11/10/2016

I woke up on the morning of 11/9/2016 in a fetal position hoping I had just had a long lucid dream in which Donald “Pussy Grabber” Trump had just been elected president. Of the United States. Of America. My two-year-old daughter had her hand on my cheek and her face inches from mine. “I’m sorry,” she said with her little lisp and eyes cast down.

“Why are you sorry, Bug?” I asked, knowing the weight of America’s election day drunk dialing was falling right on her tiny little shoulders.

“I farted,” she said. And with that I was awake in a new paradigm, where hillbillies had thrown the entire country into the potty.

I flashed to the terrorist attacks on the morning of 9/11/2001 that slaughtered almost 3000 people. Then I feared the election of Donald J. Trump is going to make that day look like a mild SARS outbreak.

Wednesday morning, I unplugged my social media for a bit. I grew up in Klan town in Georgia so my Facebook friend circle is filled with those “non-college-educated white males” that were crucial to Trump’s path to victory. I didn’t want to hear them braying, thinking Trump’s vacant policies would help them in any way. There were enough white males cheering on neo-Nazi and white supremacist websites. Former Klan Grand Dragon David Duke all but took credit for Trump’s win and delivering the South for the alleged billionaire.

The last post I saw was by a white guy of my peer group who wrote, “Relax. We lived through Reagan.” I thought of all the people who did not live through Reagan, including the thousands of Americans who died of AIDS because the president ignored the epidemic as just a “gay plague.” He could have done something but he turned his back on his fellow countrymen as they suffered some of the most excruciating deaths imaginable.

Elections have consequences and those consequences are never paid for by the people at the top. Hillary Clinton will be fine. Even the white guys in red hats yelling at Trump victory parties like they were at a frat house gang rape will be okay for the most part. (Although they might think about cashing out their 401Ks toot suite.) I began to think about all the likely casualties of a Trump administration and it quickly surpassed the 9/11 body count.

A brief sketch of coming casualties

I thought of the Americans who will die when they are thrown off of their health insurance. Trump has vowed to cancel the Affordable Health Care Act as soon as he takes office in January with a promise to replace it with some vague “open market” alternative. Millions of men, women, and children (including my family) will lose their health safety net and will, again, have to chose to go forgo treatment and preventative care. This will cost lives.

I thought of the women who will, again, die from back alley abortions. Trump has made it clear that he will end a woman’s reproductive rights by stacking the Supreme Court with “pro-life” judges. Justice Ginsberg can’t live forever so this return to those desperate days may come quite soon. Add to that the women who will die of various cancers because they couldn’t get screenings at Planned Parenthood, another target of Trump’s pandering to the religious right.

I thought of the people who will die because of the loosening, non-enforcement, and/or canceling of safety, health, and environmental regulations. Trump has said most of these regulations are unnecessary and get in the way of “job creation.” We now have a president who believes global climate change is a “Chinese hoax,” so I have to count the related environmentally-sourced deaths as he ramps up carbon-based fuel industries. Anybody remember Black Lung?

I thought of the women who will be raped and sexually assaulted as his “Move on it” misogyny has been given the seal of approval from the American voter. The president of rape culture is moving into the White House. Likewise, the casualties from hate crimes inspired by his “America first” rhetoric will only increase. Americans and residents who are Muslim, black, or brown (like my wife) are not as sure they will “live through Trump” as my white friend of Facebook. There are already reports of Trump supporters in liberal Portland, Oregon screaming the “N word” at black residents on the street. After one day of “President Elect Trump,” there are reports of hate incidents all over the country. It could get very ugly.

I thought of the people who will die in the justice system, in jails and prisons and on the street, just as Obama’s reforms are starting to get underway. Their lives matter. But stock in private prisons is surging as America anticipates a new war on minorities (sorry, “War on Crime”).

I thought of the refugees escaping the hell of wars we helped start who will die because they can’t find refuge for themselves or their children as Trump has sworn to shut down the border on “Day 1” of his administration. I thought of the Central Americans who escaped violence to find safety and security as (undocumented) immigrants who will die when Trump’s deportation force sends them back to the hell they escaped from.

I thought of all the American troops who will die as Trump’s “bomb the hell out of them” diplomacy goes into effect with war after war. Just like the over 4000 Americans in uniform who didn’t survive the Bush Administration because they were killed in Iraq, the Trump body count will mount, as this zero-experience commander-in-chief who dodged Vietnam plays with his flesh and blood toy soldiers.

I thought of the global body count as he alienates our allies from our overseas struggles. Body counts from withdrawing humanitarian aid around the world. Genocidal body counts as he promotes the sale of nuclear weapons to South Korea and Saudi Arabia.

I thought of the deaths of young Americans from suicide, bullied for being gay, or Mexican, or Muslim. The Trump Effect in schools has already been well documented. And then there’s deaths of girls from eating disorders as they starve themselves to be a Trump 10 and not a “fat pig.” I thought of the Americans who will suffer as he translates disrespect and cruelty into “so much winning.”

3000 deaths in Trump America? That might be a good day. And where 9/11 brought us together as a nation, 11/8 has ripped us apart.

Who are these red state people?

I know the people who voted for Trump. I’ve been studying this demographic for 30 years. It’s the “White-lash” (as Van Jones called). There’s a segment of White America that couldn’t handle a successful black president, devoid of scandals, while they faced their own hardships. They became obsessed with him just like the racist skinheads I studied in 1989 were obsessed with the Huxtables on The Cosby Show. Rural America blamed Cliff Huxtable/Barrack Obama for the changing complexion of small town life and Rust Belt America blamed him for the globalization (that took off under Reagan) that was stealing their solid wage unionized jobs. Those folks are in for a shock if they think anti-union Trump is going to bring back their line position at General Motors.

Sure, Trump managed to find a few women and people of color to climb on to his fact-free train, but let’s face it – This election was all about the push-back. It’s the same push-back that the Klan rode to mainstream appeal in the 1920s. Then it was the pushback against immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe (aka, Catholics and Jews) under the banner, “100% Americanism.” Now it’s the pushback against immigrants from south of the border and the Middle East under the banner, “Make America Great Again.”

Donald Trump is the greatest recipient of white male privilege in modern history. If any other person had stumbled though just one of his foibles, it would have been over. Imagine if Hillary Clinton had children with three different husbands and bragged about her sex life on Howard Stern. Imagine if President Obama said his opponent was holding secret meetings with “international bankers” and that he could do anything to any woman he wanted, because he was a “star.” Do you think Fox News would let that slide? Donald Trump lied to his followers on a daily basis they ate it up like coprophiliacs eating shit with a spoon. I wonder if that teflon will keep working for four years. But he was the white man, so he got the job over the actually qualified female. Happens every day in America.

So what’s next?

First I would like to tell the world that most Americans did not vote for Donald Trump. In fact, most of Americans who voted didn’t vote for Donald Trump. Clinton won the popular vote. But America has as an arcane electoral system that gives the few hundred people who live in a hamlet in North Carolina essentially the same say in the contest as the few million that live in Oakland, California. So know we’re not all crazy.

Secondly, as we enter a period of one party rule headed by a potentially sociopathic charismatic authority who wants to build a Supreme Court in his image, know that the founding fathers gave the power hungry a ticking clock. The 2018 mid-term elections are just around the corner, so if we can flip Congress before Trump burns the Reichstag, we might be safe from a fascism. Might. And then it’s Elizabeth Warren for president in 2020!

The big lesson is in how we talk to those “non-college-educated white males.” I’m certainly guilty of over using the word “moron” and perhaps, “mouth breathers” on my Facebook page. We were characterized as judgmental elitists and it was probably accurate. That position only served to push them away from anything approaching an intellectual discussion and into Trump’s cult of personality where simple slogan’s ruled the day. “Crooked Hillary!” “Build a wall!” “Trump the bitch!”

Trump is not going to build a wall, or ban Muslims, or lock Hillary up. The Constitution should prevent such folly. But he could amass a pretty massive death count before he realizes he probably should have stayed in his golden tower instead of moving into the People’s House on Pennsylvania Avenue. If we want to limit the damage, we gotta figure out how to talk to these knuckle draggers. Sorry, I mean economically fragile Caucasian-Americans.

Take some time, hug your children, go for ice cream, and then get back into the fight, but this time, try some dialogue. There should be some down-time while these boys in red hats wait for their wall to appear. The whole world is watching us.