Peter Greene is furious. He was fully prepared to start criticizing Hillary Clinton, but he was caught off guard by Trump’s election. What can he tell his students? Should he shield them from the hate and prejudice unleashed during the election?

“I want to be able to tell my black students, my brown students, my gay students, my female students that I’m sorry, that this giant F you delivered directly at them is not what this country is, except that, of course, we just elected this guy, and apparently this is what this country is. I’ve watched the gleeful raised fist, the angry yell, the happy anticipation of telling Those Damned [fill in the blank with your favorite Other] that they can go straight to hell and we are just going to stick it to them now, you betcha. As I contemplate tomorrow’s work day, I have to wonder things like how my coworker who is spending the night at a “Build That F—— Wall!” party will interact with our co-worker whose husband, the father of her child, whose wedding we all attended, is Hispanic.

“This election has stripped us all of so much. While I am generally perceived as liberal or progressive, the fact is that I come from a conservative background and there are many conservative principles that matter to me– yet I saw the GOP leaders abandon virtually every principle they ever pretended to have. I have been churched most of my life– heck, spent many years as a church choir director– and I have been astonished to see Christians jettison beliefs that they have supposedly– but apparently falsely– held for ages, just so they can– I don’t know. Win? And the Democrats, my own adopted party (you can’t vote in primaries as an independent here) have continued to prove that they get stupider and stupider every time, dropping their principles and constituents so that they, too, can get their hands on big piles of money. I hope that this will finally be enough of a shock to wake them the hell up.”