America Will Break Your Heart, Won't It?

Thoughts on this regrettable election outcome.

Photo by Charles Etoroma on Unsplash

Last night was so disheartening it literally took my breath away for a bit, and I woke up angry and walked into Panera for my morning coffee with a bitter frown on my face. America will break your heart, won’t it?

Here’s what I’m not going to do yet: over-analyze Democrats’ failure.

Finding a specific talking point, or campaign promise, or demographic group to blame is pointless when Democrats lost votes across the entire political spectrum. Kamala Harris got many fewer votes than Joe Biden.

Should Joe Biden have decided not to run again earlier so Democrats could have done a real primary? I don’t think that would have helped, and I actually loved Democrats’ shotgun primary. This election outcome was pretty obviously anti-Woke and against identity politics, so I don’t think it would have been more helpful for Democrats to have had a bruising primary with a bunch of candidates competing with each other on the party’s left flank all raising their hands in support of things like having healthcare providers give illegal immigrant felons in prison sex changes. I’m glad Harris did not have to fake being more liberal than she really is to appease the furthest left voters who are liable to vote for Jill Stein anyway.

I think Kamala Harris ran a professional and serious campaign, and I think her attempt to build a big tent, moderate coalition was a worthy strategy given the nature of the authoritarian threat of Trump’s return. Normie Republicans and independents did not reward Democrats for offering a centrist candidate promising a bipartisan approach to governance.

Brief side note on Jill Stein:

The Green Spoiler Eel is now completing the final stage of its four-year life cycle as it slithers away back to the mysterious Sargasso Sea where it won’t be seen or heard from until the next election.

The Miseducation of America.

This election was a triumph of uneducated and low-information voters. The most common thing I heard from interviews and conversations with Trump voters was that they knew Trump was a toxic, coarse person, but they supported his policies. What policies? Even after voting, Trump wouldn’t say whether he supported or opposed Florida’s abortion amendment. He only had “concepts” of a healthcare plan… forget it, my readers know everything I could rant about for the next 10,000 words.

This election proves that the echo chambers in America are too algorithmically siloed for normal political discourse. Trump and Republicans are clearly better at 21st Century communication than Harris and Democrats, and it’s a misfortune tearing this country apart at the seams that more people get their news and vibes from podcast bros and TikTok than professional journalism.

But, frankly, journalism failed America. They spent four years reporting how Americans felt about inflation, the economy, and the direction of the country, but rarely reported that inflation was lower in the US than anywhere else, that the economy was the envy of the industrialized world, and that Joe Biden was accomplishing more than any president since Lyndon Johnson. And what does the mainstream media get for bending over backwards normalizing Trump and his MAGA delusions and empty promises? Declining viewership, subscribers, profits, respect, and influence.

Partisan conservative media, in contrast, is booming, and has financially perfected the art of paranoia and misinformation, and now perhaps conservatives are just too insulated in a fantasy world of Fox News, talk radio, bro podcasters, and Elon Musk’s X for hints of the reality that Trump is not normal to sneak in.

Is the media going to talk about these new Epstein tapes from Michael Wolff?

Anyone else paying attention to these reports of Michael Wolff’s interviews with Jeffrey Epstein talking about being Trump’s closest friend for ten years, and other creepy clues to Trump’s alleged sexual misconduct? Why is the media blacking this out? I’m thinking more and more there must be some connection between Epstein and top media executives, that they’re complicit somehow or there is blackmail out there on them. It’s always the perverts, whether sexually frustrated (MAGA incels) or sexually deviant (Epstein’s black book of island buddies), that lead a country to fascism.

…But maybe it won’t be that bad.

Remember that Trump is extremely stupid and lazy, and his deranged management style pits all of his underlings against each other constantly in self-destructive ways that leave everyone around him sorry they believed he had an attention span higher than a 5th grader or any modicum of loyalty to America’s national interests. Generally I’d bet Trump will have more staff turnover this time around, and his previous administration was already unprecedented for its revolving doors.

Trump has also made a lot of wild promises to random demographic groups, and many of those pledges are inconsistent and paradoxical. Some of his ideas are wildly unpopular with conservatives, some of them are not going to win over Republican senators, and many of them are impossible or impractical. Trump is going to upset a lot of people very soon because his words and promises mean literally nothing to him, and he’s just not going to work very hard to accomplish the disparate goals of the self-interested people riding along on his coattails.

For instance, I think many of RFK Jr.’s ideas are bad, but I don’t think ending all vaccine mandates for schools and removing fluoride from the water will become legislative priorities for Congressional Republicans, or executive priorities for which Trump is willing to burn political capital.

The Tech Bros who helped elect Trump are going to get burned.

How long can this alliance between Trump and Elon Musk really last? What happens when Musk announces he wants to cut a government program that really hurts Trump’s approval and gives him bad press? What happens if Musk starts getting bigger ratings and reactions for his press conferences than Trump? I’m not convinced Musk is egotistically stable enough to play along with the submissive theatrics Trump demands of his underlings. And what happens when Musk and Peter Thiel start having meetings with Trump to dismantle the federal state, and Trump promises them wild things after they call him a genius and stroke his ego… and then Trump talks to someone else and immediately changes his mind? How long can America’s biggest egomaniacs stand each other?

Brief side note on how Elon Musk is somehow a global top 20 player of the video game Diablo 4:

Apparently this is legitimate news, and Musk’s account literally is at the top of the leaderboard stats, but… like… there’s no way the CEO of 3 giant companies should be spending so much time playing Diablo 4, and I don’t think there’s anyway he can be spending that much time playing. How could he? He has been campaigning for Trump almost every day, and he tweets all day long, and presumably he has an occasional meeting for one of his giant companies. So is he paying people to play all day for him so he can film himself defeating the bosses or something? Why is it important for the richest person on the planet to be on the leaderboard of a video game? It just doesn’t make sense, and it’s pathetic for him regardless of whether it’s really him playing all those hours or not.

It would be hilarious if Stephen Miller deported Elon Musk. Musk’s family has acknowledged he was working ilegally while on a student visa. Rules are rules.

The 25th Amendment is on the table.

I think the chance America will get to use the 25th Amendment to remove a president has gone way up. Trump is pretty senile, and is to some degree being used like a Trojan horse by Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, JD Vance, and others so they can grift and help control the government. It would be a funny power play to remove Trump, and get JD Vance in charge, who is much younger and more capable of staying focused.

Others have disagreed with me on Twitter on this, but I do think Vance as president is preferable to Trump because I think Vance is at least a little more concerned with optics, shame, humility, history, and reality than Donald Trump. I also think Vance will be way less inspiring and motivating for America’s worst people. An autocratic strength of Trump is that he really has no policies or opinions on anything, and doesn’t care at all for the nitty-gritty of governance, so his most toxic underlings have a lot of latitude to interpret what he wants and go wild on their own, whereas Vance would constrain and micro-manage much more, and probably paradoxically get less done because he’d care more about the outcome of the details whereas Trump just wants to rush to a photo-op. Feel free to let me know if you disagree in the comments, I’m curious about what others think, and I’m not 100% willing to die on the hill of this paragraph.

If things get too crazy, maybe some Republican senators can switch parties and caucus with Democrats?

I might be psychotically huffing the last glue fumes of #Harris24, but Lisa Murkowski could maybe convince Susan Collins to be a NeverTrump Senate duo…*Takes another huff and gets a bloody nose*

What an international shame for America choosing to go back to its abusive, sociopathic boyfriend Trump.

Sorry, Ukraine, NATO, and Europe. Sorry, Taiwan. Sorry, Gazans and Palestinians. Sorry, trans people. Sorry, pregnant women. Sorry, immigrant families who came here undocumented 30 years ago. Sorry, people with pre-existing medical conditions. Sorry, fans of American idealism. So many people’s lives are gonna get worse here and abroad.

The most annoying party is that Trump won when the economy is so incredibly hot right now and firing on all cylinders with low unemployment, the lowest post-COVID inflation in the Western World, record-breaking stock prices, tens of thousands of infrastructure projects now humming along, the US is building electric batteries and computer chips domestically now, and we’re making real strides in renewable energy. Democrats deserved to win reelection. Now Trump is going to immediately take credit for the all the heavy lifting the Biden Administration has done, and his supporters are never going to look up who actually got the funding for the ribbon cuttings he goes to. It’s going to be so fucking annoying as he pretends this boom in manufacturing and prosperity isn’t thanks to Biden, Harris, Buttigieg, Democratic governors, and Democrats in the House and Senate. Trump lobbied Republicans to vote against it.

A brief survey of reactions to Trump winning:

• No one is happier Trump won than Tony Hinchcliffe. It would have been funny to blame Trump’s loss on his Puerto Rico joke. But apparently a lot of Hispanics believe Trump and Stephen Miller will make sure their deportation paramilitary soldiers don’t arrest and even deport legal people. The temperature of xenophobia will not lower with Trump back in the White House.

• No one is madder than Melania Trump that she has to pretend to be First Lady another four years. And decorate the White House for Christmas four more times. And hold his hand in public. But at least she can break out her “I don’t really care do u” jacket some more.

• It’s going to be an uncomfortable four years for normie Republicans who are going to have to make excuses for Trump fucking over NATO and Europe, and starting trade wars with our economic partners.

• The abstaining Muslims in Michigan will very soon find out Trump actually will be much worse than Biden on Gaza and Palestine.

• Stephen Miller is going back into the government *vomits*

• Ted Cruz got reelected *vomits again*

Damn. This fucking sucks.

But in eras of struggle and suffering your beliefs, actions, and ideals become more important than ever. Never give up. History is watching how you brush it off, and roll up your sleeves. Let’s appropriate the MAGA bro sentiment that tough times make tough men and women. It’s time to get tough. 🥃

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