Editor,

This is in response to your recent editorial suggesting acceptance of the new president-elect. It was a well-written piece and I enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek tone. If something is truly unacceptable in life, as this man is, then it will always be unacceptable. I hope we haven’t all fallen down the fascist rabbit hole, and now up is down and black is white. Untenable means untenable, and it always will.

We have had a national rape. Do we have to accept that it occurred? Yes. Do we have to accept the rapist? Never in a billion lifetimes. What has been raped is our innocence. I’m a 69-year-old man, and I still have innocence. My innocence stems from my sense of opprobrium; right and wrong. Charles Dickens once said, “Nothing is so clearly perceived as injustice to a child.” I feel like a 10-year-old boy who just witnessed his father cheat on his mother. We all saw it happen.

The real question for me is how do I, we, live with something of this magnitude that is so palpably wrong? This is not our favorite football team losing the big game, a week of depression, and we’ll get’m next year. This is a fifth-grader looking out the school-house window and seeing the playground bully beating an innocent kid, and feeling there’s nothing he can do about it.

Or is there something to be done? There is enormous energy in anger, lots of it. The key is to catch this anger by the tail and harness it to good use. Our anger is a swift moving current, turning a large wheel, grinding out grain to fuel our self-development. Rather than losing my anger, accepting it, moving through the stages of grief, my anger sustains me. I have two new bumper stickers on my cars. The first is a two liner: “Donald Trump Workaround: 3-second Day.” The second, a three liner: “Defund Trump’s Racism: Refuse to Pay Federal Income Tax. He Does.” (I have extras and I’m in the book).

I’ve killed my TV. I won’t let the son-of-a-(expletive) in my house. Ever. Now’s a uniquely perfect time to knit a scarf that will keep people warm from Freeland to Tacoma. I use words but there are so many other beautifully colored yarns.

STEVE V. HORTON

Langley