Election Postmortem

Voters of all kinds gleefully choose fascist clown over capable woman of color. Is this the end of America? Do we even care anymore?

I had to skip my Wednesday rant this week because, well, it was a very long night. (It would have been an anti-Woke Wednesday post—all things “woke” are truly dead and buried under a tidal wave of red.) I’ve argued since Trump’s unlikely victory in 2016 that Democrats and leftwing activists need to abandon virtue-signaling and performative outrage in favor of economic issues. (The soothsayer Senator Bernie Sanders is fuming at the moment, and who can blame him?)

My own outrage is far from performative: It will take me weeks, if not months, to come down from my post-election hangover. (It turns out that outrage is even more disorienting than too much alcohol.) In response I plan to attack—with words if they’re lucky—those parties I determine to be the primary perpetrators of this electoral massacre. You may have gathered that I’m targeting establishment Democrats for this first post-election freakout. The mere mention of Bernie Sanders should make them run for cover. (They fear him more than Trump after all.)

If you’re anything like me and can’t calm down enough to read much further, the summary is as follows: Fuck the Democratic establishment. It’s time we pulled the proverbial plug on grandma. She’s just not capable of surviving without life support.

And there’s no more life support coming for Democrats. The machine is broken beyond repair. It’s not even worth trashing Office Space-style.

Sure, Democratic apologists can spout high-minded bullshit like “disappointment is the other side of hope” and promise to “continue the fight” all they want. I’m not buying it, and you shouldn’t either. They are the worst form of losers—the kind that never learn from defeat and gaslight anyone with the nerve to tell them. They will continue to appeal only to the “woke” among us. That’s the dial the broken Democratic machine is stuck on.

Despite what many establishment types think, not every liberal was awoken by George Floyd’s death at the brutal hands of a white police officer. Some of us already had our eyes open and didn’t need ten minutes of graphic cell-phone footage to determine that we live in a racist police state. America has been this way (or worse) since the first slaves were brought over in the 1600s. No surprise it’s still this way in 2024. Some of us—we should call ourselves the “pre-woke”—have been waiting for a true Democratic alternative since at least Gore v. Bush. And some of us didn’t blame election rigging or Nader as much as we blamed Gore (and Kerry thereafter) for not being Nader.

But the difference in 2024 is—as the great Bernie Sanders pointed out in a Wednesday communique—even blacks and Latinos aren’t sold on the Democratic alternative. I was ready that morning to flagellate my fellow white men with all the scorn I could muster, but I was stopped in my tracks when I saw the exit poll data. If it’s true, this country is in far worse shape than I thought.

How the fuck could this happen…AGAIN?! In 2016, they lost the support of a majority of white female voters (who supported Trump), and now they can’t even keep the rest of the petty tyrant’s chosen scapegoats under their umbrella. How can they be so pathetic? And how is it that only a once-in-a-generation pandemic could save the Democrats in 2020? I’m convinced Biden would have lost without the death of so many Republican voters (who refused vaccination)—not to mention the sluggish and schizophrenic response from the Trump regime.

Is American politics just meaningless bullshit? It certainly feels more like a sick drama—or even a horror-comedy than real life. (I won’t compare it to a reality show because I don’t watch that kind of shit.) Why not just hold election day 2028 on Halloween? Get it the hell over with a little sooner?

The question still remains: Will Trump ever face any real consequences? He once said he could shoot someone on the streets of New York City and not lose any support. This once-crazy statement has turned into a truism. He can do no wrong in America. Forget his bad manners, cognitive glitches, fascist inclinations, utter stupidity, sexism, racism, whatever-ism: Trump can do no wrong in America.

America has spoken: It has zero fucks to give about anything—except maybe the price of milk. I can’t imagine explaining these election results to the next generation or the one thereafter. Extraterrestrial visitors would never understand. (They would just assume that apes evolved from us.) Some things really are impossible to put into words. Yet, if I had to keep it simple, I would assert that Trump is America in far too many ways—like it or not. (I fucking hate it.)

I don’t know if out-of-touch eggheads like me will ever come to terms with Trumpism—no matter how many books we read. We prefer smart, capable, and practical politicians. We want them to solve problems rather than invent them, alleviate fear rather than stoke it, build and unite rather than destroy and divide. We can criticize the system for failing us and others—but we aren’t nihilists. We don’t want to blow everything up because we’re unsatisfied. We play the long game and fight to preserve whatever good exists, knowing a progressive revolution is light-years away. Perhaps light-decades away at this point.

Is this election result due to nihilism, ignorance, equal parts of both, or something else? Are people dumber now than in 2016? (Think Idiocracy—it’s the perfect time to rewatch it. A sequel better be on the way.)

I can understand 2016 to an extent. At least then Trump was a novelty of sorts. Nothing makes sense in 2024. I guess I should step out of my echo chamber and listen to the people I claim to fight for. Why not? Even if what I hear is bullshit, I’m sure it will be entertaining bullshit.

If the Dems won’t learn, at least I will: I will learn never to trust those fucking losers again. May they rot in whatever passes for hell in their godless, gutless universe.