The Life in My Years

“No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share of responsibility for the abandonment of the democratic Republic and the advent of Adolf Hitler. The cardinal error of the Germans who opposed Nazism was their failure to unite against it.”
~ William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

---

It’s all coming back to me. The memory of getting up every morning, going downstairs and turning on the news. It started in 2017 (actually it started in November of 2016). Turning on the television wasn’t unlike looking out the kitchen window to see a leering demon staring back at me. Each day delivered a new demon. It might be a policy (I use the word loosely) statement or a blasphemy launched at someone who got under the guy’s skin, or words of praise for a tyrant on the other side of the planet, or another word salad from a buffoon who couldn’t construct a coherent sentence. Hell, it could be as simple as – “covfefe.” The demons didn’t even have the decency to take Sunday mornings off. They worked 24/7/365.

And then in 2021, the demons disappeared.

And now their back. It’s the sequel, and sequels are usually worse than the original. I wish I could say it was political PTSD – gremlins bouncing around my brain from a chaotic past. But no, we’re going through it again. To date most of the daily demons have names; Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Gaetz (known informally as Rapey McForehead), Pete Hegseth, and a guy who admitted to having a brain worm.

Today’s daily demon was a reality show quack known as Dr. Oz. The good doctor didn’t arrive in the morning. He showed up while I was at the gym. They do that. Tap you on the shoulder, look back at you in the rearview mirror, or jump out of the closet when you least expect it.

I guess the difference this time around is that the current demons are exponentially more horrific than their forebears.

---

Mandate – shmadate
As is its wont, Trump-land is calling Donald Trump’s victory a “landslide.” Hardly. The margin of victory will end up at about 2 percent (his margin comes in at 44th out of the 51 elections that have been held since 1824), and once the last signature is verified, will be less than 50% of the vote. LBJ’s 60+ percent in 1964 was a landslide.

But Donald Trump lives in his own “like the world has never seen before,” fictional universe. And the cult, as is the wont of cults, hangs on every word and believes Trump’s fictions of landslides and mandates. The bigger problem is some of the people who possess actual sway in how things are going to work, also believe the fictions. Or are simply willing to turn away from reality because it suits their ambitions.

Corey Lewandowski, the creepy political commentator and former Donald Trump campaign manager, along with others, has been claiming that the people have given Trump a mandate. A mandate for what? Tear apart our institutions? Immolate the Constitution? Endanger our safety, our health, our well being, and our right to enjoy “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness?”

The meager American electorate (and I’ll get to the meager part in a bit) voted to entrust Donald Trump (The very concept of entrusting Donald Trump with anything is mind boggling) with its future. The voters who chose Trump did so in the belief that he would make life more livable (you know – eggs and milk). The electorate didn’t give Trump carte blanche to fuck the world. And yet, here we are, looking at a cabinet lineup of unqualified, sycophantic ideologues which indicates that Trump is in the mood to do a lot of screwing.

---

The numbers
“Over half the country voted for Trump.” That’s what I’m seeing on social media from Democrats who are still curled up in a fetal position two weeks after the election.

Bullshit!

As of this writing, Donald Trump has tallied 76,453,941 votes (and I’m guessing that a fair number of those voters did so while holding their noses).

In 2020, the voting eligible population was 242,690,810 (voting eligible means people of voting age who aren’t excluded because of a legal impediment). Just for fun, let’s say that the voting eligible population was the same for this election as it was in 2020. So yeah, bullshit; half of the country did not vote for Donald Trump – 31.5 percent did (still a scary number).

The total 2024 vote count (as of this writing) stands at 152,766,448, which means that nearly 90 million “citizens” voted the, “What, me worry?” ticket.

And yes, I get it that the American sense of civic duty is pathetic and there’s always going to be a vast ocean of Alfred E. Neumans out there.

The most exasperating number
One hundred. Google Trends, tracks search phrases and rates their popularity based on a scale of 0 – 100, with 100 indicating the peak.

On election day and during the immediate hours following, the top Google search, with a score of 100, in states that Trump won, was “how to change my vote.” The popularity of the search continued during the days following; after the surge of misogynistic online hate speech and the admission by Trump allies that Project 2025 has indeed been the plan all along.
“What,” exclaimed Goober. “Do you mean that Donald J. Trump, the second coming of our lord and savior, was a fibbin’ when he said he didn’t know anything about Project 2025?”
“Yeah, you dumb fuck,” said the Trump campaign operative. “We scammed your dumb ass again.”

Other search terms that spiked immediately after the election included:
“What is a tariff?”
“Trump’s tariff plan”
“Who pays tariffs?”
“Will tariffs cause inflation?”
“What to buy before tariffs take effect.”
“Fascism.”

If you are one of those who searched for any of the above after you cast your vote, here’s another search term for you; FAFO.*

---

Processing
I’ve processed the results in my still spinning head. It’s done. I say let the talking heads on MSNBC keep clutching pearls and engaging in the post election circular firing squad.

That said, I’m having trouble processing through my frustration with the 8+ million people who showed out for Biden in 2020, but decided to have a hissy and lock themselves in the bathroom on election day.

I have more frustration with this group than with the cult. The cult is the hopeless 71 to 75 million who are lost in the Sea of Q’lessness with no lifeboat and no Hooligan’s Island in sight. My frustration with the 8+ million (enough to have made the difference) who decided to sit on the sidelines, is in my belief that by and large they are smart people. I will always be asking the question – why?

Sadly, even when we all might be sorting through the Trumpian rubble, they won’t trouble themselves. They won’t ask why. They won’t second guess themselves.

Because …

“Everything bad that happens under the Trump administration will have happened because the Democratic Party was too corrupt and evil to run a good campaign with a good platform and a good candidate…”
said a recent post on Facebook.
That sentiment would be laughable if it wasn’t so cowardly, so pathetically devoid of reason and so lacking in responsibility and introspection. It’s a sentiment that panders to the legion of the electorate who wants to point a finger instead of gaze into the mirror. You threw the game losing interception – own it.

Did the Democrats self-destruct? Hell yes. It started with an unpopular Joe Biden running for reelection and the party rubber stamping his decision, and then the ruination continued with the June debate debacle. The hapless party had toiled for well over a year to dig itself into a crater and then told Kamala Harris, ‘you have 107 days to shovel us out.’

And to make matters worse, she was burdened by the unpopularity of the administration (even though the job of the Vice President is basically “sit down and shut the fuck up”). Should Harris have repudiated some of Biden’s more unpopular policies? In hindsight, yes.

Should the party have taken a different course after Biden pulled out? Maybe there should have been a primary.

Were there better options than Kamala Harris? Maybe. Probably. Would carving away some of those precious few 107 days to find a different candidate have improved the party’s chances?

But here are the more germane questions.
Are we to believe that the people who sat with their thumbs up their asses couldn’t discern some marked difference between a serious candidate (yeah, you don’t love her, you don’t even like her, hell you hate her guts), and nine years of recent Trumpian history, with its felony charges and convictions, vitriol, misogyny, inciting of violence, insurrection, outright Nazi rhetoric, schmoozing with Nazis, racists and nationalists, threats against opponents in politics and in the press, the demonizing of people of color, entertaining an anti-vax kook (who will now be in charge of, yeah, you guessed it, vaccines and communicable disease research), Project 2025, and all of the outright weirdness? Sadly, I guess the answer is a disgusted, ‘Yep, they just couldn’t tell the two apart.’

Even if one grants that there’s a level of corruption in all parties (and could someone please define, exactly, the Democratic Party’s corruption) wasn’t there cause for some extraordinary concern over the douchie, sociopathic, richest guy in the world with billions in government contracts cozying up to a candidate with an autocratic bent (who himself bilked the taxpayer by overcharging the Secret Service for rooms in his hotels), and literally offering to buy votes for that candidate? Didn’t it occur to you that the Republican guy’s documented history of fraud, corruption, and prevarication might be just a smidge beyond the everyday politcal corruption pale?

I’m sorry, you don’t get off the hook so easily. You don’t get to make a capricious choice that ends up blowing up in everyone’s face and then claim, after it’s becoming clear that things will be horribly worse than anyone could possibly have imagined, “but the devil made me do it.” Here’s a Google search term for you – FAFO.

Next time, if there is a next time, perhaps take the words of someone who witnessed the ramifications first hand. “The cardinal error of the Germans who opposed Nazism was their failure to unite against it. At the crest of their popular strength, in July 1932, the National Socialists had attained but 37 per cent of the vote. But the 63 per cent of the German people who expressed their opposition to Hitler were much too divided and shortsighted to combine against a common danger which they must have known would overwhelm them unless they united, however temporarily, to stamp it out.” ~ William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

We had a preview of what could’ve been (the opposite of what Mr. Shirer described) just this past summer when we watched opposing parties in France form a detente to stave off the right wing Marine Le Pen.

---

Hmm. It seems we’ve misplaced our republic.
“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty is this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.” ~ James Madison, Federalist 51, February 6, 1788, explaining the importance of the separation of powers, and of each branch of government having the power and the duty to check the usurpation of power by either or both of the others.

“There’s no question he’s (Donald Trump) the leader of our party. His mission, his goals and objectives, whatever that is, we need to embrace it. All of it. Every single word,” said the congressman. He continued, “If Donald Trump says ‘Jump three feet high and scratch your heads,’ we all jump three feet high and scratch our heads.” ~ Troy E. Nehls, Congressman from the State of Texas announcing his absolute loyalty to Donald Trump.

In September of 1787 as the Constitutional Convention was adjourning, a woman stopped Benjamin Franklin and asked, “Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy?” Responded Doctor Franklin, “A republic, madam. If you can keep it.”

Anyone located a missing republic. I know we left if somewhere. Oh well, I guess it’ll turn up. Or not.

Moving forward, I hope that all of those people who did those post-election Google searches regarding tariffs and fascism, learned some things and will remember them next time – before filling out their ballots. If there is a next time.

---

The enduring question
After the election, a friend of mine posted on Facebook, her thoughtful impressions of the outcome. She ended with an expression of what strikes me as bewilderment:
“I continue to pray that there are still enough guardrails in our country to prevent Trump from destroying it.
For those that threw away their values over the price of bacon, eggs, and toast. I hope you enjoy your breakfast!
This election was similar to going into a restaurant that had two things on the menu: Maggot infested rat or chicken, and the majority of the patrons asked “How is the chicken cooked?””

The anger is finally leaving me. What abides is the stupefaction. I’ve no doubt that to my dying day I will carry with me the enduring question, the same age old question asked by all victims of autocrats and fascists after the door locked behind them; How did we let it happen?

*FAFO – Fuck Around and Find Out.