I’m angry

I can’t tell you how angry I am. I’m angry, disappointed, disillusioned, and sad. I’m scared for our future and for the future my children will have to deal with. And I’m angry

On November 5, 2024, America elected a convicted felon, a fascist, and a low-intelligence buffoon. I will never give Donald Trump the respect of the office of President of the United States of America, because he has none for that office and none for the people who work for him to get him elected, none for the people who voted for him, and none for the institutions that were built on an ideal and a promise.

The laundry list of faults with Trump is long and sundry. There is direct, factual evidence of his misdeeds and bigotry. Even so, more than half of Americans agreed that factual evidence of misogyny, bigotry, and lawlessness is insufficient to judge a man’s character; indeed, they chose to install him in the highest office in our country. To cite his offenses is to give fuel to the fire that energizes his base. More than half of American voters support anarchy and authoritarianism.

So be it.

I suppose it might be easy to say that this is how the other side feels when Democrats are elected. It would be easy, but it would also give credibility to the ignorant and the bigoted. Because that’s who America is today. It’s ignorant and bigoted. For those who say that we’ve always been that way, I say no. We used to want to raise those people up and educate them. Even the uneducated had a sense that they’re children needed to know a certain amount of “book learning” to have a life better than their parents. Last night, America said, “No, it’s great to be an idiot and a buffoon. Who cares about rights and liberties? They’re too complicated. Let’s get lit.”

I cannot say that the people I know represent America. I know a couple of dozen people, at most. That is far from a representative sampling of the nearly 335 million US residents or the 140 million voters whose ballots have thus far been tabulated.

America is not just a place. It’s a belief. It’s an ideal that lives in our hearts. It’s a promissory note that was signed by men 248 years ago, who had no idea of the fabulous wealth and freedom they were bequeathing to us. It’s the hope and ideal that drives men, women, and families to leave their homelands and journey thousands of miles for a better life. It’s the faith that we hold when we enlist that, in the long run, our leaders will use the American might not for self-enrichment, but to protect democracy and liberal values abroad.

America is the ability to see what is flawed with our country and still believe in the better angels of our national nature. Theodore Roosevelt worked for a better civil service and was a champion of wilderness conservation, even as he was a global imperialist who sent a “Great White Fleet” around the world to display America power. We can see the selfishness and greed of capitalism, the misogyny and bigotry of religion, and the anger of small-minded, semi-literate men, and still choose to work for a more perfect union.

America is an ideal. Electing Donald Trump is abandoning idealism, just as believing Americans never landed on the moon is a foreclosure on the grand vision of our future.

I am angry. And I grieve for the final passing of American ideals from our cultural zeitgeist.