What I can't understand is why Hilary is so unpopular. I really like her. From what I saw (and I watched every debate), she appeared intelligent, well-prepared, and unflappable. I agreed with many of her policies. (I'm Canadian, but I would have voted for her even had she been running against a more appealing candidate). Yet America chose the rude, easily-provoked, bigoted demagogue with a grade-four vocabulary and a tendency to turn everything into a show. He gets what he wants by bullying.

I cheered when Michelle Obama said "When they go low, we go high".

I guess low wins.

Aziraphale, she won the popular vote. More people voted for her than for him. But he won the electoral vote. I heard it said yesterday that we don't have a national election, we have 50 state elections.

This is the first time I've cried over an election result.

And I am very, very happy I'm not on facebook right now.

I'm finding some weird solace on FB in some ways, but in others it's definitely marinating me in collective grief, and it's a double-edged sword.

I have to admit Lynn's comment threw me. (ETA I just now see she delet d her original statement and wrote "Sorry.")

I also really came to really like Hillary, aziraphale.

Nancy, I agree about the collective grief. I'm sitting on the shuttle bus right now and everyone on it looks depressed and shell-shocked and is glued to their phone. It's not doing much for my mood right now.

Lol @ JAileen -- correction -- vast swathes of America chose the rude, easily-provoked, bigoted demagogue with a grade-four vocabulary and a tendency to turn everything into a show.

I do realize that Hilary had plenty of support as well. What blows my mind is that enough Americans must be so desperate for change that they could overlook Trump's overwhelming character flaws. And I saw a depressing amount of news coverage showing "ordinary" people actively praising his racist "build a wall" attitude. I couldn't believe how many women were able to dismiss his blatant sexism, too (although immigration, not women's issues, was really the focus of his campaign). I watched one woman say, on camera, "oh, well, men just talk like that". WHAT? Not in my world, they don't.

I don't have the words.

I didn't support either candidate. To me they are both the greater of two evils. The Clintons have been involved in a lot of shady dealings since before he was governor of Arkansas. Things that I personally remember, not out of Trump propaganda. This election season was like a bad dream that I couldn't wake up from. I don't feel either one of them are fit to lead the country.

I am staying off almost all media and online sites today.

I spent yesterday traveling - voted two weeks ago. Here is the only place I feel safe saying I voted for Hillary. I keep my political views off of all social media and even my sisters and their families voted for that odious man. I suppose my brain can rationalize his appeal but my heart is sick.

delurked, this is the off-topic section, so we can say anything we like, providing we are polite. I'm afraid America is an international laughingstock today...but maybe (hope against hope!) Trump will prove me wrong, and he'll be a better leader than his behaviour up until now has led me to believe.

All of the Americans I know personally are decent people.

Here are my best-case-scenario hopes:

1. that Mr. Trump is smarter than he appears
2. that all that ugly stuff he said was just an act, to dupe unhappy whites to vote for him, and doesn't reflect his real opinions (after all, he has a history of saying one thing and then later, saying the exact opposite. It's hard to know what his real opinions are)
3. that, since he can hardly have loyalty to most Republican party politicians (many of whom loudly denounced him!), he might disregard the standard party lines and act in a more non-partisan way. Who knows. He's a loose cannon.

I feel a sense of profound grief today... like the feeling of losing a loved one to a sudden and violent death. I mourn what was lost and wish I could simply turn back the clock. Alas, I cannot... we cannot. All I can do is move ahead step by step, after a period of reflection and mourning.

I am so sad.
And I am mourning.

Last night there was so much fear in me and among my immigrant,colored and caring ( from all races and ethnicities) friends.

I am heartsick.

I'd like to build a wall -- a human wall surrounding the White House so he can't move in. God help us all.

Oh, I was going to say that I'd noticed a huge number of YLFers online too - but that was the day before yesterday.

I heard on the news lots of people voted for Trump thinking he was unqualified. A protest vote indeed. Giving the elites a good shakeup indeed.

I didn't vote for him, but I also told my family that Hilary was totally unelectable. I was dismissed as the dim, low brow cousin at the table. I know there's something I don't know about the Clintons, because they were positively hated from day one in Washington. And indeed around the country. I feel it has to be more than their shadiness - we got lots of skanky people we love. I mean, look at The Donald. We love his 'you're fired!'

Anyways, yeah: people are not hearing when people say they're not making it in this country. It's 1984: your egg allowance has been raised from three eggs to two this week.

I like Hillary. I think she would have been a good president. I have never understood the hatred toward her, I have always thought it was because she is a threatening, powerful woman, and those are not very welcome around politics. Or many places.

Most people I know are in shock and are in mourning. I've had to limit FB and Twitter today.

What I have been doing is working on two important projects I have been procrastinating due to election anxiety and I've made great progress on both. My anxiety is mostly gone because the possible outcome I feared is now reality.

I have voted in 14 presidential elections now. My chosen candidate won six of those times. I can't remember feeling so sad at a lost election before. I'm proud that I was able to support the first woman candidate who actually had a chance of winning. (I fought some of the ERA battles.) I admire Hilary for the gracious manner in which she conceded.

When I was a kid I was afraid whenever an airplane flew overhead at night--I was afraid it might drop an atomic bomb on me. We practiced duck and cover air raid drills in school, and I grew up watching newsreels and then TV showing the destructiveness of World War II and the long lines of DPs. (Displaced Persons as they were called then.) Somehow I ended up becoming idealistic and perhaps unrealistically optimistic.

How great that we can share our distress and talk or write ourselves through it.

A wise friend wrote this on Facebook this morning:

"Dear friends - we did not wake up in a different world this morning. It's only our illusion that we were living in a fairer society that dissolved. Now it's on all of us to work harder to make it real and actual, regardless of which borders we live within."

The future is always unpredictable, and as my poor husband reminds me from NY where he is sitting for a week of mourning for his sister, the things we think are the biggest deal never turn out to be the things that matter (he used some local examples but I am sure we all have our own). One never knows what beautiful things can grow when enough "fertilizer" is spread.

It has been almost 24 hours now - and I am still at a loss for words. 'Devastated' doesn't begin to describe it.

I appreciate everyone's thoughtful words here. I'm distraught.

I'm still trying to process my feelings about everything.

In the meantime, here is something that Eva (who used to post here) posted on instagram. I agree with her that messages of unity and support are important in these times. One of the things this whole election mess has made me realize is that, even as a minority woman, I still come from SUCH a position of privilege. It's all too easy to forget that in my bubble.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BMmceJTBIWb/

Privilege has been on my mind constantly since the election. I feel incredibly privileged, too, Diana. As a middle-class white person living in Boston (though sadly, I've already had an Asian-American friend here experience street harassment of the "go back where you came from" variety)

But I can probably still go through my days physically unscathed. My fears are for anyone who's visually conspicuous: people of color, transgender, women wearing the hijab, etc. stuff is already happening. people are becoming emboldened. We really have to dig in and prepare to work and fight for a fair society.

in the end, here's a couple of really (at least to me) frightening takeaways--only 55.6% of the eligible voters voted, that was down from 57.5% in 2012 and over 62.3% in 2008....and 5 states tallied under 50%.

how can a democracy survive if almost half the eligible voters don't participate?

Oh, remember the budget shutdown? That was effectively a coup. The system is already at a stop. It's just that normal people get on with it. The immediate problem IMHO is a lack of a birdseye view, a common public sphere that COUNTS. Which is interesting to me: I think social media exacerbates this problem. We're so tribal, fractured, and ignorant of what is going on. Lots of people love the principle of subsidiarity, but it has its limits if you ask me...local action yes, but to only get local, channeled information...you're gonna be drinking someone's waste water. And then there's the scale of all our endeavors nowadays...even when you're rural and doing a lot on your own, like drilling your own wells... Anyways, my theory is all these people have been encouraged to think their voice matters, but then the only place they use it is on Facebook...

Right. More of my crazy person on the street corner muttering. Lol.