Oy. He’s baaaack!
I woke up this morning dreading the day. I thought of the old Moody Blues song that ends with a poem whose first line is, “Breathe deep the gathering gloom”. And then The Wizard of Oz popped into my head, recalling the scene where the wicked witch rides on her broom spelling out the words, “SURRENDER DOROTHY”. But instead, my now befuddled brain conjured the image of the orange turd riding the broom and spelling out “SURRENDER DEMOCRACY”. And the dark image continued with the flying monkeys having the faces of Stephen Miller, Laura Loomer, pillow guy, Rudi, etc etc etc. But, in this version, the wicked witch wins! Where is Gwendolyn to save me from this hell on earth! The shoe thing isn’t working! I’m melting! Oh, what a wicked world!
Is there still no place like home? Can we still claim our country is the greatest democracy on the planet? Will we join the rest of the world’s goose-step toward authoritarian rule? Does our great experiment end after 248 years? If I binge on 4 seasons of “Emily in Paris” will this dreadful feeling go away? What the fuck America? Aren’t we better than this?
It was pretty obvious based on Kornacki’s early analysis that Donny Dumb-fuck, now President-elect Dumb-fuck, was gaining in most counties across the board. You would think the Latino tribe would have had enough of the a-hole after his abhorrent treatment of all humans, but especially Latinos, in his closing week of the campaign. But no, we have them partially to thank for the toilet backing up and the orange turd emerging from his cesspool of hate and division to take over the levers of power, now with the Senate as an additional lever of his authoritarian control. Oh woe is us.
But, as the saying goes, you get the government you deserve. While we may have deluded ourselves into thinking his first go around was an aberration, we need to look hard in the mirror, and face reality: aberrations do not happen twice. The orange clown got the last laugh. It may be too soon to understand the full breadth of his tribal and sub-tribal support. But, the fact that he won so convincingly in “majority minority” Florida, and not just with uneducated white guys. It seems as though he has built a multi-ethnic coalition of folks that became untrusting of our institutions, fed up with immigration out of control, and worried about the price of bacon. But, if we are honest with ourselves, it’s more than that. We must appreciate that democracy was indeed on the ballot, and a majority of our fellow Americans trust Republicans on the issue of democracy much more than they do Democrats. According to one exit poll in Pennsylvania, three out of four voters in the state believe that democracy in the United States is threatened; among those who do, it was Trump, not Harris, who had the edge.
And to some degree, I can’t blame them. The progressive wing of the Democrats, despite their lock step support of Kamala, deserve some of the blame. The “defund police”, open border, and other woke nonsense that Kamala deftly pivoted away from still provided ample ammunition to the right wing propaganda machinery, and helped establish in the vacuous minds of a majority of our fellow Americans that perhaps its the Democratic party that is outside of the American cultural mainstream.
As one of my fellow Substackers, Yascha Mounk, put it so succinctly:
I don’t know whether Harris’ failure to mitigate Democrats’ glaring political weaknesses was due to fear and indecision or due to ideological conviction and a distorted perception of reality. But I do know that the price that she—and the rest of the world—is paying for that failure goes by the name of Donald J. Trump.
The question is, what do we do now? While the image in the mirror may look a bit ugly and orange, it won’t always be so. Once the anger subsides, maybe after a few episodes of “Emily in Paris”, what can we do to right the ship? When whatever remains of the guard rails fail, what’s next?
Stand up. Speak up. Do not go quietly into the night without a fight. Remember the mortal words at the end of the Declaration of Independence, “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” Swear that you will not let this happen without your constant and loud voices of opposition. Do not surrender, Democracy. Make the words on Jefferson’s memorial your new mission statement: “for I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Amen.
Let’s be careful out there.
Brad out.
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