Editorial note: Opinions expressed here are solely those of the blogger
If you’re like me, time seems to exist in this odd other-worldly vacuum during COVID-19 where it seems days are like weeks and weeks like months. I know it was a little more than a week ago when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were declared the winners of the 2020 Presidential Election. But it seems like ages ago.
Our family officially received the news around midday Saturday via a text from one of our daughter Sasha’s friends. Then we all gathered together to watch CNN before getting back to our chores and errands. Only to watch the celebrations throughout the country later in the evening, which one cable news talking head described as what you typically see after a dictator is overthrown.
I know intellectually that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump and that after Inauguration Day Donald Trump will go back to being a private citizen. My prediction is that even when Trump takes on the widely-expected roll of professional troll that he will be diminished. No Air Force One, or briefing room with the Presidential seal-emblazoned podium. No motorcade. And man, will Trump miss all of that. I’m confident deep down in my soul that despite the incredibly daunting obstacles that face us, we have a better shot of coming through to the other side quicker and more intact with Joe Biden at the helm.
All well and good. But something’s lacking; something feels a bit hollow and unsettling. Ah, I know what it is. I can’t get the satisfaction of something I’ve waited four long years for: see Donald Trump and those around him acknowledge what we’ve known all along – that he’s a big, fat, pathetic loser. Donald Trump won’t give it to me. And like everything else with Donald Trump, I find myself absolutely repulsed yet strangely impressed.
It’s not like we didn’t see Trump’s actions coming. He said all along he wouldn’t accept the results of the election, if he lost. But what drives me nuts is that how, to a large degree, he’s being enabled. By member of Congress. His own cabinet (Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s smarmy reference to a second Trump term was particularly galling). And the millions of people who voted for him.
And, in this weird way, I feel oddly complicit in all of this. Don’t judge but during the past several weeks our family has been watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians on Hulu. We have a blast offering our own color commentary about what qualifies as “reality” – staged drama, clunky foreshadowing and wooden acting. But from a bigger picture, many of us are living in our own blue or red realities, where, depending on your point of view, we’re, as I stated earlier, starting our journey out of the wilderness or heading off into it to plot our return to power.
It’s almost as if, culturally, enough of us decided that a new kind of manufactured reality was acceptable. We can get angry and annoyed at Donald Trump all we want and truthfully, I have plenty of more anger and annoyance in reserve. But at least for me, part of the anger, annoyance and no small amount of frustration comes from the knowledge that I had a hand in making Donald Trump possible.
shishkabobgirldad 