When a clown moves into a palace, he does not become a king.
The palace becomes a circus.
Turkish proverb
So … what have we learned following this devastating loss?
For one thing, we aren’t living in the country of our dreams anymore. In the days after this most shameful of elections, a friend reminded me that in 2016 — the first time this clown moved into the palace — we said, defiantly, “This is not who we are!” This time, my friend noted, “We can’t say that so easily, can we?”
On Nov. 6, we woke up in a different country than the one we dream of and, as the clown prepares to defile the White House … again, we have to face the fact that this is who we are right now. Not all of us, of course. Some 75 million (and counting) voted for a country where truth is stronger than lies, where light defeats darkness, and where government of the people, by the people, and for the people will never perish from the Earth. We trusted that all Americans wanted that.
We were misinformed. This time lies were stronger than the truth. In fact, truth barely made a dent in this year’s campaign. We learned that democracy can be used as a tool for democracy’s demise. We learned that the majority of Americans are such low-information voters, have such a short memory span, and are so easily swayed by falsehood that it may not even be possible anymore for truth to prevail.
There are no bright spots in this election, no silver linings. This time around, lies won, hands down.
So how do we defend the vulnerable if we are now the vulnerable? How do we navigate the insanity of this asylum now that the inmates are firmly in charge? How do we defend our respective islands of light against the dark when darkness has become our default setting?
Some say we get the government we deserve. I don’t believe that. No one deserves this.
We learned that our institutions were too weak to prevent the darkness from taking control. Our final defense was the vote, but our electoral system is contaminated by sexism, racism and voter suppression.
We learned that we are, at this moment, incapable of electing a woman president, even when she was clearly the superior candidate, who ran a nearly flawless campaign against the most despicable human being ever to run for this office, who already established that he is the most incompetent person ever to hold the office, which qualifies this election as the American people’s greatest collective failure, calling into question — as the authoritarians always do — whether we are capable of governing ourselves.
I hope to God that Trump and his minions stole this election because if he won it fair and square, I may never regain my faith in my fellow Americans.
But if this is not who we are, then who the hell are we? We’ve been toggling back and forth like a colossal metronome for the past 45 years: Reagan to Clinton, Bush to Obama, Trump to Biden, and now Trump … again.
One side wants progress, the other side will do anything to stop it. Two steps forward, one step back; one step forward, two steps back. The backlash against Obama was severe. The backlash against Biden, and now Harris, was equally harsh, punishing them for the sin of making progress, for daring to prove that the system works — whenever voters put the adults in charge.
In 2020, the pandemic enabled a breakthrough, a minor miracle. But the forces of backwardness succeeded in overturning Biden’s election. It took four years — aided by the impotence of the courts, the media, and a suppressed voter turnout.
We came so close to turning the page and finding a way forward. But the opposition wasn’t about to let the system work long enough for people to finally take notice. And our side isn’t strong enough yet to overcome the firehose of lies and fear-peddling. When that happens, the jig is up for Republicans.
What will it take to defeat voter suppression, gerrymandering, election-worker harassment, the electoral college, filibustering, and campaign finance abuse? How do we sustain progress, when voters attack it like antibodies rejecting a transplanted heart? What will it take to cure this country’s government-phobia?
Republicans are the masters of disaster: The Great Depression; the Watergate scandal; the extreme economic inequality of Reaganomics; 9/11, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the 2007-08 financial meltdown; the pandemic — all of it happened on their watch. And after each disaster, voters turned to the Democrats to clean up the mess: Clinton eliminated the deficit and produced an unprecedented budget surplus; Obama brought us health care reform; Biden got us through the pandemic, passed the Recovery and Inflation Reduction acts, investing in green energy and infrastructure, adding 16 million jobs and sparking an economic boom. But every time Democrats come to the rescue, voters punish them, fueled by Republican lies.
How can we overcome the power of lies when voters can’t even remember back four years and recognize how much better off they are now?
So we lurch from disaster to disaster, fix to fix. The center does not hold. Voters are easily manipulated. Social media is more problem than solution. Russian misinformation is rampant. The system has too many flaws. More devastating climate disasters loom because for the next four years, we will be governed … again … by madmen with outlandish egos, tech titans who have no answers, and a new/old president who is likely descending into dementia. Maybe all of that will change our future election reckoning — or maybe not.
Was 2020 our last real election, the last one that wasn’t rigged by lies — and our capitulation to those lies? If 2024 is the new model, all future elections will simply be a contest to determine the biggest liar. We have made America ridiculous again … a circus, run by clowns. Trump, the sequel.
Who are we now? Based on this election, we have become a nation of second-rate citizens who make bad choices, who keep running back to the Republicans, addicted to the sugar high of lies and the adrenaline rush of insanity. To invert Winston Churchill’s famous words, future Americans will look back and say, “This was their darkest hour.” I hope to God it is because I’m having trouble imagining anything darker. And at the moment, I’m having trouble imagining anything more hopeful.
As a nation, we have two choices: Evolve or Devolve, Sanity or Insanity. On Nov. 5, we chose insanity … again. Devolving is the easy path. All it takes is surrender, ignorance, lies, and cowardice. A majority of Americans demonstrated that in abundance two weeks ago.
But my grandkids need a future, so giving up is not an option. How do the rest of us accelerate our evolution?
Partly by remembering, and keeping alive, our fundamentals. Americans believe in just one self-evident thing: Everyone is created equal. To paraphrase Lincoln, whatever differs from that, to the extent of the difference, is not America.
Freedom is the condition we seek, but without equality, there is no freedom. It’s a very simple equation: Democracy + Equality = Freedom. And Forward is our only direction. That sums up who we really are. When everyone finally learns that, everything changes.
Apparently, though, we’re going to have to learn that lesson the hard way.
The sooner the better, because all this back-and-forth-and-back crap is really crippling us.