Thread by @frodofied

My Fellow Americans,

I wake up every single day with a pit in my stomach. It's pretty awful.

And it's everyday.

My whole life I've sort of avoided the news in the morning, but now, what was a slight aversion has turned to actusl dread.

1/

That dread is there all of the time now. It never goes away. It's like a small red you see in the dark no matter how tightly you close your eyes. It just blinks & blinks.

Since about mid-2016 I have had almost nonstop insomnia. I feel exhausted all of the time.

2/

It's like my mind and body know something is going to happen, but it doesn't know what. It's just waiting.

When I do finally sleep it is so deep that nothing can wake me, nothing. This can go on for days.

And when I sleep?

Don't get me started on the night terrors.

3/

A grown man with night terrors is a pretty pathetic sight.

Fun.

I now take a cocktail of meds to fight the dark depressions and anxieties that been with me my whole life, but never at this level, or frequency.

When I was 13 years old I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease.

4/

And a little later ulcerative colitis. Both are mostly stressed induced for me and once triggered are like monsters. Terrible and often terrifying.

Since the age of 22 I have managed these diseases without medications. My doctors called it remission.

5/

And with one or two small exceptions I had lived flareup free for most of my life since then.

That remission ended in 2016. I have been hospitalized for periods of five days or more since then no fewer than seven times. I am back on meds, but they only seem to delay now.

6/

There's more. Other things.

Mood swings, social anxiety disorder, and mania.

It fucking sucks to be me.

I don't feel particularly weird telling these things to what amounts to the whole world anymore, because I know I'm not the only one.

Not even close.

7/

My therapist's waiting room is always packed these days. It doesn't matter what time of day I go. A room full of people all sitting completely sile)nt and all with faces like they are looking off into some distant horizon.

I always wonder if they are seeing the same thing.

8/

I haven't even said why any of this happening yet, but you already know. You probably knew what this was about back in tweet one when I told you about the pit in my stomach I wake with everyday.

Whether you follow or don't, you knew.

9/

Do you know what I've overheard more people say in the past two years than anything else?

Some variation on "I wonder what he's going to do today?"

And that question is never curiosity based. It's always based in fear. It's that dread. The blinking red light.

10/

We have changed in the last two years. The whole country. And not for the better.

Depression and anxiety are on the rise. Alcoholism and drug abuse too. Hate crimes have risen. Suicides are up. All the bad shit is rising and the good is disappearing.

11/

What I find most disturbing is that since @realDonaldTrump stole the presidency life expectancy in the United States has lowered.

In two years that man has actually changed the average length of time we might live. In the negative!

Think about that.

12/

It goes without saying but I will say it anyway: This is not normal.

No matter how hard the media and the systemic support of this administration tries to convince us.

THIS.

IS.

NOT.

NORMAL.

13/

We should not fear our president.

We shouldn't be doing a lot of things in relation to this president that we do, however. And the fact that we even do should terrify and worry us a lot more than it is.

It's disturbing on so many levels the number of things we accept now.

14/

How is it ok that there is a man in the Oval office who might be more loyal to another country than he is to our own?

The possibility of conspiracy notwithstanding, in every instance when Trump has been in the presence of Vladimir Putin he has shown deference to Russia.

15/

Remember that time Donald Trump committed actual treason in front of the whole world?

How did we ever stop talking about that?

30 years later Monica's blowjob gets more critical sanctioning than ACTUAL TREASON ACTED OUT IN PLAIN VIEW.

What the fuck is happening?

16/

Why is it ok that we even have to debate whether that man is an actual fascist?

No person whose views are so terrible that they inspire such a debate should have ever made it with ten thousand leagues of the Presidency.

17/

There is no longer a question whether Donald Trump is a racist.

The debate is now about how racist he is or whether he is an actual White Supremacist.

But even those are pretty much bullshit debates.

If it quacks like a duck, then it's a fucking duck.

This is not hard.

18/

And how is anyone ok with the fact that how much support a state is likely to get during a crisis seems to be directly correlated with whether that state supported him during the election?

Seriously?

19/

This shit is not normal.

It is ņot funny.

It is not ok.

In two days we have out first and quite possibly our last chance to say with a unified voice that we will not let this happen here.

Not anymore, and not ever again.

20/

And let's be perfectly clear, if you vote for a single Republican.

At any level.

For any office.

You are telling the world that you support Trump.
And fascism.
And white supremacy.

All of it.

If your canvassing for a Republican or volunteering or donating, we see you.

21/

I don't understand how this is even a discussion at this point. Honestly, I don't.

Trump has said and done so many terrible things, things no other person could ever have gotten away with. That people are still willing to vote for someone in the same party astounds me.

22/

We're going to learn a lot on Wed morning, perhaps more than we want to know. And while the whole world watches.

What I know for sure is that the answers we get are going to satisfy no one.

In fact, I'm quite sure the results are going to raise more questions than answers.

23/

Please show up. Even if you're just getting in the game and are unsure of your state's registration policies please check, many states, like my own, Illinois, have same day, onsite registration.

24/

We once had the luxury, the privilege, to live in a democracy that was so sure and so absolute, that most of us were able to be nonpaticipants.

We knew that regardless who or what party won, our republic would continue on in its same form.

We don't have that anymore.

25/

Be an American on Tuesday.

Vote for the protection of our Republic. Vote to save it.

I often preach that our votes don't belong to us, they belong to the Republic itself, to our fellow citizens, and to everyone who cane before us who fought to make it what it once was.

26/

When you vote, vote for every slave who was pulled here against their will and forced to build a nation that would call them property, and treat them worse than animals, for the better part of 200 years.

Vote for Sojourner Truth and George Washington Carver.

27/

Vote for Abdaham Lincoln and every Union soldier. Vote for Molly Ivans and Dwight D. Eisenhower. For Jesse Owens and Muhammad Ali. For every soldier who has died where they stood and every one who died at home much later, but no less heroically.

28/

And vote for Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the rule of law. And Lady Liberty, vote for her too.

It's going to that kind of day on Wednesday.

Be ready.

By then only one word will be on the lips of every American as we wait with baited breath.

Mueller.
U
E
L
L
E
R.

#resist