Thread by @frodofied

My mother was not an educated woman, but she was smart enough to know her own limits and she trusted science and medicine and respected higher learning.

She aldo had incredible instincts which she passed down to me.

My mom never saw Trump for anything other than what he was. 1/

It never occurred to her that he could win an election against a women like @HillaryClinton fairly.

In fact, she was convinced he could not. Not in a just world.

She was worried about it as early as Dec 2015.

"If Trump wins the nomination he'll draw blood to beat her."

2/

I held back telling her about Russia as long as I was able.The media were not talking about it (at all) so I thought I had time. It was one of her home nurses who broke the news. He was an old school Democrat & he & his wife were devoted to Clinton.

My mom was so angry.

3/

But she was also confused.

Though not educated, she knew what everyone knew, which was that Russia had always been considered our enemy and that they had done more than enough to earn that designation. She had never liked Putin, whom she & my stepdad had thought of as evil.

4/

The thought of Putin & Trump working together to beat @HillaryClinton repulsed her, but it also made perfect sense to her as a woman.

Mom had let men control her her entire life & she had an instinctual belief that the very worst of men would come for HC.

She wasn't wrong.

5/

Where my mother's instincts failed her, and, to be honest, mine too, was when she gave our system and her fellow Americans far more credit than either deserved.

Mom believed deeply that every American would be as angry and repulsed by Russian interference as she was.

6/

Some days I'm grateful that mom didn't have to live to see the results of Russian interference in our elections nor the indifference so many of her fellow Americans have displayed as the facts about the Trump / Russia conspiracy are revealed.

Both would have made her crazy.

7/

I've written here before that my mom had never considered politics to be relevant to her life.

She had never voted, not once.

And it wasn't until we were dealing with the realities of her life in the aftermath of my stepfather's death that she began to understand.

8/

I was proud of her evolution and moved by her emotional reaction to @HillaryClinton as a person and a candidate.

Something about the idea of a woman sitting in the Oval Office as leader of the Free world sparked something in my mom. It changed her. It inspired her.

9/

Women like my mother, ones who in their lives were never able to fully escape the velocity of poverty, were often dissuaded from independent political thought by their husbands, brothers and fathers, and mainly b/c they knew that women could potentially oppose their views.
10/

Yet another facet of the terrible legacy of American misogyny.

That my mom was able to see it for what it was, name it, and seek to correct it for herself will never not make me cry.

She wanted to cast that vote more than I can tell you.

11/

Of course all of these truths make dealing with Clinton's "loss" that much more difficult.

And it makes watching Donald Trump's arrogance that much more galling.

But it also makes the fact that #SheWon, really she did, that much more satisfying.

#Resist #ImpeachTrump

✊