I spent November 5, 2024, working at my local polling place. Had just enough time to shower and dress, walk Ping, have a swallow of tea, and walk around the corner to Samuel Adams Elementary School before the clock chimed six.
There’s a lot to prepare: putting up signs, plugging in machines, signing paperwork, counting ballots. We were barely ready when John, our Warden, called out that it was seven am and the polls were open. A line had already formed and the first few hours were a crush. Most satisfying. Just what an election should look like.
The Vote Talley
the emperor and his clothes
I stayed away from my phone, even during breaks to walk Ping. I had bad feelings. My outlook was nearly as bleak as it had been in 2016. And my expectations were correct, just as they had been then. I knew before I turned out the lights around eleven that it was over. At some point between five and six am, WBUR confirmed that Trump had taken the electoral college. And now we know he has the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives and the popular vote.
And the blame-placing has begun.
Make It Make Sense
Statue of Bigotry
How did Donald Trump win a second shot at destroying this country by turning it into his personal fiefdom?
One could argue that it started with “birtherism,” the baseless accusation that President Barak Obama was not born in the United States. Trump loves making baseless accusations because then he forces his victims to explain why his—Trump’s—fibs aren’t true.
Trump won on a platform of lies, fear, hate, scapegoating, violence, & division. That’s it. It was a platform whose foundation was laid in 2015 when he descended on his shiny, brassy escalator at his vulgar castle in New York City. He said a number of appalling things, but here is the bite of fabrications that stays with us:
When do we beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically…
The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems.
…It’s true… When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best… They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
Trump’s political platform was an edifice raised and ornamented when he claimed from the start of the 2020 election season that the polls were rigged. It is now, after the utter capitulation of the GOP to the MAGA Party, an architecture so elaborate that it is likely visible from outer space.
America Led When It Wasn’t “America First”
Trump’s “America First” agenda is a bunker mentality of white, Christo-Fascist patriarchy. More guns. Higher walls. Dismantling of science and fact-based education. Theocratic erasure of the autonomy of women. Racist restoration of apartheid in schools, workplaces, and the voting booth.
Don’t blame me. I voted Blue down the ballot and I have in every election I have voted in.
Voodoo Economics
the wealth gap
According to CNN Business, “The world’s 10 richest people got a record $64 billion richer from Trump’s reelection.” I saw the numbers. I felt the earth wrench and heard it groan as the chasm between the ultra-rich and working people, the poor, and the impoverished yawned that much wider. It is gulf so great and so systemic it is hard to imagine any bridge that could cross it. The have-nots may window-shop but they absolutely will not be allowed to touch. Unless, of course, they abandon independent thought, swear fealty to the Orange Overlord, and swill the Kool-Aid of personal destruction.
George H.W. Bush was right: Ronald Reagan’s “trickle-down economics” is “voodoo economics.” Reduce the tax burden on the most powerful corporations and the billionaires and their millions and billions will cascade down in the form of jobs, lavish salaries, and reliable benefits. Yeah. Uh-huh. Right. Since when has that ever happened?
One should not forget that the last five recessions began with a Republican in the White House. Nine of the last ten recessions, in fact, began with a Republican in the White House. On average, Democratic administrations create more jobs than do Republican administrations.
Not-So-Great Expectations
the Trump Gulag
Some of peons enslaved to the Pumpkin Premier may, if they are sufficiently useful and dedicated to licking spittle, may earn a sort of elevation. Rather like the way the most energetic and reliable Party Workers could get a better apartment in Moscow or privileges in Beijing. Not that that made anyone safe from purges or an arbitrary death penalty.
I am no longer in denial about the character of too many of the American people. I am certain that we have abandoned that our leaders demonstrate honor, intelligence, and decency. We are happy now to place a person who is venal, dishonest, ignorant, and cruel in charge of what has been for more than two hundred years the greatest, most successful and idealistic democracy in the world. Granted, that history is mottled with tarnish and even depravity. It is, however, an effort that has been largely and insistently progressive, humanistic, and admirable.
I know, moreover, the extent to which that indecency was unleashed by Donald J. Trump.