Orange is the New Bleak

Progressives, liberals, reasonable moderates, many conservatives, and other people in this country and elsewhere who are afflicted with a condition known as sanity are waking up from their Trump-induced comas and asking themselves –

What the hell happened?

It feels like we were all hit by a great big bus – perhaps that Access Hollywood bus   where Donald Trump bragged about being able to grab women by their private parts.

We knew there was a possibility that Trump would be elected. After the RNC Convention, Michael Moore said, “He could win.” And, we all knew that was true.

So, we redoubled our efforts. We donated money and time and effort. We talked to friends and relatives and strangers. We urged them to vote, and to vote wisely, to keep Trumpocalypse from happening. We voted. We participated in polls. We watched the news coverage and read the polls. We felt confident that Hilly Clinton would win. Our hope was that she would carry enough electoral votes to give her a clear mandate – so that those nay-sayers would think twice before blocking her path, as she and the rest of the people worked to make things better for the vast majority of Americans. We talked about paths to victory, all the ways that Hillary could exceed 270 electoral votes and how difficult it would be for Trump to come close to scoring enough of them to later complain that the election had been rigged against him. After all, how many Trump-supporters did you know? I could have counted those I knew personally one hand.

And then…

And then, we watched as the red began to overrun the electoral map, like blood soaking an undersized bandage on a wound that has begun to bleed much more copiously than we had anticipated.  

In just a few hours, it was all over for us. The Democrats will have less representation in national government than we have had in recent history. And, when Trump starts filling Supreme Court vacancies, well, never say, “It can’t get worse.”

We could have elected our first female president. Instead, we elected our first president without any governmental or military experience. We could have elected a president whose statements were mostly clear and verifiably true. Instead we elected a man who told lies in the debates and at his rallies, lies what could be easily shown to be lies, with even a cursory look at his past statements and record. We elected a misogynistic bigot, known for “Lock her up!” and “She’s such a nasty woman,” among other greatest hits.   

And you can’s blame Gary Johnson or Jill Stein. You can’t blame the Millennials, who turned out in number better than were expected by many.

Friends are telling me, well Trump won the election fair and square. He has made a nice acceptance speech, calling for unity. We have to give him a chance. He has earned a chance to be president.

I do not agree. I don’t think he has earned anything, except the just ire of about half the people. However, he has won a chance to lead, and we, who believe in the peaceful constitutional transition of power, will grant him that chance. It is all we can do.

Trump will take office next year. It appears at this time that the majority of Americans didn’t vote for him, but our electoral system, based as it is on the cutting-edge technology of the eighteenth century, still gives this man, the awesome power of the United States presidency. You can polish a turd only so much, but what you still have is a turd. And it and many more are poised to hit the fan in a little over two months.

I do not doubt that progress will continue to be made, perhaps not at the rate we had hoped, but we will continue to move forward in such causes reducing income inequality and climate change.

It would be so much easier if progress could be made with the help of our leaders in Washington, and not in spite of them.

Trump will get his chance. In the past decades, he has been all over the map, as far as the important issues that affect us all have gone. So, I suppose there is a chance, that he will a much better president than we had thought.

It could happen. We can hope.

And we can keep watch out for flying pigs, crashing into Trump’s wall on the Mexican border.