“To My Dearest Friend, The past four years have been very difficult for me. I have never been…”

To My Dearest Friend, The past four years have been very difficult for me. I have never been particularly political, but that was because I never really had a specific issue I felt would matter. I thought my view as an individual citizen was just too small to be noticed. But this time, there were two issues that really got to me - Trump's treatment of women ("locker com talk") and his views on civil rights and protesting in a democratic system ("both sides"). With Trump's election, I was very dismayed. First, it was the comments about women, when he had that conversation with Billy(?) in the van and talked about how easy it was to sleep with women, it disgusted me. 'Locker room talk' or not, that's not acceptable behavior for a president. I'm sure other presidents have said similar things, but I defend no one, Democrat or Republican. They are all wrong for saying things like this. Then came the comments about 'both sides' when it comes to the protests in the streets, I'm not interested in assigning political blame, I'm interested in solutions. And one solution I never want to see is the use of the National Guard & the military unless a very real, mass uprising is happening. The precedent set by cavalier deployments of the military/militarized forces around the country is dangerous. This President declares everything a national emergency that puts our security at risk- first it was immigrants, then it was the Chinese, and now it is social protest movements like BLM. When is it going to stop? If he sends troops to dispose of crowds for little cause now, it only lowers the bar for every succeeding President. This is not sustainable. Your Loving Friend