Made some money on oil stocks…but nothing else that hasn’t been mentioned. FB became unbearable…etc…
Twitter was interesting to return to after not been on since 2014
It caused me to vote for Democrats in 2018 for the first time ever. I may register as Democrat to vote in the 2020 Dem primary.
Uhhh. … you do realize that Trump has only been President since January 2017, right? According to your cite, your fund is up about 20% in the two years since then and was up about 20% during Obama’s last year from Jan 2016 to Jan 2017.
He furloughed me and coworkers for 35 days as part of a hissy fit and personal vendetta. Then we spent another 21 days on pins and needles that he would do it again. We cannot regain a lost eight weeks of work so it’s gonna cost you taxpayers lots of money to repair the damage. Well, that work we can continue to do as he systematically rips apart federal agencies (including mine) under the guise of eliminating regulations, converting funds for other (unknown) purposes, etc.
I’m watching coworkers bail out of their federal careers left and right. The brain drain and lost historic knowledge is not just gonna hurt what we do right now, but will ripple across society in the coming months and years.
My taxes are gonna go up because my Seattle house is worth more than $10,000 in taxes.
My employer is one of the largest manufacturers on the planet and the tariffs/china trade war is bad for our business.
I have 3 kids and Trumps rollback of environmental protections, climate change denial, war on truth, ad nauseum is gonna bite them in the ass.
I’m on tenterhooks all the time, especially about health care. If the preexisting condition clause from the ACA does eventually get stricken, that will affect me greatly.
Not at all. Just another ‘Shit-on-a-Stick’. Just glad it ain’t a Clinton.
I’m a white, middle aged, heterosexual, affluent male so personally I’m doing ok. I’d have to check, but I think we paid less in taxes last year. So the direct consequences to me have been negligible to slightly positive.
I’ve become more politically active, calling my congresspeople, attending protests, finally joining the ACLU, etc. I’ve distanced myself from a couple of friends who started distributing really ugly things on Facebook.
But, as mentioned upthread, even though I personally haven’t been harmed, I’m upset by the harm done to others and the future problems that I believe are coming.
Lets see, shrank the pool of women available to me for dating, filled me with fear and wonder at the fact that our way of life is under serious threat, wonder that I would see in my lifetime a repeat of the Maginot Line, on our own border no less, caused me to devote a great deal of time to the thought excercise of merging the US with Mexico instead of wasting money on a boondoggle of a wall, and, most importantly to me personally, for the first time in 20 years since I got out, I wish I hadn’t served in the military because this isn’t what I stood up to defend
On the plus side, I’m a bit more vocal about my thoughts and feelings on helping those in need, and Inmake more of an effort to pit those to action. i am deliberately less judgemental and make an effort to be kinder in my daily life, I make s deliberate effort to ne more understanding, of failing that, accepting of people as they are, more supportive of those who are in socially disadvantaged circumstances but stand proud anyway, just being who they are, to increase the level of joy in the world(in my community that would be a girl who came out publicly as a girl at a young age and had a few minutes of local fame as a champion for trans folks)
What Wheelz said in post 33, but I’ll add that it’s taken a real mental toll, and even a bit of a physical one, on me personally. Plus, my disappointment/anger/mourning is deepened by my being a parent of an elementary-school-aged child from whom I must daily shield, filter, or contextualize the lies, hatred, and filth that spew from that dolt in the White House and his supporters.
I like the idea of the political establishment being shaken up by an outsider. Same as when Ross Perot ran.
The 2020 election should be pretty exciting.
In theory, an outsider could work. I would want that person to be smart, curious, honest, kind, and competent.
Not at all–genuine curiosity. I’m an establishment dem, not quite a bleeding-heart liberal, but I’ve been known to leak a little. No entrapment here.
I gotta ask–how? Immigrant fetish? 
I’m a little shocked I didn’t consider emotional responses to this presidency to be taken into consideration. I’ve seen heightened anxiety all around me, but I work in Mental Healthcare.
I hope this doesn’t come across as cold, but it’s fascinating to see accounts of people whose livelihood has been effected. Seeing how lives have changed in a community I’m a part of realifies it (is that a word? Should be) that reading or hearing third-hand reports in the news doesn’t.
I don’t work in government, or with government contracts, and I don’t do research or production which can be impacted by tariffs or shutdowns. I don’t have investments or own my own home. My taxes are different this year, but that’s because I got married in March; our overall rebate is lower, but that’s because my wife’s health expenses, when combined with my own, are not deductible. I also don’t have children, school-aged or otherwise. I’m as sure as I know my own name that if I did, the last two years would have been far different than they are now.
It has made me avoid national news almost entirely. Also most political discussions.
The shutdown affected me at work a little but not in a major way.
My effective tax rate went from 11% to 17% under Trump’s tax plan. When the withholding tax dropped last year I changed my W-4 to increase back to the previous level and a little bit more. Glad I did or I would have been writing a check to the IRS instead of my 2 figure tax refund.
Trump’s trade policies are hurting construction (and my industry) because steel has gone up significantly and contractors have less money to put towards other aspects – everything from carpeting to windows to cabinets to parking lots. It’s not as though this money is just moving around the industry or benefiting anyone in it, it’s just being siphoned off to pay for Trump’s tariffs. There’s a lot less work out there now than there was a year or two ago.
Fortunately, some of his other stuff I have some insulation from by living in a blue state. Trump may think that a dipshit who doesn’t know what the IDEA act is makes a great Sec of Education but I have some state and local level people who care about children with disabilities.
The election changed major parts of my life: my job, where I live, my finances, some of my personal relationships, the makeup of the neighborhood I used to live in, and my level of activity in state politics.
And, of course, like many other posters in this thread, my emotional state hasn’t been the best since November of 2016.
I’ve tried to make this post as short as possible, without leaving out any of the essentials.
My job
I’m an SAT/ACT tutor in the NY area.
Before the election, about half of my students were non-Americans who wanted to go to college in the US. After the election, I lost almost all my international students. They no longer wanted to go to school in the US, so there was no need for my help. Some of the families I worked with told me that they were now planning to leave or avoid the US entirely. They had opportunities elsewhere, and the USA no longer felt very welcoming.
I’ve managed to bounce back from losing half of my students. But that sudden change in who I work with, and how I ended up with a very different student base, brought about lots of other major life changes. I’m doing OK now, but the transition was rough. I miss my former life.
My neighborhood in NYC
My area was targeted by ICE in the winter of 2017. I, myself, wasn’t in danger; I’m a natural-born citizen, as are all my living relatives. But plenty of my neighbors disappeared, leaving what felt like weird, eerily quiet, empty holes where their presence ought to be. And, of course, you couldn’t ask too many questions; if someone was in hiding, you didn’t want to risk exposing them.
Many businesses closed or limited their services. Delivery, in particular, became an issue for a while. Every time someplace closed, or was having trouble, you always wondered why. Of course, small businesses go under all the time. But, after the ICE raids, you stopped thinking “Well, I guess they had trouble balancing the books,” or “Dammit. They had the best chicken over rice,” and started thinking, “Oh, crap. I hope everyone’s OK.”
There was a general sense of fear, and it showed in everyday interactions. People turned down their stereos much more quickly when they got complaints, for fear that police attention would turn into an immigration raid. Conversely, you were likely to think twice about calling the police for any kind of my-neighbor-is-being-a-pain kind of thing, because you didn’t want a petty dispute to ruin somebody’s life.
I smelled less pot on the street, saw fewer people jumping the turnstiles. (There were signs all over saying that turnstile-jumping wasn’t going to be prosecuted any longer, but people instinctively kept a low profile.) The churro ladies and subway mariachis became rarer. In spring, many of the usual street vendors failed to materialize, and the ones who did all wore their permits prominently, in case anyone hassled them.
Gentrification, already underway, started to accelerate. I didn’t notice it right away, but by summer, you could see the effects. As families disappeared, many small-time landlords were under sudden pressure to sell or find new tenants. You’d think that, by the law of supply and demand, rents would go down as non-luxury units suddenly became vacant. Instead, we ended up with more rapid hipsterization and up-marketization (if that’s a word) than we’d expected.
Personal relationships
Like many other Dopers posting in this thread, I found out that some of my facebook friends, neighbors, and relatives were either willfully clueless or horribly racist. That sucked. And, like many other people posting this thread, I’ve made a conscious effort to be nicer to people.
I’ve lost an IRL friend–one who I really miss sometimes–over the fact that I became politically active, but she didn’t. (And, no–I didn’t harangue her about politics or the need to protest. She has a touch of social anxiety, and I don’t. She’d said before that my ability to talk to strangers and to push for what I want made her feel bad about herself. I think my political activity made that worse for her, and so she stopped talking to me.)
But I also learned that some people were a lot cooler than I’d expected. That was pleasantly surprising and gives me hope.
Political activity
I figured that there’s not much I can do about national politics. I’m in a blue Congressional district, and both of my senators (Schumer and Gillibrand) are pretty blue.
I’ve become more active on the state level, though. I think there are some particularly exciting possibilities for this legislative term, and I’d like to make the most of them. I haven’t been as politically active as I’d like in 2019 yet, but I’ll change that soon.
Well, I can start with some positives. The change in tax law is going to be hugely beneficial to me. Friends of mine that I have only been distantly connected to, and who are liberal like me, have suddenly not only been more in contact, but we actually hang out a lot more. I’ve also bonded with coworkers that I didn’t have much of a relationship with before.
On the other hand, friends and relatives, particularly ones in Texas, are sharing a lot more political and racist bullshit on Facebook. These are people who for decades kept these impulses in check, apparently, but now it’s open season. We also have friends here in Massachusetts who we have generally gotten along with great for almost 20 years, but recently they have felt the urge to to recite bullshit talking points they got from Fox news whenever we get together to play cribbage. We’re supposed to see them this weekend, and I am dreading it.
ETA: A couple of other things related to my kids. One of my kids had clearly been drifting toward a sort of libertarian/conservative mindset after a couple of years in college, but that has reversed drastically. Another positive! The other kid has become politically active and is already thinking about whose Dem campaign he wants to work on in 2020.