never been so depressed. A year later I left him.

Still waiting on both personal issue of divorce due to required separation of one year before you can file for divorce in NC and political future of the country in November with election. If Dems don't at least take the House, this country's experiment with a republican form of government is dead. We will become a fascist state, I fear. I don't know whether I have the energy and patience to move abroad on my own at this stage of my life or whether I'll just withdraw into my own little world to do the best I can getting by for the rest of my life. It all hangs on the election in November.

[Vinca]

39. I knew it would be bad, but I had no idea it would be this bad.

Thanks for reminding me of the name of that book. I wanted to buy it and couldn't remember the title.

[pansypoo53219]

40. everybody needs to go find imperial caddy by joe queenan.

sure, it was about dan quayle, but the moron is as stupid. we need a rock star of a candidate in 2020. tho, the moron will kill the economy.

[Heartstrings]

41. Haven't had a decent nights sleep since that night....

Would HRC been better? YES! A thousand times YES!!!!!

Can we stop this merry go round? I want OFF!