Thoughts at the End of America

Turns out, even seeing what was coming a mile away, the guy I was on January 19th could have never predicted this...

At pretty close to the strike of midnight, the night before Trump’s inauguration, I was full of the feels. Too many feels not to release them somehow. At this point, I had determined that the 2024 election results had been manipulated but I hadn’t figured out exactly how yet. And I knew that things would get infinitely more difficult once he managed to ascend into the White House again. And the damage he’d do immediately, the pain he’d inflict just because he could, the abject cruelty. It chilled my heart knowing that, just like in his last term, many people would not survive what was coming. And suddenly, the time was upon us—a shift that would change the world forever. And I sat down to record what was going on inside me at the time.

It’s almost quaint to look back now those, 50-something days ago. If I could sit that guy down and tell him anything my enduring the last weeks of Trump 2.0 have taught me, it would be that, yes, you were right but you’re way too small potatoes! You’ve got to ramp up your imagination a few notches. Because everything about Trump 2.0 is cranked up to 11. The stupidity, the cruelty for cruetly’s sake, the narcissism, the hypocrisy, the corruption, the ineptitude, the complete and utter lack of a soul or conscience or empathy or accountability or temperament or decency. It’s all jacked up to 11! He has managed to get people killed and increase world suffering and fill our allies with animosity and dismantle our social safety nets and tank our economy and embolden the absolute worst of humanity in record time. And worse than you could imagine. He’s willing to take food from staving babies in Sudan and close the only programs keeping his constituents fed and fire veterans before gutting the Medicaid they rely on get the pain meds that help them navigate through this world with the bodies war left them and on and on and on…just to line his pockets with the mega-tax cut you know he’s drooling, nipples hard over the thought. Side note: I knew these people were greedy but I knew thought that they were “let the poor and the dying die poorer and faster so that I can apply a fresh coat of paint on my favorite yacht” greedy. Well, they are.

So re-reading this now is bitterbitter, the only sweetness I can imagine these days would have to arrive via magic wand making all of this go away. But people have already died, lives have already been shattered, the country is hobbled and confused, our place in the world diminished, the faith we had in leadership and the failsafe we had always been told were there weren’t there. We can never go back. Illegitimate president or not, he has still managed to land a suckerpunch or two right to the gut of this country {and this world) that I love so much. And why? Because he’s a little man with a lot of power and this is what they do.

But the truth shall set us free.

In the meantime, here were my thoughts at the end of America…

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People used to be good. I mean, they were awful but still they were good enough. And they cared. Not just about themselves but other people. And they liked having nice things.

A president really does have a power. And when you combine that power with the only thing Trump is good at, corruption, this is what happens. I'm afraid to see who we will be in four years.

Even I've been corrupted. I've caught myself wishing ill on people who lack compassion. And if that isn't an oxymoron, I don't know what is. But it's going around. We're all walking contradictions now. Cognitive dissonance is our currency. That's his gift to us all. The only gift he's ever given anyone freely.

I would've never thought that it could happen so quickly. I consider myself so savvy. I see things even the top shelf Democrats who are supposed to be our leaders don't see, right? And even I didn't see just how far and away America had become from the America I thought I was living in. And now I can measure the change in me by the fact that I have no compassion for the willfully-blind mice the orange Pied-Piper has enchanted. Every befuddlement rudely and roughly shattered around them, I will enjoy. I'm so corrupted by this man's influence that I don't even care. At least I care that I don't care. So maybe there's hope. Maybe.

Here we are on the last day of America. The last day of democracy. Also the last day of my American fantasy. I thought I learned my lesson when and how George W. Bush had been reelected but the miracle that was the Obama election tricked me into thinking that my fellow Americans believed in justice and truth and honor the way that I do. The swearing in of a convicted felon who gamed the system in order to escape justice and swindled so many of my countrymen and women into helping him become the nation’s first king has shown me that it was actually the Obama election that was the fantasy. This America is the real America. And either I accept that and keep my head down or one of his emboldened “patriots” will put it down for me.

The true reign of Trump begins now.

You fools have no idea what you have done. But you'll find out.