The Mourning After
Helping America answer the question “WTF?”
Dear America:
No doubt you’re suffering from a serious hangover right about now. You’ve been on the bender of your life for the past eighteen months, and now, here you are, trying to figure out just what in the hell happened. As your therapist, I’m here to walk down this path with you. Here, let me hold up this mirror and turn on the light. There we go. What do you see?
No doubt you’re looking for someone to blame. The racists, the xenophobes, the sexist white males that show up at rallies louder than any group of fratboys you’ve ever had to deal with… it sure looks like they came out in droves. But let’s think about this one, America. In the last eight years, we’ve seen gay marriage become a nationally-accepted thing. We’ve chosen a guy with dark skin to lead us… twice. And a lot of us just made it legal to buy and smoke pot. Pot! Is this the portrait of an angry, straight, white guy? Or of a closed-minded, religious right person? Are you becoming more liberal, or more conservative, America? And look at this breakdown of your 2016 voting habits:
How many women voted for mister Trump? A lot. Yeah, it seems crazy to me too, but, there it is. How do you explain your seeming schizophrenia?
Maybe the blame lies elsewhere. Maybe it’s those third-party assholes that kept up their “They Both Suck” campaign all over social media. Clearly, those morons messed up the… hmm… actually, it looks like mister Gary Johnson did pretty well for himself. I was going to trash the third-party people for being selfish and not caring about their country, but that would have to include all those Republicans who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for their party’s candidate, too. Good thing they voted their conscience and didn’t “fall in line” with the Republicans or Trump would have won Maine, Nevada, and New Mexico as well:
Jill Stein, meanwhile, didn’t affect the outcome in any of her 50 states. Let the records show: without third parties, Hillary would have lost the popular vote and gotten trounced, not just beaten, electorally. Gary Johnson spared Hillary Clinton a true humiliation.
And those Bernie Sanders millennials..? Why, just a few weeks ago I was at a party listening to a producer who works for a major news organization rant and rave about how his research and data made it clear that the only way Trump could win was if those spoiled Bernie millennials tipped the scales towards Trump- but alas, look at how they voted:
In Nevada, which Hillary barely won, 52% of the youth vote went her way, a much higher percentage than what she got from the other age groups. Same with New Hampshire, which she also barely won, and Michigan, which she barely lost:
So it looks like those stupid and entitled young people aren’t so dumb after all.
As your therapist, America, I’m supposed to ask you roundabout questions that lead you to discover the answers for yourself. So let me tell you a story about another group of people who also chose a hate-filled leader once. Like you, they weren’t fundamentally evil, yet somehow, they ended up allowing some pretty terrible evil into this world for a few years. That “somehow” is the key to your issues, America.
You see, these people were scared. They had just lost a really big war, and their economy was in shambles- hell, they were literally burning their money just to stay warm in winter, because it was worth more as kindle than as actual cash. The “full faith and credit” in their government was kaput. Yes, America, we’re discussing the Germans after World War One. You remember, surely? These people were starving and scared, with no prospects for a better future until a certain loudmouth came along and promised them hope. And you know what? He delivered the goods. He did put food on the table and people in jobs… at a horrible cost which we’re both fully aware of.
But there’s something unpleasant I need to point out, though, America. One of the reasons they were so broke after the first war was that even after you and your friends defeated them, you added insult to injury by preventing them from importing food and other essentials into their country. You refused to lend them money to rebuild their country with. Your treaty at Versailles really fucked Germany but good, and the result was ugly: another half a million of them ended up dying needlessly after the fighting was over. If you’re wondering why Germany ever elected the most putrid, hateful leader in modern history, well, to answer that honestly, America, we have to own up to our part in that sordid tale. Their present was bleak, their future looked bleaker, and this was the one guy that was full of solid answers, despicable and wrong-headed as they were.
Well, now we’ve got our loudmouth to deal with, and the takeaway is the same. America, if you’re trying to make sense of it all, the answer is in the History Books and it pops up over and over and over. When people are afraid, they’ll do anything to stop feeling afraid. And Americans are afraid. They started feeling afraid after two buildings in New York went down, and that fear dovetailed quite perfectly into a crumbling economy no one wants to acknowledge is still crumbling. America, you let it happen- you asked Mister Reagan to take over for eight years, then you asked Misters Bush, Clinton, and Bush II- all of which slowly but surely gutted our middle class and culminated in a big money and housing crash in 2008, leaving you even more uncertain about your future. So you spoke up- you elected someone who offered Hope and Change, expecting things would change.
But they didn’t. Our economic recovery has stagnated between then and now. Without it, people can’t get ahead no matter what other economic figures get thrown around. The distribution of your wealth, America, is a lot less even than you yourself even think it is- so what good is a big, shiny GDP when most of it goes to feed one tiny little piece of you, America? The rest of your body is starving, but you’ve long stopped paying attention. Stop calling everyone a racist and a homophobe, and look at their situation instead. How many thousands of them work at places like Wal Mart- full time, in fact- earning $15,000 a year? That’s a full time job, America, and yet they are so under the poverty line they depend on food stamps to survive. This, from the nation’s wealthiest retail outlet, America- the same outlet our 2016 Democratic Nominee was a board member of, and whose owner raised millions of dollars for in campaign funds this election. And you think those Americans were going to ask her to lead them? How many Americans are going to be in debt for decades if they dare pursue a college education, America? How many of them lost their homes, or are currently struggling to keep their homes, due to a 2008 crash that was partially due to the removal of financial regulations by none other than President Bill Clinton? How many more people are in prison now for nonviolent crimes thanks to a crime bill pushed for and passed by both Bill and Hillary Clinton in the 90’s? Look at the increase, America:
All of this stuff has consequences, America. The 1996 Telecommunications Act has allowed a small group of people to own and control all the media outlets. Remember the media, the same idiots who gave Donald Trump most of the political airtime this year? Without whom Trump would have fizzled away the way he did every other time he ran in our nation’s past..? Yes, there’s a special place in hell for the senior management of CNN, FOX, NY Times and the like, but… how ironic is it that Hillary’s husband is the guy that opened that door in 1996? And in that vein, how ironic will it be that no one but a vocal few seemed to mind Mr. Obama’s expanding executive powers these last few years- powers which will now be transferred to the most deplorable human this side of reality TV?
Stop rolling your eyes, America, I mean it. Every week you walk out of our therapy session full of excuses as to why you can’t get your shit together… well, not today, America. Today you’ve got to stare into this here mirror and take a good look at yourself. Not just the parts you want to see, but all of you. I didn’t want the loudmouth to win either, America, but, well… see for yourself:
In broad but significant terms, those who are doing well voted for Hillary, defender of our current economic system, and those who are doing poorly didn’t. And there were more of the latter than there were of the former. Go figure. Am I defending their choice of Trump? Of course not. Was it a stupid, uneducated, short-sighted move? Well, duh. But it was the move made by desperate people who have been repeatedly ignored by the party that claims it represents them. Yes they fucked up, yes they allowed themselves to turn a very blind eye towards a disgusting human being in order to get him elected, but understand that you contributed to the fuel that gave them fire. Understand that it was your party that convinced everyone to stay away from the one guy that would have beaten Donald Trump. Hillary was expected to win both Michigan and Wisconsin… and didn’t. Do you know who did? Bernie Sanders, in the primaries, both in stunning upsets. That’s right, a Jew from New York was embraced by two midwest states that are supposedly full of bigots and anti-semites. We don’t need Nate Silver to explain that one, America. Half of you got duped by Donald Trump, but the other half got suckered back in the Spring by Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Sure, whether Bernie would have actually won is speculation. But you know what isn’t speculation, America? Whether Hillary could have won. That one we’ve figured out.
But don’t take my word for it, America- listen to your own. When’s the last time the left side of you bothered to actually talk to the right side? America, you’re one body. You can’t function as two separate bodies- you share too many vital organs. Can I drop this silly metaphor, America? People on the coasts: stop shitting on the Midwest, stop shitting on the South, stop telling yourself anyone who doesn’t think like you is an ignorant and racist asshole. They’re not. Though racism, sexism, homophobia are still very much issues we deal with as a nation, we have undeniably improved in all of those areas over the half a century. No minority, woman, or gay person (and I would fall under the first category) would argue they’d rather be living in 1960's America. We’re all freaking out because Trump won, but keep it in perspective. Cognitive Dissonance is real; people can hold completely conflicting ideas in a single brain- it doesn’t make them wholly one way or another. Yes, it’s true- the fact that so many decent people were willing to turn a blind eye towards Trump’s hateful rhetoric in order to elect him despite their reservations is very disturbing- but remember what let them do so; what let Germany do so almost a century ago. Racism is an idea, not a genetic trait- and you need some kind of motivation to gravitate towards that idea, especially in 2016. Economic fear is what gives such ideas fuel; if we solve our economic woes, people will have the mental space to reject them again, exactly as we had been doing as a nation, slowly but surely, for the past 60 years. But if we choose to ignore history, and instead focus on the rising tide of hate crimes without tracing their source, America will quickly collapse into two angry sides punching each other without realizing they’re joined at the hip. And that is just as stupid and shortsighted an act as is casting a vote for Donald Fucking Trump.
