What Just Happened?

Almost everything I ever believed, or thought I believed, about my country, the United States of America, has been disabused by the results of the 2024 Presidential election.  We just elected a convicted felon, with multiple pending felony indictments for starting a riot leading to an attack on the United States Capitol and a joint session of Congress, a man who is in obvious physical and mental decline at 78 years of age, after berating and criticizing the sitting President because he is too old.  A man who is surrounded by sycophants who are themselves felons for the government corruption they committed the first time he was in office, who, in his first term left the country reeling defenselessly from a viral pandemic he called "a hoax," and wrecked the economy, leaving behind a massive amount added to the national debt and job loss higher than any Presidential administration since Hoover.  

We haven't begun to sort out the multiple reasons why an evenly split electorate which leaned into the electoral college giving Trump an advantage of less than 200,000 votes across three states to win, didn't want to put a woman in the White House.  But I tend to agree with The Rude Pundit who characterizes it well by saying that America is a floating island of garbage.  They didn't want to put a black, intelligent, accomplished, liberal thinking woman in the White House.   

It has just proven it with the results of an election that its own mainstream media started setting up from the moment Trump left the White House in 2021.  Trump has had four years of free publicity provided by the corporate interests who own the media.  He got television, radio and internet news coverage every day for the past four years, far more than the sitting President got.  Whether they were fascinated by him, or they were pushing his ideology into place for his next run at the White House, they are the ones who re-created his image, carefully leaving out the flaws, gross incompetence, unbelievable and filthy immorality and vulgarity, and most of all, making sure he stayed credible even though every word out of his mouth was a flagrant, intentional lie.  

Trump gambled on the possibility that there might just be a slim enough majority in the American electorate whose hatred, bigotry and selfish ambition, combined with both ignorance of traditional American values, and disdain for what they actually require, would drive their vote.  Because the fact of the matter is that a majority of Americans are vulgar, prejudiced, racist, hateful, misogynist and willfully ignorant, who want to punish immigrants, homosexuals, transgendered persons, Asians, Blacks and Latinos (in spite of the fact that the Latino vote tipped toward Trump in an amazing display of voting against their own interests) and anyone who doesn't accept their culturally twisted version of religion.  They are trash, mostly white trash, and they have been manipulated by their hatred, fostered by false cults calling themselves Christian churches, for generations.  

We were high minded and idealistic enough, at least some of us were, to believe our culture and society have been advancing in this area since the Civil War, and we reached the point where, watching Germany deteriorate into National Socialism in the 1930's, we believed something like that could not happen here.  Well, not only could it happen, it has.  The pro-Nazi rally in MSG in 1939 that was organized to tip American support toward Hitler materialized a week ago in the same place.  Don't think the choice of location was convenience or random.  That was a Nazi rally if there ever was one and the fact that those people are now in charge of the government is the sign that whatever liberal tendencies the American electorate was showing when it elected Barack Obama as President twice have been rolled back.  

We have come to a dividing line in the eras of American history, and the post-World War 2 era, which showed some flickers and flashes of the possibility of America becoming the first country in the world to achieve success as a multi-cultural, multi-racial democracy of shared power, as a superpower with the ability to spread, and support, democratic reform around the world, has ended.  The interest of a majority of Americans doesn't go much further than the edge of their own property.  

Trump got four years of free publicity from the corporately owned news media, virtually around the clock every day.  He was on television and in the media far more than the sitting President, and he soon discovered that they were quite willing to cover up his racist bigotry, his disgusting immorality and vulgar words, and most of all, the hatred he spewed out ever time he opened his mouth.  I wonder whether most of those journalists who are responsible for the content of news broadcasts could even recognize American idealism, or fascism, if they saw it.  That, more than anything else, is what helped him win this election.  

That, and the fact that, for four years, his minions have infiltrated the counties where elections are conducted and held.  With the control they had, we shouldn't be reluctant to consider exactly how much opportunity they had to screw with the registration rolls, cut people off and mess with the results.  All of the whining about it that he's done for the past four years is a clear sign that they knew how to cheat, and that they were planning to do it. And if you look at the patterns across the country where Democratic party vote appeared to be flattened, and dropped from previous years, it should at the very least raise suspicions. 

So it is that a convicted felon, and rapist, who led a treasonous attempt to overthrow a legitimate election, twice impeached for heinous crimes against the American people, an immoral denier of what is right and wrong, who, by anyone who understands decency and upholds basic human values, is himself "garbage," will now get another chance at being the most powerful man in the world.  I'm not sure this represents an ideological shift, or whether it is simply a transition back to what has always been there.  

And really, we are speaking of this in too kind of a way.  This administration is going to be very ruthless toward those it hates.  We're not just talking about hating with an angry face.  This conglomeration of billionaires with roots in South African apartheid, American white supremacy and Christian nationalism are angry, brutal and lacking in any kind of human reason or empathy.  We are headed into dark days.  Ukraine will likely be the first victim, and those whom we've come to admire are reaching the end of their lives.  In this country, let me tell you people, Dearborn and Hamtramk will be empty, and the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank will be in refugee camps in the Saudi desert.  The Latino asylum seekers will be brutally abused, and sent back to face the torture and murder they escaped by coming here.  

And he'll try to do whatever he can to his political enemies.  

And the mortality rate of pregnant women is about to head to places that only third world countries have seen.  

And don't let the use of the adjective "Christian" fool you.  Trump has effectively replaced Jesus and made an idol out of himself by his snide, and intentionally devious denial that he has done anything requiring God's forgiveness, which is basically telling his Christian supporters that he's been able to dupe them into supporting him and he hasn't even had to fake a sham Christian conversion experience to do it.  Well, that's not important to them, either, nor are any of the values of the Christian gospel.  The characteristics these people, including their dear leader, exhibit, are those described by the Apostle John in his first church epistle as "antichrist."  Don't take my word for it, though, look it up. [I John 4:1-3] 

There is absolutely nothing Christian about Donald Trump, or any of his sycophants, or any of his supporters.  Nothing.  

Me?  Well, I'm fine.  I have no intention of doing anything that remotely supports or contributes to the atmosphere that this white supremacist, immoral, worldly demagogue wants to create.  I will continue to be the person I have tried to be, living up to values like loving my neighbors, and my enemies, treating them with the respect they deserve as human beings, and setting an example with my own behavior.  My values will be visible to others in all I do, including simplicity, being a peacemaker, holding to truth and integrity, contributing to my community, responding to others as equals, regardless of their race, culture, ethnicity, political or religious beliefs or other differences, and respect resources as a consumer of them, otherwise known as stewardship.  

And as the Apostle Paul said, live and express love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and gentleness.  There is no law against these things.  As Kamala Harris said, a lot of Americans are tired of the hatred, the viciousness, taking advantage of hardships, the fraud and the lying.  Apparently there are others who want to indulge those things. The constitution gives me rights which guarantee the pursuit of happiness and that's what I'm doing.  So stay out of my lane and you won't get hurt.