America: The Country Formerly Known as The Land of the Free.

here are many conclusions we can derive from the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States in 2016.

 

• It is conclusive proof that lying is the right way to win the presidency.
• It is proof that you don’t have to have a ground game to win the presidency.
• Proof that you don’t need the most money to win the presidency.
• Proof that you can win the presidency without the support of your own party.
• Proof that Might is Right, and bullying is acceptable.
• Proof that it’s okay to be a sexual predator.
• Proof that you don’t have to release your tax returns to be president.
• Proof that a thrice-married philanderer can be president.
• Proof that you don’t have to serve in public office or the military to be president.
• Proof that you can insult any part of the electorate and still win the presidential vote (Trump once mentioned “I love the poorly educated…” Insulting every demographic in the country – from women to Hispanics to Muslims – Trump appealed to this largest demographic and unwittingly rooted out every single one of ‘em on election day!)
• Proof that it’s okay to cheat people out of paying them for a job they did for you.
• Proof that endorsements mean nothing – not newspapers, rock stars or celebrities.
• Proof that you need no policies to run for president. (“We’re gonna bring jobs back like you’ve never seen!” “I would bomb the fuck out of them!” “We’re going to build a beautiful wall and Mexico is going to pay for it.” Sound, solid policies.)

Hillary’s concession speech reminded us that we should “never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it.” But this election is proof positive that fighting for what’s right is NOT worth it. Because you will lose. To the petulant, incurious, uneducated juvenile who is fighting for what’s wrong.

When asked by the Washington Post whether he thought his campaign rhetoric had gone too far, Trump replied curtly, “No. I won.” Which means that credo about principle and fair play we were raised to believe (It’s not whether you win or lose – it’s how you play the game) has been turned on its head: It’s not how you play the game – it’s whether you win or lose.

• America electing the poster boy for Skin Condition Monthly means that it accepts hate-speech as fine and dandy. (Why do underprivileged people go to jail for hate-speech, but Trump’s hate-speech was broadcast to the nation every single night?)
• It means the Ku Klux Klan are good and righteous and Doing God’s Work. (Ex-Imperial Wizard of the Klan and melted showroom dummy David Duke, gives his full-throated endorsement of Trump in January 2016, which Trump’s campaign would only repudiate half-heartedly within 2 weeks of the November election. Not Trump himself.)
• It means racists can roam freely among us, without fear of recrimination.
• It means hypocritical evangelicals – who supported Trump past all the indecencies and illegalities revealed about him – are, in fact, supported by God. Because – as Michele Bachmann tells us – “God made Trump president.” If you believe the God fantasy, then that must be true. Because if Satan made Trump president it means God lost. And that’s never an option for the big guy.
• It means Fox News is, in fact, Fair and Balanced.
• It means voter suppression works.
• It means the FBI really is “Trumpland.”
• It means Russia can actually affect American elections.
• It means the alt-right is now a “respectable movement” (and I’m still wondering when we are going to start calling them what they really are – racists).
• It means Founding Father Alexander Hamilton was wrong: (“The electors would make sure the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”)
• It means the right-wing nutjob disinformation juggernaut Breitbart News is the law of the land. (Extremist Stephen K. Bannon, CEO of Trump’s campaign, is also executive chairman of Breitbart News. For those unfamiliar with ignominious swine and founder Andrew Breitbart, look him up and wear your heavy duty Bullshit Helmet.)
• It means Stephen K. Bannon – in the vein of Dick Cheney’s shadow presidency – is the new President of the United States.
• It means that America – land of the free and home of the brave, the country that Alexis de Tocqueville lauded for “the ability to repair her faults,” the country regarded by its citizens as “the greatest experiment in democracy” – is dead.

Freedom is something that dies unless it’s used.
— Hunter S. Thompson

America has always been about ESCAPING from tyranny – it started by excising its colonies from the tyranny of kings in 1776, going on to eradicate more metaphysical tyrannies, like inequality, or being told what to think, do or say. The “ideal” of America and its form of government, has always been one of free speech, social harmony and inclusiveness. Yes, there are unforgivable crimes in America’s DNA that should not be swept under the mat: Native American genocide, slavery, installing dictators, Japanese internment camps, Hiroshima, McCarthyism, false flag events, torture, Citizens United; Republican Lincoln freed the slaves and Democrats tried to get ‘em back, Democrat Wilson advocated for women’s suffrage and the South wanted to grab them by the pussy, Democrat Carter put solar panels on the White House roof and Republican Reagan took ‘em down… Yet the arc of the moral universe (as MLK told us) has continued to bend toward justice.

Roe v Wade, end of conscription, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell revoked, gay marriage legalized, social programs for children, elderly and injured, Climate Change science and technology, affordable health care, etc. And – surprisingly – marijuana legalized in four states during the 2016 election! And now all these social enhancements, all advances in any space program or scientific endeavor, all forward momentum will be halted by the climate change deniers and anti-choice lunatics in control of the Presidency, the House and the Senate.

What better way to reinstitute tyranny?

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
— attributed to Mark Twain, by way of Benjamin Disraeli.

Everyone is jabbering earnestly about the polls being wrong and Trump’s policies and Trump’s transition team and Trump’s cabinet, not realizing this cult of personality disorder is merely the distraction; the deflection away from the fixing of the result and the hate-filled agendas of Stephen K. Bannon and the Koch Brothers.

Trump wants new libel laws like any good fascist (i.e. the man who insults everyone wants to do away with free speech that insults him); he wants to stultify the free press (ironic coming from the whiny little bitch whose presidency was won on the back of the press irresponsibly covering his every dog-whistle and pillow-fart. What would he have done had the press called his bluff and packed up and left his rallies when he singled them out and berated them as “the most dishonest people in the world”?); his malicious cohorts are advising him in baby-talk to revoke the Senate filibuster (meaning to cut off the last manner in which Democrats can stop his reprehensible policy proposals being signed into law); he wants to kill the wives and children of terrorists (dude, that’s just straight up murder, and has nothing to do with the American constitution)…

From here on in, the Supreme court will be staffed only with Republican extremists that Stephen K Bannon approves (who will do away with Roe v Wade, will reinstate Stop and Frisk, will allow Big Pharm and Big Banks to run roughshod over America; will rollback regulations on GMOs, fracking, food, guns; will cut budgets for the EPA, Planned Parenthood, Education, and will teach creationism in schools as if it was history). And at least two of the current Democratic judges are so old, they will retire or die before Trump’s rancorous reign is over, thereby replaced by more of Bannon’s bitches.

Let’s stop and consider what I just said: All three branches of government are red. All people in line for the presidency – the president, vice president and speaker of the house – are red. The Supreme Court will be majority red, and only get redder.

The arc has stopped bending.

… and even if

we wish for a quick death of the 70-year-old demagogue whose health is “astonishingly excellent” according to his hippie drug-dealer—I mean doctor, his successor is VP Mike “NO ABORTION even for Life of the Mother” Pence. The same Governor Mike Pence who signed a bill that legalized racial, religious and sexual discrimination in Indiana and called it (wait for it!) – The “Religious Freedom” bill. And even if Pence is righteously assassinated (because ignorance spawns ignorant solutions), then that swine Speaker of the House and sworn enemy of Medicare, Paul “Crashing a Homeless Shelter to Rewash Clean Dishes for a Photo Op” Ryan will ascend to the presidency.

Ironically, these people are the same party who talk about despising those voters who take take take, while implementing policy to take take take as much as they can from those voters.

… and even if

these three poster boys for Unprincipled Jackass Monthly were eradicated completely, the fact that so many people voted for them means this is the mind-set of the country – imbeciles who voted against their own interests; racists and morons and bigots and rednecks and Klan. Now empowered.

… and even if

the multitude of people who voted for Trump did so in earnest based on Trump’s policies, how could they not see through his insincerity? Could they not see that his “policy proposals” were merely other people’s platitudes, which Trump would read at a third grade level from a teleprompter? Could they not see through the lies shotgunned at them, some so obvious Trump tried to amend them himself midway through his unintelligible sentences? Could they not discern that in all three debates against Hillary Clinton he was out of his depth and floundering? Could they not see that this nihilist had no other person’s interests in mind except his own? Do these low income voters (whom Trump supposedly “spoke to”) really think Trump, who has dodged taxes all his life, would reform tax laws to make himself pay taxes? Do they think he would allow them anywhere near his golf courses or restaurants or casinos? Can they even afford one night at one of his lavish hotels? Could they not see his LACK of policy knowledge in the blithering, incoherent manner he deflected questions? Could they not see the epitome of The Peter Principle made flesh, as Trump cruised on idiocies, cheer points and denial? Could they not see he was accusing his opponent of the very misdemeanors he was perpetrating?

Ana Marie Cox on THE DAILY SHOW, in a moment speaking from her heart, lamented, “I’m really heartbroken,” because “this is not the country I hoped it was.” Trump is a symptom of this disease, which was hiding deep in America’s blood, until it exploded like an outbreak of hives across the Rust Belt and overwhelmed Eastern states once blue… “We are more divided, more racist and more sexist than I had wanted to believe. Whatever the results are tonight, that is going to remain true.”

… and even if

Trump reverts to his former Democratic self and mitigates his extremist campaign pronouncements (which he is in the process of doing, starting with “America will build the wall… and Mexico will be given the bill to reimburse America.” I know, the idiocy level is too high to measure), his pimp masters Bannon and the Koch Brothers will have none of that conciliatory behavior! Trump is – as he so vociferously denies – a puppet.

In him, the Republican masters of destiny have found their perfect frontispiece, figurehead, fraud – an ignorant, two-faced blowhard whose erratic behavior is now taken for granted. So while he huffs and sniffs his word salad inanities to the public, with no listeners or reporters able to tease out what position he holds on any policy, the Republican debunking of America continues apace on a clandestine level, with this sociopath being cajoled into signing malicious bill after malicious bill that he is too lazy, illiterate or incognizant to read.

It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the votes.
— attributed to Joseph Stalin.

… and even if

we assume the vote was rigged by the Koch Brothers (by disenfranchising minority voters with surgical precision, gerrymandering, closure of polling booths, spreading the false narrative of voter fraud to enact voter suppression, underhandedly throwing voters off polls, etc. After all, President Obama’s approval rating was 53%, Hillary’s lead with women was over 50%, her lead with the black community, 98% – where did all those votes go?) it still means only one thing… America can’t win.

America is dead.

No one has ever gone broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
— paraphrased from HL Mencken.

Everything I write is for the gag. From movie reviews to eulogies, it’s because I’ve identified a good punchline or two, and the article is built around those strategic zingers. But the American presidential election of 2016 is no laughing matter, so I apologize if there is not much to laugh at here… The 2016 election revealed too much about the feckless state of the American psyche. It will affect each of us in horrible ways, financial, physical and psychological. And the ways in which the United States electorate has been doctored now proves that the Republicans have effectively blocked all avenues for the Democrats to even win another presidency. This shit is real.

Before the election, comedian Louis CK warned, “If you vote for Hillary, you’re an adult. If you vote for Trump, you’re a sucker.” As PT Barnum noted: “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

The best argument against democracy is a five minute talk with the average voter.
— Winston Churchill.

This is what appealed to Trumpa-Loompas (a most astute name for Trump fans, who squeal in subservient delight at everything he says, no matter its contradictory nature to their own party’s beliefs or to something he said five minutes ago):

An outsider to shakeup Washington.
How can someone promise to fix something he doesn’t understand, that is going to flatten him like a steamroller? He may be an outsider, but as president, he is still as far from running things in Washington as he was when he was denying “colored people” access to rent his apartments.

A person who speaks his mind.
We all want someone forthright to lead America. That doesn’t mean you can just babble fact-less verbal diarrhea. A mind that thinks Ted Cruz’s father helped assassinate Kennedy, a mind that accuses Elizabeth Warren of lying about her heritage (which she doesn’t) just to get into Harvard (which she didn’t attend), a mind that puts 2 and 2 together and comes up with “Obama founded ISIS” – is a mind we should put in a rubber room, not elect to lead a country.

Ideas on fixing the economy.
Unfortunately, Trump has none. That doesn’t stop the Trumpa-Loompas imagining they are hearing policy proposals when Trump is reading slowly and not insulting anyone. Like pets and small babies, they mistake the tone of his voice for the content of his speech. They entrust a man who has spent his life cheating people, to do right by them, because he’s reading words he doesn’t understand, about issues he has no interest in, written by bigots and liars whom he would backstab at the drop of a panty.

I guess there IS a punchline to the death of America after all: Donald Trump, the 45^th President of the United States.

END