Month: November 2024

I know there will be people reading this who will disagree with me. That’s okay! 

There are people who will even say these things were underway and just came to fruition coincidentally 72 hours after the election was called in Trump’s favor.

Regarding Ukraine & Russia there are people who will say that the sudden change is because Putin and Trump are boyfriends.

Okay, the folks that believe those things are more than welcome to continue to believe them.

But regardless of the reasons, it may be that Trump’s win, and let’s face it, this was a drubbing of Democrat policies in general, and the policies of the Biden/Harris Administration in particular, has catalyzed a lot of nice things happening very suddenly.

One of those things that I find most amazing is that the American people didn’t just speak, they roared.

Had the Democrat party been paying attention, and adjusted their approach addressing the concerns of the people, I doubt that so much of the country would have voted red.

Look at the map. There were counties in deep blue California that flipped to red. That’s almost unheard of. Except that the entire country is clearly pissed off.

I honestly don’t think it was only about Trump’s messaging. The media kept up their attacks, Kamala, Biden, Obama, and the rest of the Democrat Machine kept up their badmouthing and misrepresentation. If anything, all that side of the equation was constant.

Orange man bad, Nazi, Racist, Misogynist, Felon, Rapist, Dictator, blah blah blah. And all his followers too should be in camps! (Honestly, the Democrats sounded a lot more Nazi than the Republicans.)

Trump isn’t much different than he ever was. He might be a little more humble but I’m not sure.

So it comes down to 1 of 2 factors. Kamala was a terrible candidate or Americans believed their lying eyes and not the gaslighting about the economy or how much better their lives are under the Biden/Harris Administration.

It’s maybe a bit of both.

The media is saying that suddenly the whole damn country is misogynist, and racist. I think that’s funny as hell because even after getting stomped, the media is still trying to prop Kamala Harris up and completely missing the point.

I don’t believe the American people give two shits about her race, her gender, or anything else aside from she said she couldn’t think of anything she’d do different from Biden, and that she’s deeply flawed and unlikable, she could not or would not address the concerns of the people.

I believed that Kamala would win anyway because it could be argued the Democrat Party and the machine in Washington demonstrably hate the American People.

What better way to demonstrate to We The People that our voices fall on deaf ears than to saddle us with a blithering idiot like Kamala Harris & lying buffoon like Tim Walz, coupled with crippling debt that serves other countries interest but not our own?

I believed that Harris/Walz would be installed regardless of the voting results and that would be the end of our nation. I was envisioning the decline of Rome. A string of mostly shitty leaders who frittered the wealth of The Empire away.

Trump being elected has given me some hope. It sounds stupid but I’ve been in a depression, closer to despair, that I had attributed to Jerry’s death.

Now I wonder. Since the election I’ve been smiling more, I’m feeling lighter and more positive. 

I can see the possibility of being employed again. Things aren’t so dismal. My need to work on projects isn’t quite so daunting. Hell, I wasn’t paying attention and found that I’ve cleaned the garage.

Monday, there’s a representative from a new church coming to pick up at least some, if not all of the boxes of music that Jerry had stored but hadn’t touched for a decade.

The thing is, I was smiling most of the time I was moving things around, sweeping floors,& making sure that Jerry hadn’t stashed important papers amongst the music. I wasn’t sad, it wasn’t drudgery, I was content moving boxes and re-stacking them for easy loading.

It’s progress born of hope rather than “going through the motions” not wanting to extend myself or expend any physical or emotional effort because “Why should I? Some faceless nameless fuck will just come along and tax me or steal my work.”

California has made me feel like this for a long time, but California plus an overarching federal government that appeared to be capricious and arbitrary too, was right on the raggedy edge of too much for me to bear.

At first I thought this was strictly about my own issues. That I was taking it all far too personally. That I’d never recovered from the “Lockdown” mentality. All these things are probably true in some measure. With gas & food prices what they are, I don’t go places often. I’ve gotten out of the habit, and I don’t enjoy sitting in traffic.

During the California lockdowns, you didn’t know if you were going to be arrested for surfing alone on an empty beach. Or when the next insane Karen was going to accost you in a parking lot because you hadn’t put your completely useless chin diaper on. Or finding shelves empty because our transportation infrastructure was a useless mess, I got into the habit of not wanting to go anywhere because I just hated and loathed dealing with the insanity.

One thing that I did notice during the COVID / Biden / Harris years was that going to Florida,  Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, and Alabama were pleasurable because those places were not treating their citizens like prisoners in their own homes. Oddly, their shelves were pretty damn full too in addition to gas costing about 1/2 what I paid in California.

All of which is why I was pressuring Jerry to move. I really wanted us to enjoy our golden years  someplace that was calm and comfortable. We never got the opportunity.

We put up with the lockdown mentality. I kept beating my head against the wall employment wise, and Jerry kept working all the jobs he’d been working for years. We settled into almost a Stockholm syndrome way of living. We were prisoners and we couldn’t see any way out of the prison. Things were as they’d always been and they weren’t going to change. 

The world was a uniform grey of rules, fear, regulations, and not wanting to deal with anything outside our four walls more than we had to. When Jerry died, for me, the grey got a lot darker.

I stopped correcting people who needed to validate their COVID terror, by saying Jerry died of COVID. In a way that is true, not because he contracted the virus, but because he wasn’t able to get the medical care during COVID he needed.

Doctors here in California made it so very difficult to schedule appointments plus it was questionable if the appointment would be kept dependent on the doctor’s staff testing positive for COVID or not. After a while Jerry stopped trying. His schedule had far too many moving pieces to accommodate the doctor’s office calling to say, “tomorrow?  Next week??? Maybe in a month?”

A lot of these were wounds that I didn’t realize I was carrying. I knew I was burdened, but you get used to the weight and after a while you don’t notice it at all.

Since Trump’s election I look at the stock market soaring, I see Hamas saying they want to stop the shit. I look at Putin & Zelensky publicly stating that it’s time to stop their war, and the middle east countries who suddenly have decided it’s not a good idea to harbor terrorist groups and kicking them out. Look at the most recent migrant caravan suddenly reduced to 1/2 its size because the message is out, the free ride ,in the United States is over.

So perhaps it’s not just me, that feels like I’m seeing the sun for the first time in a long while. Sometime in the last 3.5 years, I wrote in this blog that the Biden Administration “Felt” a lot like the Obama Administration. At the time that was a “one off” comment. 

Looking back on it, and the Obama Administration, I wasn’t happy either. About a year or so into Obama’s first term I felt profoundly betrayed.

I’d voted for the guy and he wasn’t who or what I thought he was. I felt relieved when Trump won in 2016 even though I didn’t vote for him or Hillary.

I realize now that even though I was attempting to ignore politics, on some level I was very aware of the political machinations. I was seeing the effects on my life and worried about how I would be affected by nameless faceless bureaucrats.

I’d had a taste of what could happen under the Clinton administration when he closed military bases in the local area. Our local economy tanked, there were layoffs, high unemployment, our home’s value dipped underwater and we were very concerned that we’d lose our home altogether.

The Bush II years were slightly better. At the time, I was not happy with the Republican Party at all, hence my voting for Obama and “Hope & Change”. I was willing to risk a Democrat Administration because I looked at Obama and thought “He’s a younger guy, he’s going to understand the working class. The Democrats are the party of the working class so things will be better off.

Except they weren’t. Scandals, mismanagement, & misuse of the DOJ, IRS, and other government agencies plagued Obama. Even Jerry, a lifelong Democrat, turned away in disgust from the Democrat party toward the end of Obama’s administration.

Both of us rolled our eyes at Trumps 3AM Tweets. Neither of us voted for Trump in 2016. Jerry thought I was nuts when I came around to Trump. I could see the advantage of a Businessman’s practicality in the Presidency. In 2020 we both voted for Trump and were both disappointed when Biden was installed.

We both had many questions about the election and thought that it was a bad idea to switch Presidents with the looming COVID crisis. But all too soon we were locked down. Shortly thereafter Biden was mandating vaccines, as a condition of employment, even if you never left your damn home, because you were working remotely.

So I was screwed. My system doesn’t react well with RNA inhibitors so medically speaking a modified RNA vaccine was out of the damn question.

Until Tuesday, I’d given up even looking for a job except for once every two weeks or so. I am white, old, male, don’t have a degree, and while I am gay, I’m not much into the pronouns de jour, or worrying about how someone identifies if they’re wearing genderfuck drag. That was the employment environment. Why bother wasting time looking?

That seems to have been the recurring theme for me over the past 4 years. Why bother? Why try? The obstacles and impediments are too high. After all, I’m a racist, disease carrying, misogynist, uneducated, illiterate, nazi, garbage, existential threat to democracy, transphobic, domestic terrorist, worthless useless, male piece of shit. I don’t deserve to be able to have a job, or to even exist… According to Biden, the sitting President of the United States.

My sole usefulness was to pay taxes.

Words matter. 

Negative messaging and name calling is destructive.

Perhaps that’s why Donald Trump fills stadiums. His message is one of we’ve got these problems, here’s what I plan to do about those problems. We’ve got a few nasty people in power who are not listening to all the beautiful voices of you good people. I appreciate that you folks have taken the time to come hear what I have to say.

It’s possible that I and the rest of a weary nation heard him and thought, “That message is a better one than we’re hearing from the other side.”

Hearing that the country had elected Trump in both popular vote and electoral college vote was heartening.

It represented a possible end to the slog through hell we’ve experienced for the past 4 years. That the House and Senate were also red provides a mechanism wherein Trump can implement his plans without a lot of static.

That made me happy. I can see an end to the shit. I feel like trying again. I look forward to the future and want to contribute again.

All of which is to say, If you see me and I have a goofy grin. It’s because I’m happy for the first time in 4 years…