Trump

“The most effective means we have for drowning out the hateful minority that currently holds sway over our government is to turn out in droves on election days and put into office people whom we know share our values and will represent our interests. … Only by doing so can we reclaim our democracy from the vile, greedy, spineless, self-serving cretins whom we’ve allowed to take over.”

The preceding is an excerpt from a piece I published in January titled “Here’s the Thing: A Trump presidency — or one like it — was inevitable.” The premise I set forth is that the many malignant factions of society that have become more noticeable and emboldened during Trump’s presidency exist not because Trump is president, but rather that Trump is president specifically because those factions of society exist and have been allowed to flourish relatively unchecked.

Upon reading said piece, an anonymous reader responded thusly:

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One of Donald Trump’s biggest problems — and, granted, they are legion — is his utter inability to say “I was wrong.” I, on the other hand, never pass up an opportunity to publicly flog myself … and so, without further ado:

I was wrong.

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Remember when I wrote the following words back in February?

Donald Trump’s presidency is going to end badly. In just three short weeks, he has made Nixon, the most disgraced president of the modern age, look like an Eagle Scout. Do not doubt for a second that there is a long and ugly fall in Mr. Trump’s future.

Now, I am not the type of person to say “I told you so,” but … oh, who am I kidding?

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Look, I get it: You got caught up in all of that “No more politics-as-usual!” mania, right? You wanted to “Drain the swamp!” You bought into the Right Wing’s vilification of “Crooked Hillary,” and for some (probably sexist) reason, you couldn’t stomach the thought of her being your president, so you cast a vote for Donald Trump in the hopes that he really would “Make America White Great Again.” I get it. I mean, I’m not giving you a pass for it — you’re still a shortsighted fool at best and a greedy, misogynistic, xenophobic, homophobic racist at worst — but I get it.

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Wow. Waaaaahhhhhow. The dude who wrote that previous post was pissed, huh? Daaaaaamn.

Look, what I wrote in that previous post is what spilled out of me in the immediate aftermath of Tuesday’s election, at a time when I was in, shall we say, a state of heightened emotions … but the main thrust of my words remains: Whether or not Donald Trump and/or the bulk of those people who voted for him intended for the forces of hate and intolerance to interpret his electoral victory as an endorsement of their own sick, twisted agendas, those forces — many of whom heretofore at least had the decency to keep their disgusting views on the down-low — now feel energized, emboldened and fully entitled to make life hell for anyone who does not look and think like them.

Since publishing that post yesterday, I’ve re-read it a number of times … and, earlier today, I was toying with the idea of taking it down … or at least toning it down. And in the middle of contemplating that approach, I had this unexpected exchange with a close friend from Massachusetts:

So, um, yeah … I stand by what I wrote yesterday.

I understand why so many previously sane people made the insane decision to vote for Trump … and yet, despite understanding why, I do not understand how they could vote for Trump … for all of the reasons I laid out in my previously posted rant.

I suppose it’s possible that a lot of good and decent people voted for Trump … and I can only assume that those good and decent people simply failed to recognize just how catastrophic their decision would be for others, if not for themselves … and that is what I can not abide. I can not abide what I believe amounts to sheer selfishness. Voting for Donald Trump was, at best, a very selfish thing to do. And I abhor selfishness … especially when that selfishness hurts others.

I keep reminding myself that there very well may never have been a President Obama if not for the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush. Whether or not it was worth the cost is debatable … and the cost we are about to pay for a Trump presidency seems unfathomable … but I believe that, whatever the final tally, the payoff will be another historic victory of our own next time around. (Can you say “President Warren”? Might as well start practicing. If nothing else, it feels a hell of a lot better than saying “President Trump.”)

These are dark times … and we almost surely are about to experience firsthand that whole “it’s going to get worse before it gets better” thing … but I believe it eventually will get better … as long as enough of us are willing to make it so. In the meantime, as I said yesterday: Let’s all look out for each other, m’kay? Yes, things suck right now … but we are not alone. In fact, we are the majority. Let’s not hesitate to act like it, and let’s not hesitate to wield that power when next we are presented wth the opportunity to do so.

You know that pivotal scene in “The Matrix” when a hairless Neo wakes up in a gel-filled pod and realizes that, up until that moment, he had absolutely no idea just how awful was the world around him, and just how misguided was he about the truth of his own existence? Yeah, that’s me, right now … minus the “hairless” part. (You’re welcome for that visual, though.)

I apologize in advance if none of the words I am about to type make a shred of sense, but I am deliriously sleep-deprived and deeply rattled by the recent discovery that I now exist in an alternate universe where an angry mob of millions just handed the nuclear codes to an abhorrent, vile, vulgar, uninformed, ill-tempered, bad-humored, intellectually challenged, racist, sexist, misogynistic, xenophobic, greedy, selfish, thin-skinned, petulant, pathetic little bully man-child because “Fuck you, you liberal-elites and all your reasonable, logical, tolerant, fact-based book-learnin’!”

We just witnessed a massive road-rage fit channeled into the ballot box. Progress and tolerance innocently sped in front of the Archie Bunkers of the electorate, and they responded by running us off the road, taking a crowbar out of their trunk and smashing our windshield … without any fucking concept of the price that they themselves (and the people they love) will now have to pay for their shortsighted, poorly thought-out temper tantrum.

Listen, I admit it: I completely, thoroughly, 100% underestimated Trump’s chances. In no way, shape or form did I think he stood a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the presidency … so much so that I sent to bed on election night my 11-year-old daughter (who struggles with anxiety and had taken to saying “I’m afraid” when considering the possibility of a President Trump) with a virtual GUARANTEE that he had absolutely NO CHANCE of winning.

I am the guy who not only never, ever, ever counts a chicken before it hatches, but who also forbids anyone in my presence from trying to convince me that the egg I’m holding — the one with the beak sticking out of it, making peeping sounds, and clocking in at [proper body temperature of poultry] degrees — is sure to bear a chicken … and yet I strode about the house Tuesday night in full confidence that the Blue Team would beat the Red Team. So, yes, I am shocked by the outcome.

But more than shocked, what I truly am is saddened by the outcome. Disheartened. And, at the risk of sounding way too fucking impressed with myself, I have realized that my sadness is not so much about Trump becoming the president, but about how his (non-majority, electoral-college-based) victory will be interpreted by the most unsavory of those who voted for him, and how that interpretation will result in very bad things for very many people for a very long time.

Let’s face facts: I am a 46-year-old white male who lives in an affluent Philadelphia suburb whose residents are 98% white and whose median income is roughly $130,000 per year. If I completely insulated myself from the news media for the next four years, my life, on a strictly personal, day-to-day basis, will not, in all probability, look significantly different under a President Trump. So why am I so deeply, profoundly upset about this election? Because the man who won it did so by playing to the worst parts of human nature. He did so by stoking the fires of sexism and racism and intolerance. He pitched a product based in no small part on fear and hatred. And, sadly, enough people bought it.

I feel confident in saying that more racists, more bigots, more sexists, more homophobes, more misogynists, more xenophobes and, in general, more profoundly misguided and stunningly ill-informed ignoramuses voted for Trump than for Clinton. And while many of those people’s own vile, hateful, backward-assed agendas aren’t necessarily anything that Donald Trump would truly champion or endorse (maybe … who knows?), those misguided, ill-informed, racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted ignoramuses will interpret his victory as the country’s stamp of approval on their vile, hateful, backward-assed agendas … and it will embolden those people to crank up the volume and openly spew their hateful, hurtful views through what they believe is a bullhorn of legitimacy.

Don’t believe me? Think I’m exaggerating? I’m not.

See this despicable, mouth-breathing fuckhead with the pro-Hitler book on the shelf behind him?

He was on NPR today expressing his delight over Trump’s victory, proudly spewing his racist views, and claiming that Trump’s election should be seen as a clear mandate for the U.S. to purge itself of minorities and become a “white, Christian” country. You can click here to listen for yourself. It’s absolutely fucking heinous … and instead of seeing himself as a put-upon fringe lunatic to whom most people won’t listen, he now believes he and his racist views are a politically legitimized truth upon which America must now act.

There are Facebook posts popping up left and right demonstrating the uptick in blatant, unabashed racism:

I also saw plenty of equally disturbing descriptions of incidents experienced by women who were subjected to sexual assaults in the name of Donald Trump … but, you know, I can only download and post so much of this shit before it starts to make me want to curl up in the fetal position and cry, so … enough already. (But, hey, if you need more, you can find a whole website full of similar such things here: WhyWeAreAfraid.com.)

Now, do I believe that everyone who voted for Trump is a sexist, racist, bigoted, homophobic, hate-mongering, intolerant rube? Absolutely not. In fact, in a disturbing admission of just how close to home this touches for me, here is my own father’s post-election Facebook status:

My father is a retired, blue-collar, high-school educated, former union member, Vietnam-era Navy veteran, one generation removed from Syrian/Lebanese immigrants, who over and over again has been duped into voting against his own best interests. Do I think my father voted for Trump with evil intent? No, I do not. I think he is a decent (but horrifically misguided) person. I also think he, like many of those who cast votes for Donald Trump, is simply a frustrated, working-class American who (rightly) believes that the political system in this country is broken and that the politicians in Washington no longer represent him and other average Americans. But I also think that, regardless of his justified discontent, if he truly was concerned about his three granddaughters … and his daughter … and his three nieces … and his wife … and his daughter-in-law … he probably shouldn’t have voted for the “grab-her-by-the-pussy,” overturn-Roe-v.-Wade guy.

Cleaning house is one thing … but burning the house down while you and everyone else are still standing in it is a pretty fucking moronic way to solve the problem … and I believe that all of the decent, understandably frustrated Americans who decided to do so anyway are as equally to blame for the mess they’ve unleashed upon all of us (and themselves) as are the sick, hateful fucks who voted for Trump because they believe he shares their vomit-inducing values. (And why shouldn’t they think that? He gave them every reason to do so.)

Those truly despicable citizens who voted for Trump as a way to legitimize their hate are getting exactly what they wanted … for now. To them, I say, “Enjoy this brief taste of quasi-victory, you cowardly, disgusting little lowlifes … because, in actuality, this is nothing more than an enormous outing ceremony that allows us to identify exactly who and what we’re fighting against. So thank you for that.”

To those who helped the former group by casting a protest vote that I believe many of you will live to regret, I say, “Fuck you very much, you shortsighted douche nozzles.”

The good news is: Trump’s presidency will be an impotent thing, because he did not win the popular vote. We, the majority, are still a progressive, multicolored, multicultural, open-minded, kind, compassionate, inclusive, forward-thinking group that will right the ship during the midterm elections in 2018 and the presidential election in 2020. Until then, let’s all look out for each other.