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Help!

 I’d rather just send out pictures of puppies and birds, … but uninvited thoughts keep popping into my head. I think, for analysis, I can split the in the 2016 presidential election voters into three kinds.  There were people who supported Trump.  There were people who didn’t support Trump.  And there were the Trump-curious.  The curious didn’t know if they really wanted Trump, but figured it was time to try something different. I think the Trump supporters still support him.  I think the people who didn’t support him still don’t.  I don’t think anyone is still curious. 
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I’m confused

 I can’t figure out when independence is a good thing and when it’s a bad thing without a playbook, and I don’t have a playbook. Our independence; the United States of America declaring independence from the British Empire; that was a good thing.  We were a population with common interests wanting to break free from a system that didn’t work to our benefit.  We revel in our independence and celebrate it every year. Independence for the Catalonian region of Spain?  That’s different.  It’s not a good thing.  Independence for the Kurds in Iraq?  No bueno.  We declared our independence then fought a war to secure it.  These are populations trying to separate by peaceful democratic means, but both the referendums have been declared illegal in their home countries.  Do you have to fight a war to prove you really mean it? I’m sure glad it was a good idea for the U.S. to declare independence, and we did.  Separation might be inconvenient for the mother country, and I suspect it was for England when the colonies left, but I don’t understand why it is a bad idea for other states or regions to do the same thing it was a good idea for us to do.  
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I could be wrong now

  …but what this statement says to me is that the Vice President supports the First Amendment right to protest perceived injustice peacefully, as long as the people protesting do it the way he prefers. (It also says to me, he had to fly a long way to walk into a situation he knew was going to happen, so he could be offended.)  
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Rain

 A flash of lightning.  A clap of thunder.  A downpour.  We head for the door.  We want to be outside on the deck, as close as we can get to the rain without actually being right in it.  Even when the storm is not a thunderstorm, we sit outside and listen to the sound, savor the clean fresh air, feel the spray. Funny, we don’t remember ever delighting in the rain like that when we lived in Seattle, but rain in Colorado, rain here in South Texas, that a whole different thing.