Ladies and gentlemen, Josh Groban.
Hello again everyone. I’m back to check in once again with another monthly update. This month has been kind of a stressful one for me. It certainly got off to a bad start, as I’m sure it did for most of you reading. You can probably all guess what I’m talking about, but I’ll go ahead and just say it. The election happened, and somehow Donald Trump became president again.
Now I usually keep politics off this site, because this is supposed to be an anime fan site. The thing is, the return of Donald Trump to the White House goes a little beyond politics. The entire world is freaking out about this. In Germany the day after the election, there was a newspaper with a single word for the headline: it was the F-bomb, and I assume it was in all caps. Like it or not, this is going to affect everyone to varying degrees.
So because this is such a big deal, I thought I should use the first part of this post to share my thoughts and feelings about this whole fiasco. I’d also like to share a little bit of advice on this subject, even though it’s probably not all that original. Now this little essay of mine is probably going to go on for a bit, so I’ve decided to split this post into two pages. The second page will cover some of the lighter things that have been going on in my life for the past month. So if anyone wants to skip ahead, feel free.
Okay, so the day after the election when I had learned the results of the presidential race, I was not shocked. I was horrified and dismayed, but I certainly wasn’t shocked. I just never had great faith that Kamala Harris would win, and it wasn’t because I doubted her abilities as a candidate. The problem was her campaign got started at the last minute. Harris was an eleventh hour replacement for Joe Biden, who we all found out too late had become like the prematurely aged and senile Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek episode, “The Deadly Years”.
Looking back, it felt like the Democrats were trying to finish an entire fifty-page term paper on the day it was due, for a class that started in less than thirty minutes. I regretfully did something similar once for a summer class I once took. It didn’t end well. Anyway, for a while I did have some hope that Kamala Harris would win after the debate where Trump went on an unhinged rant about immigrants eating pets, but apparently most of America wasn’t watching that night. They all just ignored what happened and decided to reelect a convicted felon with obvious mental problems.
As for why Kamala Harris lost the election, it wasn’t just because of one thing. There were a lot of things that went wrong, like her campaign getting off to such a late start. A lot of the things that went wrong could be filed under the category of sheer human ignorance. I’m sure a lot of people are still discussing what went wrong with the Harris campaign. In fact it’ll probably be a popular dinner table discussion at many homes around the country this Thanksgiving. The thing is it’s all academic now. Trump won, and now we’re stuck with him in the White House for another four years, unless something totally outrageous and out of left field happens.
The two days following the election I felt a mixture of grief, anger and fear, mostly anger and fear. In fact two days after the election, I ended up crying in my car while driving to work and listening to the very Josh Groban song I chose to embed at the start of this post. By this point though I’ve reached a level of acceptance with how this has all shaken out. I accept that Trump won the election. I just don’t like it a damn bit.
The day after the election when my dad came home from work, he said we’ll probably come out of this thing okay. Of course when he said that, I couldn’t help but think of a preview I saw for that stupid movie about the 2012 apocalypse where apparently the ice caps chose that time to melt and flood the planet. At the end of the preview there was this old guy who said, “We’re all gonna be fine.” My dad did point out though that we’ve had insane presidents before. Richard Nixon is the first one who always comes to my mind. This was a man who said, “If the president does it, it’s not illegal,” and if that sounds familiar to anyone, Trump more or less said the same thing during one of his speeches.
Of course one could argue that Trump is worse than Nixon, and they wouldn’t wrong. The point I’m trying to make though is that none of us really know what’s going to happen during the next four years. I think this recent clip from The Daily Show really says it best.
Now I realize that it’s been a few weeks since that clip was new, and things are already looking pretty bad. Trump has picked for his cabinet a collection of unqualified nut-jobs, creeps who should be in jail, and spineless jellyfish. I also realize that the fact that we don’t know what’s going to happen in the next four years is also what makes it all so frightening. At the bottom of all my comments on this site I have the quote, “The greatest fear is that of the unknown,” which paraphrases something H.P. Lovecraft once wrote in an essay. The reason the unknown is so terrifying is because we all tend to imagine that unknown as something that’s especially frightening to each of us. This is especially easy for someone like me who has an overactive imagination and anxiety issues. During these last few weeks my mind has certainly thought up its fair share of doomsday scenarios for the next four years.
In this case though, the fact that we don’t really know what’s coming is kind of a comfort. It’s possible something good might happen during the next four years. Like for instance hey, Trump’s old! He may not last an entire four years. Of course then we’d be stuck with the stooge he has for his vice president, but a slight improvement is better than nothing.
The other thing is the situation isn’t entirely hopeless. For instance, the creep Trump had originally nominated for Attorney-General was forced to withdraw his name from consideration because people were starting to learn about all of the freaky stuff he’s into. Plus people aren’t just going to roll over and let Trump have his way with everything. The Democrats who are still in power are going to do everything they can to thwart Trump’s agenda, and there are a lot of activist groups that are already hard at work trying to do the same thing. I’m reminded of the old quote apparently misattributed to writer and politician, Edmond Burke.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Which brings me to the advice I said I was going to share in this portion of the post, which can be summed up in these four simple words:
“Don’t be a victim!”
Okay, so Trump got reelected, but that doesn’t mean we should all throw our hands up in the air and say that it’s over. That’s exactly what Trump and his cronies want us all to do. If you’re afraid of Donald Trump and what he’s going to try and do to this country, then find a way to do something about it (short of starting an armed revolution, of course). For instance, try getting involved with one of the activist groups I mentioned earlier. I know that for the past few weeks I’ve been signing a lot of petitions that have been showing up in my email.
Above all though, just stay informed about what’s going on. One of the reasons Trump won was because there were just too many people who weren’t paying attention to what was going on. Also, while I’m not advocating mass exodus, maybe come up with some sort of emergency plan to flee the country in the event things in this country start to get really terrible. I’ll admit that a few times during this month I’ve thought about maybe fleeing to England, Ireland or Scotland. Actually my ideal solution would be to ride out the next four years in one of those cryogenic stasis pods intended for long-term space flights, like the kind used in sci-fi stories such as the Alien movies. Of course I’m sure that technology doesn’t exist yet, and if it did it’d probably cost like a quarter of a million bucks to use. Plus there’s the chance the technology could malfunction, and I’d end up awakening centuries later in a world ruled by apes, which might actually be an improvement over what’s coming.
All joking aside though, the most important thing all of us can do is stay informed about what’s happening in this country and in the world. Also, if anyone is still feeling afraid or angry, then share those feelings with someone. Talk about them with your family or with your friends. If you have a therapist, for God’s sake tell them about how you’re feeling with all this. In the end though, all any of us can do is just keep living our lives and take this whole mess one day at a time.
This concludes my little “Trump Talk”. I know it was kind of a long opening for a post like this, but I felt like a lot of these things just had to be said. Now I’ll get into some of the lighter news about what’s been going on with me lately.
