Dark Times Ahead

Well, this one was a real kick in the sac. I think I’d rather have had the presidency stolen than accept that a majority of the country voted for a self-proclaimed Day One Dictator.

In 2016 I wrote this following that election:

November 8th, 2016 will go down in history as the day we stood up and declared that we are a small, fearful people, who would rather literally build walls than solve philosophical and economic problems.  It’s the day we rejected calm, well-reasoned decision-making for a carnival sideshow of bluster and bravado.

Why is it always the people who wrap themselves in the flag and venerate the Constitution are the ones who want to completely undo the very freedoms the Constitution provides?  They “love America,” but want to change her basic nature.

This time, it’s going to be worse because he will be surrounded by yes men, with nary a grownup to be seen in the room. There may be no stopping the damage he’s prepared to do to this country in pursuit of his own glorification and vengeance.

I know I had a bad feeling early on while watching the numbers come in. They kept saying to wait for more of the votes to be counted, but even where she was cruising, she always lagged behind Biden’s numbers. The longer it went on, the more dread amassed in my guts.

I kept waiting for that lifeline to appear, while all the peeps on my Twitter feed were saying, “Just wait, this is where we were last time and the late votes save us. But it never happened.

I went to bed around 12:30, right around the time they were saying that TFG’s lead in PA was more than they had votes left to count in Philly.

Director’s DVD Commentary: I guess I’m going to have to adopt a new non-name for “him.” For the moment, I’ll continue to use “TFG” only the F will mean something else.

Everyone’s asking the same thing, “How did this happen?” I know a lot has been written about this already, in the mere two days since Election Day. I intended to write my follow-up post on Wednesday, but I just didn’t have the heart to do it. Additionally, it doesn’t much matter now, does it? It’s done.

But here we are and I feel like I should put something out there, just to put an ending on it.

Here’s what I think happened.

The media delivered this victory to the GOP’s doorstep, by the constant sanitizing (or sane-washing) of TFG’s speeches and messaging. They never called a spade a spade and while propping up this maniac, demanded that his opponent be practically perfect, or at least cleave to the version of perfection they wanted.

Plus, the Right Wing Media outlets like Fox “News” were doing their thing to trumpet every perceived fault, blame everything bad on Democrats, and whitewash the bilge coming from their guy. These were military-grade persuasion techniques used on people who desperately wanted to believe their message. I spoke with people over the weekend, GOP supporters, who insisted that the economy was in the toilet and only TFG could fix it, all evidence to the contrary. Every argument he provided was straight off the Fox list of talking points.

They created the image of her as “Border Czar,” a position that never existed and a responsibility she never had, and spent her entire campaign attacking her for it.

They also worked hard to make people forget what a cluster-fuck his first term was, culminating in the deaths of over one million Americans due to his botched handling of COVID. By the time Fox was done, people actually believed those were the “good old days.”

Misplaced anger over the war in Gaza probably lost Michigan for the Dems, even though the next administration will be even worse for them. TFG doesn’t give a shit about people in Gaza. He’ll give the Israelis all the support they want.

Abortion wasn’t the factor we all hoped it would be and I called that out months ago, when the Red States were passing reproductive freedom guarantees. I said at the time, “There’s a big difference between voting for a single, stand-alone issue versus a name with a D beside it. You can vote for an issue without crossing a party line but not for a lousy Socialist Liberal Commie Democrat.” But team politics changes that, as evidenced by seeing people pass abortion guarantees while electing the very people from whom those rights need to be protected.

I will never understand the women who just voted to reduce their own standing in society, giving up the right to determine the use of their own bodies.

Latino men moving en masse to TFG is incomprehensible to me. I see all the analysis about how they come from a socially conservative culture but you’d think self-preservation might weigh heavier when the guy they’re supporting wants mass deportations. Do they think voting Republican somehow spares them? They’d better have their documentation stapled to their underwear when the troops start rounding up all the brown guys. I don’t think they’ll be too particular about who they detain. I’m envisioning a “pick’em all up now and sort’em out later” kind of vibe. But this feeds what I think is the primary issue.

Too many people won’t vote for a woman for president, especially a woman of color. You can see it in the results. She kept coming in below Biden’s numbers. She was his GD vice president! They make up the same Administration. Sure there are some minor differences but considering the opponent, how important were they?

The biggest difference was that of gender and there are too many people for whom that’s a deal breaker. I’m sure that was a factor in the Latino shift. In addition to being socially conservative, the ethos is patriarchal, so I’m betting that a lot of these guys feel that voting for a woman would make them less of a man. Less of a caveman, anyway.

Like many others, I’m not sure what I will do with this space. This political intrigue and coverage over the last decade has been a grind. Maybe I’ll do like my pal Hackwhacker and lay low for a while. Or maybe I’ll find something else to write about. Like the rest of us, I will have to figure it out as we go. We’ve got two months of sanity remaining.

See you on the other side.