The U.S. election has drawn to a close. Like most people, I wasn’t expecting this outcome. In fact, I was going to write this column, and predicate the whole thing on the end of the election being a relief, a predictable status-quo kind of ending to a noisome, dragged-out campaign.
I, like probably many others, was tired of hearing about it. It had been months of the slangs and slurs, months of hearing about the profusion of horrible, bigoted things supporters of America’s new president said and did, in their support of him.
I was tired hearing about the horrible truths arising from what Trump said and did, and how indifferent his supporters were to it all. How eager to overlook those facts they were, in the quest to “make America great again.”
That improvident joke of an election has been the absolute focus of the media in the U.S., to the point where I would say: “Enough about Trump and Hillary. What else is going on in the States?!”
I had a lot of ideas of how the U.S. presidential election was going to pan out, state-by-state. Huge swaths of the south turning symbolic red on the many colour-coded electoral maps? “Check.” The west coast and northeast turning Democrat blue? “Of course.”
‘Yuge’ portions of the western states, midwest and Rust Belt states turning Republican red? “Wait a minute…” Trump winning a majority of the cumulative electoral votes, and not losing that majority from just after supper, and onward? “What?”
Trump having such a dramatic lead, despite Hillary getting the 55-vote lion’s share of the electoral vote that California represents? “Are you serious?”
The improbability of the election turning out the way it did was what kept me up to an ungodly hour last night. It was what compelled me to watch until the final point of no return, which turned out to be Trump’s win of Pennsylvania.
As horrible for so many people in the U.S. as the outcome of this election is, and as dangerous for the U.S. economy and the many other economies with which it is so deeply intertwined, we have finally seen the end of so many awful things.
From the incessant, toxic rhetoric from both sides, and the inundation of coverage of every inane detail of the FBI’s fruitless perpetual scrutiny of Hillary’s overblown email scandal, to the last minute avalanche of misogyny that a little digging into Trump’s past yielded, it’s finally over. If I can take solace in nothing beyond this fact, so be it.
It was an entertaining run, these last few months, at first. Entertaining in the sense that you couldn’t look away. It was like watching a train derail, or the aftermath of a particularly awful car accident. But eventually, fatigue from it all set in.
It got to the point where every disgusting sexist or racist utterance that was dug up from Trump’s past (or proclaimed onstage at one of his rallies) stopped surprising me.
“We get it, you’re unqualified,” I’d irately intone at my computer screen, only to see all that evidence of his genuinely poor character not at all be an impediment to his election.
How someone like Trump could win an election and become the leader of the most powerful nation in the world is a mystery to me. I would have never assumed someone so bigoted, misogynistic, racist, xenophobic and completely bereft of even any rhetorical skill in the any of the debates would mobilize so many voters.
Of course I was aware there were plenty of disaffected white voters who were fed up with the status quo and wanted to shake things up—I just didn’t think there were that many of them, nor did I think they were that eager to change things that’d they’d vote that orange joke of a candidate.
Hillary had history as, at least, a competent Secretary of State and first lady working in her favour. Hillary actually had experience as a politician. Hillary had policies that had some realism to them. Hillary had a lead in the polls up to election night, and all the same, Hillary lost.
Again, the only thing I’m celebrating about this is that it’s over. Now that the air is cleared of all the allegations and arguments, we get to see how this plays out. You’ve made your bed America.
