The Life in My Years

Warning: Rough language ahead.

After my recent post, I decided I needed some time away. I was poised to crack open the bottle of Polish vodka that I brought from Krakow for my son and to listen to hours of blues but I thought better of it. So I buried myself in a good book and a mixture of jazz, and head banging rock; walked the dog, watched basketball, and did some photo processing.

But the political junkie can’t stay away for long. Pretty soon he starts jonesing for the three P’s; polls, podcasters and pundits. And so, let the self-flagellation commence.

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Acceptable casualties: A military euphemism used to indicate casualties or destruction inflicted that is considered minor or tolerable.

The price of eggs. It was the voter’s rallying cry that drowned out all others. The price of eggs was the hill, the electorate’s objective, and it was hell bent on making a suicide charge up that hill.

And the acceptable casualties?

Everything.

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“As hard as it is right now, we have to find a way to tune in, not out. If we don’t, Trump wins again,” said the meme on Dan Rather’s Facebook page.

“Let the bastard win,” the me in my nightmare says. “Who are we kidding? He won a long time ago. I’m tired and done. Nine years it’s been. And at least four more to go. Thank you, America. A voice inside me wants Trump to go all Trump and accelerate the pain and I want all the people who allowed this to feel some pain. I want them to feel remorse. But the voice in response reminds me that the people who will feel the most pain are, as Matthew said in the Bible, “the least of us.”

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I made the prediction to my wife in October, while riding in a subway train in Vienna. They play short video news clips on small screens in the trains. There was Trump, mouthing something. Couldn’t understand the closed caption. All in German. Turned to Cora, “He’s gonna win, and win big. Fucking guy.”

Trump’s victory was crystal clear to me and I wasn’t feeling a trace of disappointment. No disappointment, just resignation. Because for years I’ve realized just what America has become.

A few days later, when a waiter in a restaurant said he wanted to go to America, I said, “Don’t. it’s not a good place. You have it better here.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Donald Trump for one,” I responded.

“Yeah, there is that.” His English was so excellent that I asked him if he is an expat. He responded that he was Austrian born but went to an American school in Vienna.

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We went to bed early on election night after having watched enough of the returns to decide it wouldn’t be healthy to continue. Sometime after midnight, I woke up when my wife went to the bathroom.

Looked at my phone and glanced at the returns.

When Cora came back to bed I said, “Trump won.”

“My lord.”

Yeah, Trump, my un-sweet lord.

Actually I’d fibbed. Trump wasn’t yet at 270, but it didn’t take a long look to understand that there’s no such thing as a 150 yard hail mary..

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Well damn, I thought, the corpse is still warm and they’ve already started. “Your body, my choice. Forever.” It was the work of Nazi, and Trump acolyte Nick Fuentes in the immediate wake of Donald Trump’s victory. Like the man said, forewarned is forearmed.

Following his post and the ensuing outrage by normal people, and support by knuckle draggers, Fuentes was doxxed. But there may be some sweet irony in this story. This may just be another social media yarn but the story goes that after being doxxed for trolling women, rough, tough Nicky ran home to hide in his mommy’s house. We can safely assume that Nick’s mom is, you know, a woman.

Fuentes wasn’t the only one. The wake of Trump’s victory carried with it a flow of filthy vitriol aimed at women. The Institute for Strategic Dialog reported that in the 24 hours following Trump’s victory, there was “a 4,600% increase in mentions of the terms “your body, my choice” and “get back in the kitchen” on X. Similarly misogynist language, such as the use of “dumb cunt” to target Harris, television personalities such as Rachel Maddow and others, received more than 64,000 mentions on X from more than 42,000 accounts on November 5.”

But, but, Trump didn’t say those things. Nor has he criticized those statements. Let’s remember, Fuentes is Trump’s guy. Trump broke bread with Fuentes and that whacko Ye or Kanye or whatever he calls himself today. Maybe they broke McDonalds filet o’ fish sandwiches, a Trump favorite. Trump should’ve been investigated for his bad taste in sandwiches alone.

I had a brief delusional moment of hope that the fucking guy would repudiate the misongyny. Of course he didn’t.

On the way back from the gym the other day. A guy in the car next to mine at a red light was sporting a cap that said “My dick ain’t racist.” No? But you sure are a racist dick. I’m not surprised. Racist dick fashion has become chic. Waiting for Macy’s to sell torn versions of racist dick fashion (Made in China) and bump the price up by a factor of ten.

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Knives out.
The traditional national pastime of a post election pie fight within the losing party started sometime around midnight, PST when it was clear that Jabba the Hutt would be moving back into the White House come January.

Harris ran a bad campaign.

Why didn’t she address that “taxpayers are paying for prisoner sex change operations” ads? (A fair question actually)

Too much identity politics.

Ignored and talked over the workin’ man.

Biden would have done better.

Should’ve held a primary.

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Post election good vibrations
I have to say that I wasn’t digging the post defeat condescending ‘don’t worry, it’s going to be alright.’ reassurances coming from Biden and Harris in their post election speeches.

Whaddya mean don’t worry.

For seven years, going back to the 2018 midterm campaign, you’ve been telling us that democracy, the soul of our nation, the security of the world, the climate, and mom’s apple pie are at stake. What was all that about? Just kidding?

Give us something. You don’t have to be the good sport all the time. Can you please land somewhere between a big hug and what the last (and next) guy did? You know, when he staged an insurrection.

And to those who voted for Trump and now want to hoist a beer together because, hey, after all is said and done, we’re all Americans at heart. Fuck that. Take your bottle of Coors and jam it. You’re willing to abide everything in Trump that is divisive and vile. If racism and terms like immigrant “vermin” aren’t a bridge too far for you, as the husband of an Asian Pacific Islander, it’s a bridge that’s far too far for me. We’re not on the same American page. Hell we’re not even in the same library.

Truth told, we’re not in the same universe of thought of what America is supposed to be.

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In the past week I’ve seen three conspiracy theories.

Stop.

Is this what we’re going to do every four years? Validate Donald Trump’s theory of rigged elections?

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Since coming out of my short hibernation I’ve looked back at the various post mortems and most of what I’ve seen are variations on two common threads.

The first is, ‘America has gone all in on Trumpism.’ The second is, the Democrats don’t resonate with the middle class working person. I reject the former.

If there’s a silver lining to be found, it’s that Trump didn’t build massively on his base. As of this writing (November 12th), Trump has 900,000 more votes than he did in 2020. Hardly a tectonic shift.

Polling shows that Trump apparently made inroads in areas in which he wasn’t expected to (the Latino vote for example). Is it possible that Trump’s unexpected gains simply offset some of the people who have had a snootful of Trump and decided to move on? Humor me. I’m trying to take some small solace in the idea that people can sober up from the Trump drunk and return to becoming functioning members of society.

What I found disturnbing, but not surprising, was that Harris received 9.5 million fewer votes than Biden did in 2020.

What happened?

Pronouns and other deadly sins
The messaging theory is the traditional hair shirt that the losing party dons after every election. It sews on itself the scarlet letter “F” for, well, you know. “Real soul searching,” is the loser’s catch phrase.

This year’s penance was summed up neatly by Tim Miller on his podcast, The Bulwark, when he said, “I’m sorry to obsess about this, but Kamala Harris has her pronouns in her bio.”

That’s it? Joe Sixpack got a stick up his ass over pronouns? Well, why not. After all, Dr. Jill Biden took a ration of shit over putting “Dr” in front of her name because she’s proud of the PhD she earned.

If Miller is correct then middle class Jane and Joe are as shallow as a kiddie pool in a drought.

That’s it? Pronouns? The orange guy can act like gramps who forgot to take his meds, and he can ramble about windmills, and sharks, and Hanibal Lecter, and get away with all of it because he rebranded delirium as “the weave.” That’s talking to the common man? Guy comes at me with “the weave” and this common man is telling him, “Dude, you need to lay off the Wild Turkey.”

But Kamala has pronouns in her bio. How dare she. I personally think the pronoun thing is overdone. But a deal breaker when compared to the “weave?”

On another Bulwark podcast, James Carville offered that the Democrats still wear the “stench of woke.”

My first reaction was a shake of the head, but it didn’t take long to realize that Miller and Carville are on to something.

And that goes back to the assertion in my previous post that this, as a nation, is who we are. I might not have been dead on about who we are exactly, but whatever this election showed the world, it’s something that we shouldn’t be proud of.

Faced with a binary choice between a “stench of woke” and autocratic lunacy the voters gave the green light to berserk.

Voters allowed themselves to be convinced that DEI, in a private office, is a national threat (without knowing what DEI even stands for), and at the same time, that America is the dystopian wasteland out of a Mad Max movie that Donald Trump has been describing, through bald faced lies, over the past two years. If Donald Trump says the gangs have taken over Aurora, Colorado then damn it the gangs have taken over Aurora, Colorado. Case closed – and about that DEI thing.

TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING, said the slogan behind Trump at a rally. MUSSOLINI IS ALWAYS RIGHT, said the slogan on a building in Italy.

The common man is pissed off at “touchy-feely” memes promoting kindness while being amenable to threats against former generals and political enemies.

Righteous indignation over pronouns but willing to ride with tarring immigrants as, pet eating, job stealing, rapists and drug dealers.

Conscious capitalism? Horrors. Project 2025? Meh.

Safe spaces and pride flags? Nyet. Qanon? Crickets.

I’m disappointed in America the careless. In the gullible, lazy voter who didn’t want to listen to the truth about the worldwide inflation because it came off as pedantic. “Well it’s clear that the workin’ man feels like he’s being talked down to by some generic elite,” said some generic elite who’s pulling down upper six figures, as he put himself in the head of the middle class workin’ guy.

Talking down? How many different ways, and how many different times does one have to be told that tariffs are not going to lower prices and will not compel companies to move their manufacturing back to America?

Quoting economists is “high brow” bad, but taking the word of an adjudicated fraudster with a gold toilet in his private jet, who tanked a score of his own businesses, was caught on tape telling billionaires that he’s going to lower their taxes, and schmoozes with the likes of employee degrading Elon Musk and plutocrat douchebags like Peter Thiel is common guy smart.

Want some talking down? I’ll give you some talking down, and in some common language. “Hey, shit for brains. You just voted against your own interests.”

Think I’m going to feel sorry for the guy who took Trump at his word (cue roll of the eyes) that a tariff isn’t really a tax, and will have to tell little Johnny that Santa couldn’t afford a Playstation because Trump’s tariff raised the price of a game console to that of a subcompact car?

Trump was all over the tariff issue. Told you that tariffs on Chinese made goods will bring jobs to America. Breaking news; Steve Madden, the company that makes shoes and accessories for pennies in China and sells them for a pot of gold in America is indeed going to phase out China production. But it isn’t moving production to Lima, Ohio. Think more like Lima, Peru. CEO, Edward Rosenfeld offered Cambodia, Vietnam, Mexico, and Brazil. Trump isn’t even in office again and you’ve already been snookered – again.

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My disappointment is rooted in large measure in the idea that I’m not actually stunned by my disappointment. None of it surprises me anymore.

We’re the guy who, while driving his Ford F-150 Platinum Edition truck, and towing his $100,000 dollar boat to the lake for a day of skiing, complains that the price of a gallon of gas is cutting into his weekly DraftKings budget (After being told during election cycle after election cycle that the president doesn’t control the price of gas. But that would be talking down to him).

We’re miffed Main Street because Kamala cares more about LGBTQ rights than the gut punch of trading a Starbucks latte and Cinnabon for Dunkin’. “The damn elitist bitch don’t know the troubles I’ve seen,” said the bitter man as he washed down his plain glazed with bitter, black Dunkin’ coffee. “Cares more about gays than she does me. I’ll show her. Trump may be an asshole but I’ll vote for him cuz I need my NFL RedZone package back.”

We’re the angry voter who placed animus and revenge over reason. I can’t fathom the rationale that drove single issue voters (many of them politically savvy) who, when faced with a binary choice that they didn’t love, but one that would affect a wide swath of generations to come, decided to cast the revenge vote, or just stay home.

Revenge? Against Harris? Kamala Harris is sitting in a dive bar crying in her double shot of Kessler because someone ticked the Jill Stein box and said, “Take that, Kamala.”? The issue in question was mostly Gaza and what did the revenge/protest vote help to yield? From Heather Cox Richardson, “For U.S. ambassador to Israel, Trump has picked former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian who denies Palestinian rights to the West Bank, instead supporting Israeli settlements in that land and saying that “Israel has title deed” there, calling the area by the biblical name “Judea and Samaria.”

We’re the America that determined jailing a woman for getting a medically necessary abortion is kind of shitty, and letting a sex offending, convicted felon, facing serious federal charges skate and become president is also kind of shitty. But the latter might help get steaks back on the family menu. Oh, and next time just close your legs girly.

We’re the America that decided it can roll the dice on fascism, autocracy and dictatorship, because it, “can’t happen here” and anyway it’s all scare tactics coming from a bunch of book reading, history spewing elites. How sad is the irony that just a few days after we voted to gamble on fascism, we celebrated the sacrifices of the men and women who fought fascism?

We’re the America that decided to abdicate its title as a defender of freedom and sell Ukraine to Putin. Maybe it’s this that makes me the most heartsick and disgusted.

We’re the comfortable swath of America that thinks Trump is an asshole but it’s invested enough, secure enough, and insured enough to gut out four years of Trump because he’ll be good for the portfolio. It’s the America that will put out of mind, the poor, the sick, the elderly, the ones just barely keeping the wolves at bay, the ones that will just have to fend for themselves. Never thought I’d see the day when evangelicals would be all in on Darwinism.

We’re the America that exchanged “We the people” for “them” and “they.”

We’re the America that’s traded the ideals of justice, equality, fairness, charity, compassion, empathy, understanding, reason, freedom, and civil rights for a variety grab bag of intolerance, hatred and douchebaggery.

We’re the America that voted to marginalize medicine and science, and promote quackery and charlatanism.

We’re the America that told the world that the virtues enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and in the half-baked school textbooks, and all of that “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and Reagan’s shit about a shining city on a hill ain’t worth the price of a dozen of eggs.

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Personally I don’t know where I go from here. I feel dispair, that it just isn’t worth it anymore. Why fight when well more than half the country has shown its willingness to bend over and take another hard round of Trumpism – hold the lube please. Either Americans cast the ballot and went with Trump or they just went with Stein or stayed home and voted “what the hell. “

And then I’m angry. Angry at the whole idea that we bought the thing in the orange box, then returned it four years later when we found it was defective, and then we went back and bought the fucking thing all over again.

I’m angry at the voter who can take the time to figure out his fantasy league roster every week but can’t be bothered to take five minutes to investigate and learn that the President of the United States doesn’t control the price at the pump.

My heart hurts for the people who, as I write this, are facing uncertainty and fear. And no, it isn’t just the undocumented immigrant. It’s the gay man who hoped to make a career in the military. It’s the 30 year old DACA woman who’s facing being sent to a country she’s never known. It’s the Palestinian in Michigan, who is wondering if Trump is really going to shut the door on his uncle trying to escape Gaza. It’s all of the people in Ukraine. It’s all the women who are wondering what will happen to them if they have an ectopic pregnancy. My heart hurts because as a nation we made a conscious decision to fail ourselves.

There’s the mind boggling realization that in America there are journalists, media personalities and all of the witnesses against Trump who are having to weigh the danger of staying in this country over fear of being jailed. Old Tom Jefferson must be spinning in his grave.

What the hell, I can claim dual citizenship by virtue of being a direct descendent of my Italian born mother. It’s an escape hatch in the event that it might be needed. One that my children can claim if they choose.

If you’re looking for solace.

I’ve got nothin’.