SHOCKING? NAH. JUST SINKING TO A NEW LOW.

In my lifetime, starting from birth, the following historic events, among many others, happened in the good ol’ USA:

The JFK assassination, Vietnam War, Watergate, Waco, Oklahoma City, and 9/11, along with a whole bunch of mass killings and disasters. Also, every POTUS term from JFK on through Obama. Even the Cuban Missile Crisis was just wrapping up soon after I was born.

That’s a lot of fucked up national history. Oh sure, some cool and entertaining things happened too, like Beatlemania and the first moon landing and the Internet and the Red Sox finally winning a World Series and being able to see the Ramones live before the whole fuckin’ front line died.

And now the man seemingly destined to take the title of “Worst U.S. President Ever” is going to get the keys to the White House for four years beginning around noon on January 20, 2017.

Donald Trump won the Electoral College count because a shitload of self-centered insecure white people with closeted xenophobic issues and a lack of understanding of how democracy, let alone government, works, happen to live in parts of the country where nobody of color seems to want to live, and decided to vote. If they were not Luddites who weren’t paying attention to Trump’s rancid personality, public behavior and debating tactics, then they were totally A-OK or even empathetic to his self-centeredness, misogyny and lack of intelligence and compassion. I’m prone to buy into believing the latter as the truth.

His opponent edged him out on the popular vote, and she won all the states on the entire west coast of the continental USA as well as its northeast corner (including Trump’s home state). Hillary Clinton won the more demographically diverse urban areas and Trump won where, well, all the scared white people fled to years ago. She fucked up on campaigning, with a good deal of it spent on weak status quo stunts like trying to over-flash her opponent by showing up at rallies in already-won urban areas with a shitload of celebrities who didn’t normally strike a note with people who got off their asses and actually voted. Okay, maybe Springsteen was an exception.

To be honest, I wasn’t even that enthusiastic about voting this time. My original idea was to vote for Bernie Sanders, and then never vote again. At the time my attitude was this: I have no problem voting for the USA’s first woman President, but Elizabeth Warren wasn’t running. If Clinton was running against, say, Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush, I may have stayed home.

But, that fucker Trump got the GOP nomination. I have despised that asshole for the entire time I have learned of his existence. All the stupid name branding. The dumb ass TV show. The braindead tweets. The conspicuous consumption. Everything about him. I have absolutely no identification with the man or what he stands for. My rich daddy didn’t give me a million dollars to start a business. I worked for and earned every penny I’ve got, and I’m no billionaire, but I have a debt free life with no bankruptcies or failed businesses to show for it. Trump likes to use the term “loser” a lot but I only see a true loser of a human being in Trump. It has nothing to do with wealth, fame or celebrity. The guy is simply scum. I sure as hell could not sit idly and just let him win the White House. So, I fell into the “lesser of two evils” bullshit and filled in the little ballot oval for Clinton.

The 2016 U.S. Presidential election’s results caused a lot of shock for people, including those involved in the Establishment Media. I must be more jaded than the average American news consumer, because if I can describe my reactions to the result, shock would not be one of those feelings.

Am I disappointed in the people of the United States for electing this ego drunk intellectually challenged turdbucket to the nation’s highest office? Oh, sure, but I’ve been disappointed in people and the stupid shit they’ve done on many occasions. Am I scared? Nope. Not at all. I feel like I have a spiritual battle to prepare for, as well as nothing to lose and everything to gain. That never leaves me feeling frightened. Quite the opposite.

Am I angry? Oh, yeah. Over and over again, I have to see citizens in the nation where I was born and raised get suckered in by the dumbest shit. And it’s not necessarily in politics. For years, the Establishment Media has conspired to help earn a living for selfish, ignorant, power hungry assholes, whose only key to success is being able to call attention to themselves and attract others like them who aren’t nearly as successful but want to live vicariously through the anointed Celebrity Alpha Asshole du jour. So the masses watch TV, interact on social media, buy the books, proclaim the love, and yes, this time, show up at the ballot box and vote.

This wasn’t an election. It was a mobilization of racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobia drunk opportunists rallying up the stooges mixed with wealth worshiping groupies. It was not a movement for change. It was an opportunity for opportunistic individuals, most notably the winning candidate himself, to use the rube suckers impressed by his fame, his money, and his rubbish brand name to wreak vengeful havoc on a nation that had the audacity to elect a black man to the nation’s highest office for not one, but two terms. They saw an opportunity to strike in the fact that a woman was the ruling party’s opponent, because the same demographic that hated anyone different also hated women and felt threatened by the potential emasculation that, God forbid, a woman who didn’t know “her place” would cause in leading this country. It didn’t have anything to do with denial of a glass ceiling. They liked the glass ceiling and wanted to keep it there.

It was the week before my 18^th birthday when Ronald Reagan was elected. It was the night before my 54^th when Trump was elected, and to me, some things feel the same. A lot of people (many in similar Clinton-winning urban areas) back in 1980 reacted with shock and fear. They wondered how the electorate at large could be stupid enough to elect The Gipper.  And, the electoral vote for that contest was 489-49! The Establishment Media did the same “gee shucks, guess people want change” shoulder shrugging 36 years ago as well. It seems a lot more intense in the reaction for 2016, but I can’t help but think that I’ve seen this all before. The difference is, I’ve lived through a lot now, and feel much older, wiser and conditioned.

Shocked? No, but I am amazed at how the USA electoral process has sunk to a new low. And an absurd low at that. It’s like a lost Christopher Guest mockumentary. It’s the most fucked up episode of Black Mirror ever. Except this time it’s not onscreen. This is real life and no one can simply choose not to watch.

Nothing has changed. In a fundamental way for me, it’s 1980 all over again. It’s 2000 all over again. It’s time to put the authoritarian fuckers in their place each and every time they even attempt to step out of line. Every time the Trump Administration and the Republican U.S. government try to impede on stuff like civil rights, a woman’s right to choose, environmental safety, net neutrality, or freedom of expression and right to assemble and express dissent, I will raise hell until the cows come home, just as I have done for practically my entire life on this earth. And mark my words, they will try to do fucked up things with all of that power and authority because that is the nature of the beast. 

Fear, on so many levels, motivated the election of Donald Trump. I will not fear. I will fight.

If it’s a fight they want, it’s a fight they are going to get. I know that I don’t have to fight alone, nor do I have to. So if you are as outraged with what individuals have done in the USA this time as I have, let’s fight together. Let’s live by the words of a wise man who once telegraphed: “Don't waste any time mourning. Organize!”