Numb

So last night Cindy and I fell asleep after watching a couple hours of the election coverage.  At that point it seemed clear that the election results were much closer than the professional pollsters predicted.  You could sense the apprehension in the NBC News staff as the comfortable HRC win that was widely expected was not coming to fruition.  Despite this, when I closed my eyes there was still a clear path to her securing the win, of course the plan hinged on her securing PA, a state that has voted democrat for president for nearly three decades.  Well even my former home state let me down, flipping to red when I awoke this morning, along with pretty every other battleground state on the map.

I was lucky to at least sleep to a little after 5:30.  Cindy awoke early in the morning and saw the result and literally cried herself to sleep eventually.  I shed no tears myself once I confirmed the results as I ate my breakfast.  I just sort of shook my head in both disgust and amazement, Idiocracy had actually come to be.

I can spin myself around in circles trying to analyze how a ruthless business man, reality tv star, and man of marginal intelligence that shits on gold plated toilets was somehow seen to be representative of the type of change that America really wants.  To me it is representative of just how easy it is to use simple psychological warfare to steer the populace.  Stalin famously said, “A lie, told often enough eventually becomes the truth”

There were two candidates this year that represented the uprising against the political status quo in the country, Trump and Bernie.  Even though both of these candidates wanted to uproot the establishment, there couldn’t have been a larger difference in the way they proposed doing it.  Bernie is well spoken, well versed, experienced, and knowledgeable about everything he identified as problems.  He had detailed plans of action to make every one of his proposals come to fruition. Donald had none of that.  He relied almost entirely on vague generalities.  Everything wrong was “terrible” or “a “disaster” and his plan of action to address all of it was more or less “I will fix it, trust me” with next to no ideas or specifics on how any of it will be accomplished.

I just struggle to understand how people could dismiss the constant red flags that have come up during the Trump campaign.  They were literally endless.  In the end the only way I can sum it up is people wanted change so bad that they will take it any way they can get it, even if it is change for the worse evidently.  I can only hope that the damage that is inflicted to civil rights, the environment, our allies, and the economy is survivable.  Ironically, the only thing that may slow down the march into the abyss is that same, lobbyist controlled congress is largely still in place.  In order to carry out many of his campaign vows he will require their support which I think is unlikely he will get in many cases.

So anyway, being a sore loser in the end does not really accomplish much.  I will be thrilled if the doom and gloom I am feeling today proves to be ultimately misplaced.  I will be happy to admit my failure in judgement if that happens.  Maybe I am the idiot and the country will rally around having a reality tv star for President.  History is filled with brash leaders that rallied their country to support efforts that we now view as atrocious. Of course these efforts always have a very bad ending.  I can only hope we have not started writing the next chapter in that book.

The reaction to the election result from Wall Street and the rest of the world is pretty shocking, in a way mimicking 9/11 with plummeting markets and worldwide condolences.

There was one shard of good news from the election results with Florida finally passing medical marijuana.  After the presidential election results we are going to need it.  In the end, we will get what we deserve.