Guilie Castillo-Oriard's Blog, page 4

30 Odd Questions #Blogfest (via @DebbieDoglady)

I'm joining Debbie's and Emily's 30 Odd Questions  blog hop! Responses in italics.



What did you want to be when you were a kid? A writer. Yep. From the time when I was 8 and a short story I wrote won a school competition. But 'Nancy Drew' was a close second.Which “Friends” character do you relate to the most? Why?  Pffff... I was never really a big fan of Friends. Maybe because I never could relate to any of them? Jennifer Aniston always seemed too much of an airhead, too ditzy, too flighty. Monica seemed cool, but then she had this underlying OCD thing that seemed a tad disturbed to me. And the blond girl with the guitar... she was always so much fun. But... she never made sense. Sorry.Do you like your name? Why?  Ha — good question. Yes, I do like my name. For a large part of my life I didn't; too complicated, too unique, called too much attention to itself. Always had to be spelled, and even then there were mistakes... One of my school diplomas had to be redone because they misspelled my name. But, as time passed, I came to see my name as part, maybe more obvious than for most people, of what makes each of us individual and unique. And there's also the fact that my father invented it (so he claimed), and that made it extra special.Are you messy or neat? Messy. VERY messy.How tall are you? 1.73 m. According to this site, that's 5'8".How tall were you when you were 10? About... 1.65 m? Whatever that is in feet?What is your guilty pleasure? Just one? OK, then. Neil Gaiman novels. I just finished 'American Gods' for the third (or is it fourth?) time, and I'm a third of the way through Anansi boys — for the first time. What are you saving money for right now? Save—? Error 404: The requested URL was not found on this server.How many Pringles can you eat at once? Not a Pringles fan.Tea or coffee? Coffee. Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Introvert. Though most people who know me would disagree. (I'm such an introvert that I keep my introvert nature secret :D)What will be your Halloween costume this year? Okay... I outgrew Halloween costumes a long, long time ago. I'll dress up for a Pimps & Whores party, or any other themed thing, but... nah, not Halloween.Sweet or salty? Salty, baby. All the way.Favourite social media? Facebook. But I'm trying to wean myself from it.Who is the last person you kissed? Kissed-kissed, as in lips and tongue and all? My partner, Cor. But if you mean just cheek-kiss-hello, then... someone at a friend's farewell get-together on Friday. What is your favourite breakfast? Something real 'Murican, like eggs over easy with bacon and sausage and hash browns and dollar pancakes with lots and lots of butter and syrup.When is your birthday? 17 Feb 1973When did you start your blog? June 2011What is your opinion on the Kardashians? The who?How would you describe your style? My... dressing style? My writing style? My hair style? Unclear. I'll go with dress. Probably 'beach bum' describes it best: shorts, flip flops, t-shirt. That's it. For all occasions.What colour is your hair? Brown. With ever-multiplying, but very natural-looking, gray highlights :DWhat colour socks are you wearing? See above for 'beach bum' style definition.What is your dream job? Writing fiction.Dogs or cats? Both. I've never understood this 'I'm a cat/dog person' differentiation. To me, cats and dogs are like two sides of the same coin; they balance each other out perfectly. At the moment, though, I only have dogs. (But, given my rescue proclivities, that could change any moment.)What makes you weird? Pfffff... The list is probably endless. And, of course, it's all about what context you use for 'weird'. Here in Curaçao I'm weird at all sorts of levels: I'm a 'Latina', but I dress like a Dutchie; I speak perfect English but don't speak either Dutch or Papiamentu; I don't have children (and don't even like them)... In Mexico I'm weird because I chose a place no one has ever heard of to live. And because I speak Spanish funny after so long under the Venezuelan influence of Curaçao. And because I'm an only child (in Mexico? seriously weird). I'm weird everywhere because I left a great job, and the corresponding great salary, to write and rescue dogs. Celebrity crush? Wow. Leonard Cohen. T.S. Eliot. Roger Waters, right now (have you listened to his new album? BLOWN. AWAY. More shallowly, the guy that played Superman in the new movie—but with whom I fell in love for his role as Charles Brandon in 'The Tudors'.Opinion on cigarettes? YUM. Been a smoker since I was 13 (that's... 31 years). No, I wouldn't recommend taking up tobacco to anyone, given the health detriment, but... yeah, I love smoking.Do you want/have children? How many? Nah. Not my thing.Three favourite boy names? Michael. Santiago. Duncan.Three favourite girl names? Kiana. Alexandra. Inés.

This was so much fun to answer, and I'm very much looking forward to reading everyone else's responses. If you enjoyed reading this and would like to join the fun, check out the guidelines here and sign up in the linky list below. Feel free to hop over to the other participants and get to know them... Some really entertaining and creative responses that are sure to make you chuckle—and several cool blogs and bloggers that you might be missing out on.

Thanks for reading!

Elections in Mexico this Sunday. Key Elections.

This coming Sunday, June 4th, there will be elections in Mexico. Not presidential; only three states will be voting for new governors (and a fourth will be electing some 200 mayors). But these elections — the results in one state in particular — will shape the future of Mexico, for at least the next decade.

Elections for mayor are happening in the state of Veracruz, and elections for governor in Nayarit, Coahuila, and the state of Mexico. Yes, we have a state called after the country; someone must've run out of naming ideas... No, not really. It's more like the country is named after the state—or, actually, the city. In brief, when the Spanish conquered this land they'd call La Nueva España (New Spain, stretching from Nicaragua all the way up to British Columbia), they divided it into reinos, which translates literally as 'kingdoms' but it's in practice more like provinces, and one of these provinces, because it included the Mexica capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan (now rather in ruins), was named México. After independence from Spain came about and Mexico City was proclaimed the capital of this brand-new nation (1824), the city separated from the state into the Distrito Federal, DF for short (kind of like Washington, DC ). And so we ended up with both a city and a state (and a country) named México.

La Nueva España, circa 1821. At one point, the territory also included Cuba and the Philippines.Back to the present. As I write (and as you read), the electoral process is going on in the state of México—and it promises to be one of the dirtiest ever. Which, if you know anything about Mexican elections, you know that's saying a lot. For as long as I can remember, and as long as my parents can remember, elections in México have always been 'arranged'. We all knew upfront who the new president would be, who the new governors, mayors, members of parliament, all of them, simply by virtue of the party they belonged to. The PRI held on to its dictatorship hand-me-down rule for 70 years by becoming masters of electoral fraud—and, of course, this resulted in a growing cynical defeatism in the population, which played right into their hands.


Of course, that didn't happen. In many states, the PRI never quite surrendered (or was made to surrender) its hegemony. The state of México—EdoMex, for short—is one such; the PRI has ruled that state uninterruptedly, for 90 years. NINETY. This state has never been ruled by another party, and therefore it has—logically—become something of a PRI stronghold, the fort where wounded PRI warriors go to recover, the Knossos-like labyrinthine dungeons where the darkest, most sensitive secrets of the PRI machinery are vaulted away from the light of day, and the impenetrable walls behind which new crops of PRI Uruk-hai are bred.

The state of Mexico or EdoMex, as commonly abbreviated.

It is from EdoMex that our current president, Enrique Peña Nieto (the world's most notorious nincompoop, until the US elected The Donald to the highest office), hails from, where he was groomed and indoctrinated, where he made his first public-office 'practices', where he launched his presidential bid—and, allegedly, where most of the funds to back him, legal and illegal, were sourced.

If México is ever to get rid of the PRI and the corruption it has not just enabled but legitimized and, indeed, made an intrinsic part of the Mexican way of life, it must involve taking back the state of México and dismantling the bastion of power and safe passage it represents for the PRI.

Alfredo del Mazo Maza, PRI candidate for governor of the State of México (EdoMex) — and cousin of president Peña Nieto, pictured in the background.
Today, for the first time in—well, ever—there's an actual chance that the PRI might lose its fortress. And not to an even slightly like-minded, center-right-winged candidate, no. The polls predict a near-tie between Alfredo del Mazo, the PRI candidate for governor (and president Peña Nieto's cousin), and his opponent (one might say direct opposite) from the newcomer left-wing Morena party, Delfina Gómez. After Brexit and Trump, we're all (painfully) aware how wrong polls can be, but even the prediction itself is already a landmark moment; never in EdoMex history has there been anything close to a tie, predicted or real, between the PRI and any other party. Never. And the PRI-run federal government knows it, which is why they're running scared.

This election has shown us an unprecedented sight: the federal government's direct participation—nay, interference—in the campaign. Call centers, door-to-door canvassing, distribution of thank-you notes from the PRI candidate along with goods and even the infamous salarios rosas (literally 'pink salaries'), a barely disguised bribe to housewives; the smear campaign against the other candidates, especially Delfina Gómez, and the acarreados, the people brought to voting booths in busloads and given any number of trinkets (on top of the ride) in exchange for their promise to vote for the PRI. All of this provided and funded via federal pesos.

Delfina Gómez, Morena candidate for governor of EdoMex. The photo on the lower left corner is her home: 52 square meters of unpretentiousness and humility.And it's understandable. If the EdoMex is lost to another party, let alone to one with as much enmity towards the PRI as the Morena party, the PRI (and the president, and the president's cronies) may be at the beginning of their end. Presidential elections are to be held next year, in the summer of 2018. The EdoMex elections are expected to be not just a thermometer for the political climate nationwide but also, given that the temperature, politically speaking, doesn't really need mercury and grids to be felt, a test of the PRI's machinery in retaining control, in imposing their rule (yet again).

A loss, in this state in particular, would mean—to the PRI, and to the country at large—that the PRI's time is over. A win by Morena's Delfina Gómez would mean the country is ready for change, for progressive and socially conscious change—and it would be the most strident rejection of the PRI, and all it stands for. It would mean, in short, hope.

Jackie: Film Reviews from the Curaçao Film Festival #ciffr

It took me long enough, didn't it? Finally—finally—I'm here with the first review. Of the first film in our festival roster. (I could've started with my favorite and worked my way through to my least favorite, I guess, but—given the obvious time limitations in my blogging—it just seemed faster to go down the list in order. Plus, this way, you as the reader won't know in advance whether the review is a positive or negative one. Fine, there are no real negative reviews—except one—but there are a few four-stars-with-caveats.)

The film festival opened on Wednesday April 5 officially, but one week earlier, on March 29, they had a pre-screening of what the festival organizers expected to be one of the films in highest demand: Pablo Larraín's Jackie.





Jacqueline Kennedy is a figure of legend. Camelot, sure, but also—perhaps most of all, at least to those of us born after all of it had already happened, those of us who learned about it not from the TV or the newspapers but from history books and documentaries (and, of course, from Oliver Stone's majestic 1991  JFK )—the tragedy she was at the center of. My mother admired her, but resented her liaison to Onassis. And I don't think she was alone. Throughout the years I've heard Jackie praised and reviled, sometimes in the same breath. Onassis's chef quit because she insisted on adding ketchup to every single dish he served her. She enjoyed the limelight too much. She neglected her children. No, she was overly protective of them. She was a bitch. She was a fashion icon. She wasn't all that smart. She was guileless and naïve. No, she wasn't; it was all an act. Bottom line, the image that I garnered of Jackie—through books, through my parents' perspective, through documentaries and movies and pop culture in general—was one that seemed rather ghostly, a picture in a badly focused projector, all shimmery edges and blurry definition. In the midst of so much contradiction, she seemed more like a character of fiction rather than a woman of flesh and blood, an actual human being. It seemed impossible to know her, to grasp her in any approach to reality.

And then came Natalie Portman. And Larraín, and his screenwriters. And Jackie jumped into perfect focus. A woman who defined her time, for better or for worse. A fallible human being, who mourned the tragedy that shaped not just her life but her country forevermore the best—the only—way she knew how.

This performance is a thing of beauty, because in revealing—even embracing—fallibility, it achieves a show of strength that approaches heroic proportions. It is about Jackie, certainly, but it is also about Woman. And Womanhood. Not feminism, not per se, but an in-depth character study of what being a woman is—not should be, but, just, is.

If you haven't seen this, and if you enjoy character-based narratives, this one is a must. If nothing else, watch it for the extraordinary cinematographic achievement. The lighting is spectacular, and the way real scenes are merged (and recreated!) into the modern film is outstanding. Natalie's embodiment of Jackie stretches to the way she speaks; if you watch the White House tour Jackie gave in 1962 (Valentine's Day) and compare it to how Natalie executes that scene—I did it, couldn't resist—you'll see it's identical. Her speech patterns, her facial expressions, her posture, all her mannerisms... To a T. And the true achievement is that she manages to make it look as natural and genuine as if she'd been speaking—and walking, and moving—like that all her life.



Kudos, Natalie.

I am shameless... (And I apologize.)

So much for my new year's resolution to not let more than two weeks go by without posting... It's going on 3 months since my last post here, and more than that on the dog blog; it's a wonder I even remember how to. Shame on me.



Much has happened to blog about, and plenty of times I began composing drafts of posts... I just never got around to finishing them before things changed. Again. I got a job, which upended my 'carefully balanced' schedule of dog walks and writing and (at least the intention of) blogging. I've since quit said job (yeah, short-lived experiment; one learns more from mistakes than from success). Two of the four puppies we took in as fosters back in December are still not adopted, which means they're still here, and as part of our effort to make them more adoptable I've begun taking them to training (well, one of them, since that's all I can afford time- and money-wise). I'm still not done with the dog book, but over the last two weeks I made some serious progress. I hope to have that done and delivered to the publisher for another round of edits before the month is out.

The dog book cover, as designed by Everytime Press
Oh, and we had the film festival here in Curaçao two weeks ago, April 5th to 9th. Forty-seven absolutely extraordinary films (well, except one). Impossible to see them all, obviously, but we did manage, with careful logistics planning that included Cor taking off two whole days from work (and one extra one after the festival, just to rest up), to see fifteen of them. Sixteen, if you count the preview film, Jackie, which screened one week before the festival began (and again during the festival, but seeing it beforehand allowed us to fit in one more film over that busy weekend).

Our film-fest booty, courtesy of Cor (who, unlike me, remembers to take photos of these things for posterity):
tickets grouped and stapled by day, from Wed Apr 5th through Sunday Apr 9th.
And I desperately want to share those fifteen (fine, sixteen) films we saw. They were thought-provoking and gorgeous: their narrative styles, the cinematography, the diversity of stories and points of view, their timeliness and value in view of current events. So, as of this week, I'll start posting a review every few days here. No, I won't make the mistake of committing to a certain day of the week or even a fixed (-ish) schedule; we all know how well that's worked out for me in the past. But I do want to share them, for you film-lovers out there, of course, but also for me, as a sort of journal record of the impact these films had on me.

So... See you soon!

The One Positive Thing About #Trump? Endless Fodder For Ridicule

It's true. The man practically begs to be made fun of. That bit about 'the best crowds ever' at the inauguration—seriously? His choices for cabinet members—an illiterate moron for Education, a climate change denier for the EPA, a freakin' banker-slash-Wall-Street-scammer for Finance—and his own son-in-law as 'Senior Adviser'! I mean, you can't make this stuff up. Any dystopian novel that included even a fraction of this goofed-up circus would be laughed out of even the most amateur of literary agents' offices. To quote Monsieur Cheeto himself: Unbelievable. 

And tragic. And—to put it mildly—worrisome. But a sense of humor is the hallmark of an educated mind, and if we can't see the hilarity in all of this, we're that much farther away from gaining the perspective we need to fight back.

Enter The Netherlands.



Got to love the Dutch. (Plus, Cheeto-man really hates to be laughed at, which makes the laughing all the more enjoyable. Thank you, dude, for elevating laughter into an instrument of resistance.)

2017 To-Do List

Lately I've been doing more visual "art" than writing... Not sure why. Maybe creativity not only comes in different shapes of expression but actually requires these different shapes to feed on, to renew itself, even to deepen itself. (Or maybe I'm just a five-star procrastinator and spin doctor.)

Here's one of the latest: the 2017 To-Do List. Hope you like it :)

The 2017 To-Do List, by Guilie Castillo
Created in Photoshop, January 2017

On the Money We Make (or Fail to Make) Through Writing

Getting paid more than zero for your work is the first step toward learning what it’s really worth to you, the best way to learn to stop obsessing about what it’s worth to everybody else.

This brilliant piece I just found on Slate.com touches on some of the key elements of making a living through writing. Many authors I know say it should never be about the money. Many others believe it shouldn't be about anything else. Some feel that making money off their 'art' is akin to 'selling out'; some consider payment the ultimate validation.

Either way, though, and as the article says, 

"Few connections are more mysterious than the one between writing books and making money."

Oh, and this:

In their candid moments, most publishers will admit going into business with writers whose work they regard as subliterary because they believe that they can profit from their books. This is still considered shocking in some unsophisticated quarters, but publishing isn’t literature: Literature is literature.

Read the full article at Slate.com.

The Voice of Frustration

We—all of us falling under the liberal, progressive label—have just about had it with being told to "get over it", "work together", "move forward". Two months after the election and the divide is only growing wider. I've seen plenty of material—call it rants, or apologies, or whatever you want—in the blogosphere and elsewhere, and as brilliant as much of it has been, none of it has captured both the frustration and the sheer reality of it as perfectly as this post. My highlight (WARNING: strong language):

You can stop explaining the white working class rural conservative Christian farming folk, hot-takers and self-justifiers. Instead, why don't you explain liberalism to them? Why don't you explain that jobs are drying up and communities are dying not because of abortion and same-sex marriage but because of Republican economic policies that have favored the wealthy, most of whom live in cities, including a certain president-elect they voted for who took advantage of those very policies in order to stay rich? Ultimately, though, it won't matter. Because despite every fucking word to the contrary, the real problem is that those who voted for Trump are racist. They are sexist. They are Islamophobic. They are ignorant.  

The whole thrust of these "let's learn about the yokels" articles is to imply that there are real Americans and there are coastal elites. Sorry, motherfuckers. We're all Americans. And if I have to suffer under your stupid, you have to hear about our smarts.

Exactly. (Even if I take exception to the use of 'Americans'... America is a continent, which makes not just US citizens but Mexicans, Ecuadorians, Peruvians, Brazilians, Costa Ricans, Guatemalans, etc., etc., also 'Americans'.)

To Utopia or Not To Utopia? #WEP December Challenge

'Perfect Is Imperfect Is Perfect' — a tribute to imperfection, by Guilie Castillo
Created in Photoshop, December 2016
Utopia. To me, the word conjures visions of Huxley's Brave New World , Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 , Orwell's 1984 . Manic, soma-induced smiles of what passes for happiness (because everyone has forgotten what happiness—that overwhelming, inimitable joy that rises like milk boiling over and fades just as fast—feels like. Thought control. Do's and Don'ts. A shiny happy surface, and under it a roiling swamp of cruelty, of intolerance... The prehistoric, scaly skin of human nature's underbelly.


Maybe I'm a product of my age; in my imagination, utopia decomposes into dystopia rather instantaneously. Perfect is imperfect. And imperfect is perfect. So, if I had to envision a 'perfect' world, it would have to be a place where there is no perfect. Where imperfection is not only tolerated but celebrated. Where differences, and diversity of all kinds, are the only rule. A world without xenophobia, and a society of tolerance, where no life is worth more than another, and all life is sacred.

Is that possible? Current events would seem to prove it's not. But then there's Neil Young...

Do you see people being led by the righteous hand,
Taking care of everyone like they're on a piece of land.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
Do you see people's lives being lost on the sacred land,
and the battle over water being fought for the baby's hand.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
When the women of the world are free to stand up for themselves,
and the promises made stop gathering dust on the shelf.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
Well I hear you out there when you say what you have to say.
I know how you feel 'cus that's what made me this way.
When heaven on earth is improved by the hand of man,
and people everywhere get together and join their hands.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
Neil Young - Show Me Lyrics | MetroLyrics 

I get why you did it. No, really, I do.

You were tired of the same-old up in Olympus, the same elites decade after decade passing around power among them, like the in clique at Homecoming passing around a bottle of Chivas and hiding it every time you come close. What Chivas, man? You were tired of your little voice never being heard above the rabble and rouse of all these newly-minted minorities clamoring for their rights. What about yours, eh? We gotta take America back! You were tired of being left out, of watching from the sidelines as decision after decision was made in direct contravention to your interests, and direct contradiction to your wholesome, farm-grown, old-school common sense. You were tired of feeling like the outsider—in your own damn country! You were tired of being treated like a second-class citizen, and of your country being treated like a second-tier nation around the world.



And so you did it. You elected a man that promised to clean out that in clique, shatter that insider elite to smithereens. Government for the people, right? The real people, the ones that really matter. Someone who will look out for the actual Americans, not a bunch of wetback Mohammed-loving darkie upstarts who have no business being here anyway. And a businessman, too, because who better to resolve the nation's economic problems than a man who's spent his entire life in business? I mean, business is all about getting stuff done, right? It's all about the bottom line, and if we can make the bottom line 'Making America Great Again', then—well, by god, that's exactly what our government needs to be sane again!

I get it. Change—drastic, radical change—is incredibly attractive. Hope is even more so. In the face of such change, such possibilities, all that jaded disillusionment with a system that has betrayed you over and over recedes like a tide pulling back to reveal a beach rife with sea-born jewels. You'd given up, you'd learned to live with the despair and ignominy of being unheard and ignored—and now, against all odds, here is someone who speaks your thoughts, who gets you and the problems—the injustices—you live with every day, and who means to set all these wrongs aright. Why would you not vote for him?

I get, too, that your choices weren't all that great to begin with. I'm no fan of Hillary Clinton; actually, the only way I would've voted for her (if I were a US citizen) is if her opponent was ridiculously, hugely unqualified for office. Any office.

Which—ahem—was exactly what happened.

I hate to break it to you, Trump supporters, but you made a gross miscalculation here. You bought into exactly what Trump wanted you to, and you've now elected a president who has no intention of creating anything except benefits and advantages for himself.

Well, you might be thinking, what's wrong with a little self-interest? Looking out for yourself is, after all, the core of the 'American'* dream, isn't it? And what president—what politician—hasn't put him/herself first in the course of their tenure, right? You may be right; politicians in general seem to be lacking in basic human empathy. Trump may take self-interest to a whole new level or just fall in with that 'swamp' he promised to drain; regardless, that'll be just the tip of the iceberg.

Trump himself, or a large majority of his supporters, may not be racist or hate-filled KKK building wooden crosses in their spare time. Trump, I believe, is as much a product of his time as Hitler or Stalin (or Nero or Pinochet) were of theirs. Trump, like so many before him, has had the smarts to harness the tides sweeping the country (and the world) and ride them to the cusp of power.

And that, right there, is the real tragedy of the 2016 US election. Trump (et al) may not be a racist, misogynist bigot, but his rhetoric has unleashed racism, and misogyny, and bigotry. He—his expressions, his posturing, his 'handling' of protest and criticism—enabled, and, further, legitimized, the hatred distilled over decades of discontent and (perceived or real) injustice. Whether intentionally or not (and I do believe it was intentionally, seeing the success he had with it), he let the genie out of the bottle... And there's no turning back from that now.

It took me two weeks to begin to verbalize the devastation Nov. 8th left me with. I watched the election coverage from 5pm to 3am (CUR time). I cried like a baby at Trump's victory speech. The world is not the place I thought it was, and it was that realization, more than anything else (and there was plenty else), which destroyed me so totally. I am fortunate to have mostly liberal, left-leaning friends and acquaintances, though that may be a curse disguised as a blessing: it created an echo chamber, a bubble of opinions and prognostications that took it for granted that the majority of US citizens were, no doubt, on the side of equality and civil liberties and basic human rights. And there was no way—no way—that this majority would allow this clown, this unbelievable idiot, to get to the White House. We absolutely believed that—even though we postulated, for the sake of intellectual discourse, the possibility and the whys and wherefores of why it could happen... But it really came down to discussions of alternate realities, theoretical questions that seemed impossible to translate to the world we knew, the country we loved—yes, even us foreigners, to whom the US has always stood as an example of how things should be, the country we held up to our own Latin American governments as the blueprint of what we had to aspire to, what we had to become.

Well. That's done, I suppose. I can no longer defend the US against its detractors. On the contrary, I now must accept, as much as it hurts, that they, these detractors, were right. The US has a long, long history of racism and bigotry, of segregation and abuse of minorities, of religious discrimination, of willful ignorance and deficient education—it's all been documented, it's all public knowledge. How, then, did we miss it? How did the US become the beacon for civil rights that we all believed it to be? How could we be so, so wrong?

No, it is not Trump's fault. It's yours. Because, regardless of what 'benefits' you heard for yourself in Trump's speeches, you also heard the bigotry—and either you agreed with it, or you chose to ignore it. Whichever it was, your bigotry or your ignorance, that is what allowed Trump to run, and to win. If it was bigotry, I have nothing to say to you. If it was ignorance, though, you may not be beyond redemption. This is what you need to do: you need to hold your president accountable. You need to educate yourself on his policies and his actions, and you need to make sure that a) he stays on track to provide all those 'benefits' (jobs, whatever) he promised, b) that he does so in a way that doesn't destroy your country's economy (see the bit on educating yourself), and, most importantly, c) you need to stop turning a blind eye on the racism and bigotry. You, as a Trump supporter, have the power right now—and the obligation—to ensure all this talk of walls and deportations and registrations and camps (camps!!! just listen to yourselves!!!) remains only talk. You need to stand up for civil rights and for minorities—because you, white US citizen, are a minority. 'America' has never been white. Stop treating 'others' as minorities. You are the minority, and it's about time you develop some empathy for those whose lands and rights you have stolen and defiled.





*'America' is a continent, comprised of 35 sovereign states plus several dependencies and constituencies of European countries. The US isn't even the largest country in the continent (thank you, Canada).