I’m somehow less shocked than I was in 2016 but also more despondent. 2016 was a violent shock to my system. I cried the whole night. Now I just feel a deep unending ache in me. What an awful year.
I think also there was some minor comfort in 2016 knowing that he lost the popular vote. We could tell ourselves that We The People didn’t actually choose him.
The People spoke this time though and they decided that they don’t care that he is who he is they just want eggs to “cost less” and fewer immigrants by any means necessary, damn the repercussions.
I don’t know where we go from here.
I’m trying not to be fatalistic here but I do think that there is a reality check that is going to come within the next year that will change us all. This will not be like last time. This will be so very much worse.
In 2016 I was told by many people in my life that I was being hysterical for knowing in my bones that abortion was going to die after he won because that’s what he said he was going to do and you should believe fascists when they say what they’re going to do. God help us all if he does everything he’s said he’s going to do this time.
Last time he did, at least in retrospect, have a few people around him who believed in the American government and how it’s supposed to work. Last time he didn’t know how things worked and which levers to push. He does now. This time it’ll be exclusively people like JD Vance (evil), RFK jr (stupid), and Elon Musk (evil and stupid). The one saving grace will be that Trump is so tempestuous that none of them are likely to stay around for long. We can only hope their replacements are not even worse than them.
The second he’s in office Alito and Thomas are retiring from the Supreme Court and he’s installing two 35 year olds who make Kavanaugh look like Bernie Sanders. They’re going to overturn Obergefell and any number of other civil rights won over the decades.
He’s going to raze Gaza to the ground. All of it. Same with Ukraine. He might even break the nuclear taboo to do it.
He’s going to start rounding people up. He’s going to prosecute his “enemies”. He’s said he’s going to do it and I believe him. Protect yourself. Protect yourself.
I don’t know where we go from here. There is an evil in this country that has existed since its original sin. I had deluded myself into thinking at least a majority of us were trying to be better than that. I was wrong.
