Self Inflicted

The first few days after the election were some of the most bizarre days I've seen in America. Liberals and discerning conservatives walked around in a daze. It was, by far, the least celebratory I've seen the whole of America after an election.

After all, what is there to celebrate? The latent sexism that caused a flawed but supremely qualified and competent candidate to lose to a compulsive liar who longs to bang his own daughter? That false narratives, weird conspiracy theories and a self-defeating anti-intellectual strain that spread through social media like wildfire beat out evidence, facts and truth? That a bigot "defeated" someone who made sure black kids could go to school? That someone endorsed by the KKK and beloved by the dark, racist forces of the alt-right will take the reigns of power from our first black president?

It's equal parts comedy and tragedy.

Boy, have I tried to understand the mental gymnastics that went into voting for Trump. I really have, before and after the election. Fine, I'm a liberal. It would be awfully hard top persuade any liberal to vote for a conservative, but I've heard compelling arguments for the Romneys and McCains of the world. Trump though? Zero. None. There's not one justifiable reason to have voted for him.

"I just want to see what happens when we put a non-politician in there."

An understandable sentiment, but that takes precedence over instead voting for someone with a moral compass and having intellect and wisdom? (Answer: no, it doesn't.)

"He just tells it like it is."

N-O-P-E. Trump either has an inability to tell the truth or outright can't discern it. Both are profoundly troubling and an automatic disqualifier for the presidency. At one point it was documented Trump told a falsehood once every three minutes and 15 seconds. But hey, it's 2016 and the Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year was, fittingly, "post-truth." I guess I just need to get with the times.




"Trump is going to negotiate better trade deals because he knows the plight of the common man; he's the champion of the working class."

The same champion who repeatedly stiffed his working class contractors? Yes, the man who lives in the top of a tower plated with gold in the most expensive real estate in the world has SOOOO much in common with you. He totally understands your problems -- because people like him helped create them. Every time I hear Trump propose a tax cut or vows to fight minimum wage increases from his luxury Mar-a-Lago resort I know it's because he's right there in the trenches with me.

"I'm not racist for voting for Donald Trump."

That very well may be true for the majority of voters, but the truth (there I go using that outdated word again) of the matter is he's a well documented bigot who spewed vitriolic, divisive rhetoric, blamed "the other" for our ills -- that he often exaggerated or outright made up -- and proposed discriminatory policies that make zero sense and certainly aren't grounded in love.

Dude refused to rent black people homes even after the Department of Justice -- whom he'll be nominating a new Attorney General for -- rules against him. He refused to hire blacks for his casinos even though they were often located in black neighborhoods. Took him over 24 hours to disavow the support of the KKK, who, along with the alt-right, repeatedly endorsed him. The man repeatedly retweets white supremacist and anti-Semitic material. He wants to ban an entire region, Islam, from entering the United States, which is not only unconstitutional but also incredibly powerful propaganda material for some of our most ardent enemies. Tried to delegitimize our first black president by claiming, as usual, with zero evidence whatsoever that Obama was born outside the US. (He, as cowards do, backtracked from that sentiment just before the election and tried to shift blame to Obama's former Secretary of State.)

Trump voters, I don't get to ascribe my qualities to Clinton. I used to be in the military and had an interim top-secret security clearance. Just because I never conducted military business from my own private server doesn't mean she didn't either. That's just not, and it's depressing this has to be said, how reality works. So great, you're not racist -- but you did vote for one.

This one really does tickle my funny bone: "Mike, listen, I know how bad Trump is, but you Democrats backed me into a corner by nominating Clinton. She's just the worst person ever."

1) please see the above and try to explain to me how she's worse. 2) she wasn't my first, second or twelfth choice, but she's not this boogeyman that 30+ years of lies and propaganda successfully made her out to be.

Whitewater? Partisan hit job. Benghazi? Multiple Republican-lead committees found nothing outside symbolic wrong doing, a pure witch hunt. "More like KILLARY Clinton!" Where's your evidence? Oh wait, you don't have any. You just flock to conspiracy theorist websites that masquerade as legitimate news. (But any legitimate news that contradicts your biases are just the ramblings of an elitist liberal media!) Fine, be pissed about the shady email server issue. But why do you obsess over the splinter in her eye over the orange log in yours?

But at least one of your own saved us from that child sex trade operation she was running out of a DC pizza parlor.

Trump voters, I find myself going from angry to being befuddled with you. More often than not, I simply pity you. I don't know how you overlooked all the compelling evidence and warning signs that Trump is both unqualified and a legitimate threat to the Republic; that's your cross to bear for the next four years. I doubt you'll make it eight years because truth and reality prevail and you'll come to find you've been swindled by an idiot savant career conman who instead of asking you to invest your money this time bamboozled you into investing your hopes and dreams. Trust me, your ROI will be quite poor. You'll come to realize you forfeited so many of the past eight-years hard earned gains and you'll want him out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave and back in his golden tower.

That alone won't be enough.

If we rid ourselves of Trump but continue to let fake news and false narrative live to trump reality and, sadly, common decency, another self-serving demagogue will take his place. I can already see this emerging narrative where, "Well, we tried, but no matter who we put in the swamp corrupts them." Nope, he was already intolerably and all-encompassingly corrupt. Furthermore, stop blaming elected officials when the onus is on us, the electorate. DC is only as swampy as we collectively allow it.

Historians are going to be baffled as why we committed this self inflicted gunshot to the foot. There was no reason. In the Information Age far too many of us allowed ourselves to be duped by conspiracy theories and propagandists who stand to gain nothing from reality. That's beyond tragic. If he even garnered 30% of the popular vote instead of his 49%, this would be a crisis. Now there's an exponentially worse price we'll all have to pay now that he's been elected:

We'll be our most divided since the Civil War, we're going to experience deregulation and a recession of some magnitude, we've fortified an obscene amount of moral high ground on the world stage, bigots have their choice as the most powerful man in the world, his fingers on the nuclear codes and millions of parents will have to explain to our kids how their bad behavior is unacceptable but when Trump does it, it's presidential.

Wow ... And I'm the furthest thing from a "catastrophist."

We can't undo the damage already done, but we can mitigate as much as we can in coming four years by showing he has little-to-no mandate to lead and by electing good people, from all parties on all levels, to keep a blustering, ignoramus Trump in check.

Most of you Trump voters are a good person, but "a person is smart; people are stupid." Your bizarre group-think did America a profound disservice -- especially the younger among us. There's no gettign around it. Please, don't let it happen again, for your sake and ours.