So What The Fuck Happened Last Week?

My Take On This Heartbreaking Election

January 23, 2016. It’s a day that will live in political infamy. Because on that day, at a campaign rally in Iowa, Donald Trump arrogantly declared “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” He fucking knew it. I don’t know how, but he did. He somehow knew, even then in his unconventional nascent campaign, what proved staggeringly accurate nine years later.

But what’s fact is that he’s rewarded MAGA’s loyalty by pathologically-lying to them, using and abusing them, exploiting them and treating them like brainwashed morons. He created a cult of personality. And his faithful minions have continued to follow him like sheep no matter what. Their blind, undying loyalty put him back in the White House yet again.

For a party that once prided itself on being the party of faith, family values, law and order, and national defense, it sure as fuck wrapped its collective arms around a serial-sinning convicted-felon who paradoxically ran, for example, on ‘free speech’ and retribution against those who’ve spoken out against him.

There have been so many truly shocking and outrageously offensive Trump statements and actions over the years that it’s impossible to count and remember them all.

So for the sake of time and ease, let’s just revisit a few highlights from Trump’s election homestretch. He promised to protect women “whether the women like it or not”. He called for Liz Cheney to be executed by a firing squad. He called America a “garbage can”. He said “who cares” about rising oceans in the wake of historic Hurricanes which slammed North Carolina and Florida. He was quoted by his former Chief of Staff John Kelly as saying “I need the generals Hitler had” and “Hitler did some good things.” He obsessed over golf legend Arnold Palmer’s penis. And he simulated jerking of and blowing a mic at his Milwaukee rally.

That’s just one week! But none of it mattered to MAGA.

And it didn’t matter to MAGA that he grabbed pussies. It didn’t matter that 20+ women accused him of sexual assault. It didn’t matter that he’s an adjudicated sexual abuser and fraudster. It didn’t matter that he’s attacked 4-star generals, Gold Star families, war heroes like John McCain and called soldiers “suckers and losers”. It didn’t matter that he said he’ll be a dictator “day one” and wants to use the U.S. military to punish his opponents. It didn’t matter that he enables our dictator enemies and alienates our democratic allies.

The list could go on and on and on and on and…

So what did happen in last week’s shocking election? What happened is that MAGA had a lot of help from white women, black men, Latinos, Jews, and Gen Z, in particular, the Elon Musk/Joe Rogan crypto bro-dudes.

And I’m sorry, but I’m not buyin’ the ‘economic’ excuse. According to all the metrics used for decades to analyze the strength or weakness of the economy, ours is the greatest in modern history, and the envy of the world. We have 3% GDP growth, record job growth, high (109) consumer confidence, 4.1% unemployment, rising wages, 2.4% inflation, gas under $3/gallon, and record stock market gains.

That said, the spoils of that economy have not been shared equally. Housing costs are too high, food and gas prices still remain high, and that’s a harsh reality and true burden on young people, young families, renters and first-time home-buyers and the working-class, for example.

There remains a huge income-inequality problem in America. People under 30 are earning 30% less than they did decades ago. The income and wealth gap between the wealthiest Americans and the middle class is wider than ever. All of which should’ve pushed voters to Harris, not away from her and to the billionaires like Trump and Musk. Because she and democrats have put forth solid proposals to aid these struggling voters while, truth be told, Trump and the billionaires couldn’t give a flying fuck about them.

But to Trump they flocked. Because Americans have short memories. Trump’s first-term economy was anything but strong. Housing costs dropped, like gas prices, because of the Covid pandemic…a health crisis, it should be noted, which he utterly mismanaged. Further, Trump was the only president since Herbert Hoover 100 years ago to actually lose jobs during his presidency (almost 3-million). And the stock market lagged behind the current highs. Trump 1.0 was certainly no day at the economic beach.

Harris’s loss is also not because she “couldn’t connect” with voters. She did a fantastic job connecting with half the fucking country in just 100 days. She just couldn’t connect with those who couldn’t/wouldn’t vote for a black woman.

So repeat after me: sexism and racism played a major role in the 2024 election. 12-million less people voted for Harris than they did for Joe Biden in 2020. And no one can or will convince me that a majority of Americans choosing two white men over the black lady is just fucking coincidence. Not after all the bigoted, misogynist rhetoric spewed by Trump about her and minorities. Not after a year-long attack on immigrants and scary black and brown people. And, sadly, given America’s ugly sexist, racist history.

And please spare me this refrain: ‘How could it be racism when so many blacks and Latinos voted for Trump?’ Easy. Just as “He has a Jewish daughter!’ isn’t proof that Trump isn’t an antisemite who admires Hitler and hangs with Nazis.

I know. It’s really, really hard to think of Americans this way. “It’s not who we are!” But, there’s no escaping that this is exactly who we are. The numbers don’t lie.