Post-Election: I Am Working Through My Feelings
The sense that I have somehow been betrayed keeps washing over me.
Remember these sentiments?
Four years after standing on stage at his own inauguration and painting a dire picture of “American carnage,” Trump departed the office twice impeached, with millions more out of work and 400,000 dead from the coronavirus. Republicans under his watch lost the presidency and both chambers of Congress. He is likely to forever be remembered for the final major act of his presidency: encouraging an insurrection at the Capitol that left five dead, including a Capitol Police officer, and horrified the nation.
Trump will retire to Florida with a small group of former White House aides as he charts a political future that looks very different now than just two weeks ago (Vowing ‘Return in Some Form’).
Sorry for rubbing salt in your unhealed wounds. It pains me, too, to see these words. It seems like just yesterday, he was a pariah. The Trump name, for many, had become similar to the name “Mudd.” Doctor Samuel Mudd mended the leg of John Wilkes Booth after he broke it when jumping onto the stage during his assassination of President Lincoln. Dr. Mudd had no idea who Booth was when he arrived. Later, Mudd was arrested as a co-conspirator, and “Mudd” became linked forever to treason — “Your name is mud!” This was how many of us in America, in the world, regarded the name Trump.
On November 7th, a mere 40-some hours after a resurgent Trump resoundingly beat Kamala Harris, his name for many remains linked to treason, crime, corruption, hate, racism, rape, immorality, and so much more. The world is sickened by him, and the prospect that the man’s narcissism directly led to the deaths of nearly hundreds of thousands more than had to die during COVID has somehow again been elected to the presidency. Trump, a man-child who lies about absolutely everything and tosses out promises like candy at a parade, kept the one promise most of us wish he had never spoken.
He vowed to return when shooed off to irrelevance on January 20th, 2021, and he did. He has returned bigger, louder, more vile, and more dangerous than ever before. The American government is now Donald Trump’s psyche. We have all been sucked into his stream-of-consciousness.
Again!
It was an abusive relationship, but we somehow survived it. We recalled his first four years the way we would any traumatic event. The embarrassment we experienced during his tenure has been returned to us. The horror of this man’s words and actions again frames our reality. All f****** Mitch McConnell had to do was vote to impeach him in the Senate, and Trump would have forever been forbidden from running again for office. Hundreds of people who worked directly with him called him unfit; they called him a danger to our democracy; they called him a gift for our enemies.
Our fellow citizens, though, many who voted against him in 2020, nonetheless came out two days ago and cast their votes for a return to the abuse and chaos that was our reality from January 20, 2017, to January 20, 2021. Our fellow citizens, many horrified by January 6th, nonetheless voted for a man who said that loyalty should be first sworn to him and not the Constitution. A man whose sole goal upon entering the White House in January 2017 was to turn America into his country, not ours.
Our fellow citizens have betrayed us. Harris won only by four percent in my blue-blue state of New Jersey. A majority of the electorate chose Trump. I feel betrayed. I feel like people are whispering when I walk by — “Look, there he goes. He-he-he.”
I called FedEx support yesterday and spoke with a representative. The young man had an accent, and I could tell he was Latino. After seeing some of the data on how Latino men went heavy for Trump, I felt certain that this young man, too, voted for Trump. I wanted to commiserate with him like I did in 2016 with people — in 2020, remember how we all shared that look like “Thank God it’s finally over, right?” — but I feared he might sabotage my delivery pick-up somehow. I also realized that I am in the minority and the Trump supporters are in the majority. As I wrote yesterday, it’s their country now.
They betrayed us, and I will never — ever — forgive them for this. Some talk about “using honey to get more flies” and working to unite for the country’s sake. For this country, the one that just overwhelmingly chose Donald Trump, I have three words regarding uniting with them.
Fuck that noise.
The traitors will pay. This is not a threat to me because I don’t care about them enough to jeopardize my future with my family. The traitors who chose Trump will pay when America goes to hell, thanks to their fuhrer’s dissolution into dementia and megalomania.
God Bless Us, the true patriots, and to hell with everyone else.
I feel betrayed. And angry.