I think that you're never going to come across as anything but hectoring when you start with "what have you done." You're still assuming there's some causality between the personal actions of liberals and a reality TV billionaire with the nuclear codes and sorry, that's fucking offensive.

I will freely claim to know more than you and the reason your statement raises my hackles is that if you don't think every Clinton voter in the country hasn't done a shit-ton of soul-searching in the wake of this catastrophe you're either high or oblivious. But the fact of the matter is this: none of us expected a bullshit coalition of FSB, internet trolls, rednecks and fucking Facebook to negate a 3-million-vote majority and if you somehow think that we could have done something about it?

FUCK YOU.

I canvassed for Kerry. I volunteered for my congressman and he's my governor now. I got out the vote and I gave money and the fucker caved before everything was counted. I give money to the ACLU and have done for a decade; my political contributions are in the thousands of dollars. Yet here we are, wondering how the hell it happened, and take it from me - you didn't want it badly enough is not a helpful sentiment.

I don't blame apathy for this one. I don't blame disinterest. I blame a steady erosion of the protection of fundamental democratic principles that are utterly beyond the reach of the average voter. And I'm damn proud of the resistance and vocal opposition this country is expressing - the Muslim ban? Those are my peeps. An attorney general I put in office acting on orders of the governor I volunteered for back when he was a congressman stopped the Trump administration in its tracks. But here we are - opposing the federal government.

The way to think about this is not "we could have done more" but "what can we do now" because enough fucking redneck morons showed up to force us all to deal with this shit and you know what? Short of carpetbagging our way to Alabama and spending millions we don't have, we're doing what we can.

Claire Wolfe had a quote a dozen years back - "America is at that awkward stage where it's too late to work within the system but it's too early to shoot the bastards." I thought she was alarmist then, especially as we ended up with eight years of Obama... but the fact remains that there are crucial aspects of the system that are not functional and that can't simply be wished away.

Nor can its failures be pinned on those who know the system is broken.