Extolling the virtues of an exclusive Caribbean cruise offered to readers of the Nation, a leftist weekly, novelist Barbara Kingsolver commented: "It is such a relief to be able to sit at a dinner table and know that you are not going to hear a sexist joke or a racist remark about the wait staff. There are so many Republicans out there. You just don't know where they'll turn up."

In a later issue, Kingsolver wrote: "We now have a new administration that's hostile to the things I love most: human kindness, the dignity of diversity, and the wild glory of life on earth." She warns: "Civil rights and reproductive choice I suppose we could win back in time (though not the lives lost along the way), but the waters and wild lands devastated will never come back."

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