the ugly truth

I emerged from the wilderness after a two-day hike hoping for a decisive result in the US election. A blue wave shaped like a giant middle-finger poking that fat orange fool out of the Oval Office and back to his dumpy beachhouse in Florida. But far from it. Almost 24 hours after voting closed and it’s on a razor’s edge: 237 v 214 in favour of Biden.

WTF America?

But who’s really surprised, outside of the Disunited States, that is. Not me. About a week ago I read a bunch of opinion pieces by regular NYT columnists. While each prayed for the same result, few reflected on why they felt so angry, disappointed, ashamed and bewildered by that fact that — DESPITE EVERYTHING — millions of Americans continue to support Donald Trump. Those few recognised an ugly truth: that another America exists alongside their own, where fifty percent (48% at time of writing) of the population live. Like this crazy bitch.

Trump’s a con-artist, so division and distraction are his tools. In 2021 white Americans become a minority ethnic group in the US, so it’s all been “We (white men) are gonna lose control of our own country to them elites and minorities!” since 2016. Forget dog-whistle politics, that’s too subtle. Just attack and lie and distract. Scared, insecure people don’t give a shit about truth, and when they do it’s another truth, not ours. A truth which holds that the only colours in the US flag are red, white and blue. Not the red, black and blue of those BLM vandals, nor the red, pink and blue of those uppity college-educated feminists, let alone anything else.

But that’s just ‘merica for you. Or at least how I see it. The lies you guys tell yourselves are the lies you tell to the world, and maybe this is the correction you all deserve. As much as I am disappointed that the slap-down did not materialise, I can’t blame the blue voters. You guys tried, that’s obvious. You just don’t know your fellow Americans as well as you thought you did.

To the Democrats, best of luck. Hope you can hold on to Wisconsin. Better brace yourselves for every dirty trick Donald Trump can think of, because he’ll never concede he’s lost. He’ll say he’s been robbed, and give QAnon, the KKK, the alt-right, and all those urban militia fucktards the good-to-go. While it’s too early to speak of civil unrest, I hope to see Joe Biden striding out of the fog of war up the steps of the Capitol Building to be inaugurated as the 46th Us President, because the ugly alternative is another four years of an America most don’t recognise.