Well, Harris was wrong. Apparently we are going back. For nearly 250 years we have been on a highway of progress that was filled with traffic jams, potholes, and crashes, but we slowly fought our way through it all bit by bit over the years. Now we have reached a blockade in the highway where a mob with MAGA hats is telling us to u-turn to the other side and drive back the way we came.
Trump will remake the presidency into an autocracy. Fealty is all that matters because it feeds his ego and that’s what people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) do. That means that anyone or any organization or any foreign nation must kiss the ring or be discarded. Within our country, it means that states that don’t play by his rules will lose funding – like California losing funding for fire-fighting. Cisgender white men will be fine as long as they are in the right states and don’t express opposition to Dear Leader Trump. Everyone else is screwed. Even if policies won’t hit the vulnerable right away, you can be sure that his electoral victory will embolden the thugs that buy into slogans like “America is for Americans”. And remember that the Federalist Society will tell Trump who to appoint to the Supreme Court so we will be stuck with an ultra-conservative activist Supreme Court for a generation.
But Trump’s win won’t just redefine the United States. It will reshape the world. Trump’s idiotic “American First” mentality is only about the short-term with no thought given to the long-term. That means that Ukraine is screwed. Gaza is screwed. NATO is screwed. Under Trump’s rule, the US will stop helping those allies and leave them to fend for themselves. Wars may end but it will only paper over the real strife and lead to long-term instability. Climate change will accelerate because again, Trump’s idiotic policy is only looking at the short term. And in this way, it’s somewhat ironic that the man who thinks we should colonize Mars has somehow found his way into supporting the guy that will ruin Earth.
I’ve used this analogy before but it bears repeating and expansion. I feel like Simba in the Lion King. Scar has killed Mufasa and ascended to power. He has made a deal with the hyenas and he has taken over Pride Rock. The color has now washed out of the world replaced with grays indicating the dark times that are coming. Except in this case, Simba can’t return to topple Scar because Scar is protected by the rest of the pride, entirely unaware that they are dooming their own pride. And even when Scar eventually dies of old age, the movement he has started will feed on itself to continue.
I grew up believing that right wins in the long run. My parents reinforced that. My Boy Scout troop reinforced that. I play by the rules because it’s the right thing to do in society. Eventually, if you are in the wrong, you will be called out on it; the truth will catch up to you; you will be held accountable. Trump’s entire adult life has been escaping accountability and proving that wrong. I became really invested in him eventually being held accountable for all the evil he has done. I thought that if I stayed informed, paid attention to the news, periodically had a pithy retort or posted some solid commentary, I could somehow influence the world and help nudge things in the right direction. Or at least the world would go in the right direction and I could feel like I was there with the world. But as Trump is now the apparent President-elect, I feel gutted. My fundamental view of the world has been shown to be wrong. Liars and cheats do win in the long run and will never be held accountable because of their wealth and influence.
Here’s a third analogy – I feel like I’m on a football team that has been spending years trying to move the ball forward. The opponents constantly cheat and the refs side with them anyway and we get nowhere and sometimes lose ground. But we keep trying because that’s what you do. However now the other team has the ball and they have stacked their roster with goons who are only there to cause turmoil. We know that every play we get on the field will be a losing play and we’ll get driven deeper and deeper backward and we’ll take a beating as it happens. There no longer is any point to going on the field and while hope had kept us getting out there before, hope has been replaced by helplessness; there’s just no point in trying to be in the game when the whole system is stacked against you.
I remember when the second plane hit the World Trade Center. That was the first time that I had a horrible feeling in my gut that the world took a turn for the worse. Evil had made itself known to me in a way I had not previously experienced. The next time I had that feeling was when the United States military took down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Iraq – that would prove to be less consequential, perhaps, but I had that same feeling in my gut that the world had again taken a turn for the worse. The third time I had that feeling was when Trump was elected the first time. At that time, people like me were thought to be overreacting to the election but over time, it was clear just how bad Trump was for the world. When he lost to Biden and the Capitol was attacked, that was the next time I had that feeling – witnessing violence in relation to a political defeat was a new low for this country. But both Trump’s 2016 win and the January 6 Capitol insurrection both seemed like aberrations.
Now that it is clear that Trumpism has infected national politics in a permanent way, I’ve got that feeling again. And it is so much worse because it shows that the 2016 win and insurrection were not aberrations. This is the USA. All of those “that’s not who we are” comments were wrong – it’s exactly who we are and I don’t want any part of it. While #TrumpWillNeverBeMyPresident, I really don’t have any place to go that will be safe from him. Even if I could move to a hut in the Himalayas, climate change brought on by his inevitably destructive policies would find me there.
We’ve lost our democracy. A cult leader was elected who is going to tear the place down. And we’ve shown that a democracy just can’t work. How could you possibly trust people to vote for the right leader when they are so supremely gullible as to vote against their own best interest. The opposition would retort that they voted for what was important to them. But they didn’t; they voted for what they thought was important to them because they had been brainwashed. The opposition would then question who is brainwashing and who is telling the truth. And to that I would answer that truth is truth. If you don’t understand how to know what is true and what is not, you are part of the problem. And giving people that don’t understand truth the ability to vote in an election is the problem with democracy.
I am sure there were many times in the past when this country’s voters were duped en masse. When a President was elected through a country-wide fleecing. And yet, you have to feel like any time that may have happened before, the President who was elected then actually did President – did the things that were expected of them with a general sense of trying to do right by the country – maybe they weren’t good at it but they were at least trying (thinking of you, George W Bush). Also, at no point in history was the world so intertwined as it is now where the President of the United States’s actions influence so many. Trump being elected President a second time is truly the most colossal con of all time and shows just how flawed the whole premise of a Democracy is.
I’m stuck on what to tell my kids. Not just about what it means that the worst human we’ve ever seen was elected to the most powerful post in the world but also how to make their way in this world knowing that awful people succeed. Maybe the most important thing is to solidify in their memories the way the country used to be under Obama so they know when they are adults how far down the country will have fallen and that it shouldn’t be that way. And maybe their generation or their kids’ generation will be able to start turning things around. And although I may not live long enough to see the arc of history bending toward justice, maybe my kids will.
Will Trump last 4 years in office? Will his dementia worsen to the point where his cabinet pulls the 25th amendment lever? Will he do something so awful that even the Republican controlled Senate will impeach him? Will he die of natural causes? Will he die of unnatural causes? Any of those seem possible but none of them seem likely. And what is waiting for us if he were not to make it 4 years? JD Vance? All of the ass-hole policy of Trump but just without the NPD and with eye-liner instead of bronzer. So I guess it would be an upgrade? I’m not even sure that 2028 is the end for Trump. What if Trump starts a war that he says he needs to stay in office to finish? Will his newly refreshed Supreme Court rubber stamp his interpretation of why an election can’t be held in 2028? What if he convinces people that he really did win the 2020 election so he needs to stay in office for an extra term? All legit questions that I am going to file away here and try not to think about for a while.
I’ve been emotionally beat up through the last decade where elections go badly but I push forward with the expectation that the right result is just around the corner. I honestly never saw it as optimism – just a belief that all of the fellow humans that are with me on this ride would eventually see the light. My wife broke before me. She had become cynical over the last decade in what I saw as a defense mechanism to protect her against the inevitable dips in progress. But I’m now broken too. And I’ve fallen hard. I think the only way for me to emotionally heal is to entirely unplug. To become disconnected from the country and the world and just focus on what’s around me that I can really control.
And therefore, I’m going on a political sabbatical. Unplugging from the news outside of my community, turn off the CNN recordings, and unsubscribe from the podcasts. Even stop watching the Daily Show and SNL because they just won’t be funny any more.
I know this will seem like giving up and/or giving in. And maybe it is. But if you keep climbing up on to the hill only be knocked down every time, at what point do you think, “maybe I’ll just sit at the bottom of the hill and tend to the garden here”.
