Roxanne Tellier – Nighttime in America

 

The American Dream is OVER. It’s nighttime in America.

If Biden was running for the ‘soul of America,’ he was too late. It had already been sold to the Devil. And its apprentice, trump, along with his squad of overweight, wannabe SS, has now emerged, crueler, more sadistic, and more vengeful than ever, whether, in the trouble end, he wins or loses.

As I write this, around noon on November 4^th, trump and Biden are basically neck and neck in terms of votes. The Senate is about the same, so no clear winner there either. Biden has been sitting at 223 Electoral College points, and trump at 213, since I first checked in, around 5 a.m. At this point, either man could be declared the winner. But whomever wins, whether with 50.1% or 51% of the votes, it is America that is the loser. Because a country that split, that cleaved so cleanly, cannot hold. And a Senate that split, cannot pass any measures to help a country that is hurting badly.

In 2016, the world was shocked at what America chose, but we could still pretend that this was somehow a mistake. Good people looked at those who struggled economically, and, based on the violence, racism and inequity of American society,  said, “well, maybe they had to do it, had to pray there could be a different way. They put their trust in a con man, but, really — how bad could it get?”   

And then, for four years, we found out. Boy, could it be bad. So bad, that parts of the nation now look like a third world nation, as tens of millions have been plunged into poverty and homelessness; immigrants, refugees … children! … have been treated with a sadistic cruelty not seen since Hitler’s camps;  230,000 Americans are dead from what should have been a preventable public health crisis; the environmental clock has been turned back to before anyone cared about clear air or water; peaceful protestors are routinely met with pepper spray and rubber bullets, and there’s no hope in petitioning the court, because McConnell and co. loaded up every court, right up to the Supreme one, and it’s all tilted in their favour, and their favour means you are going to lose the last of your health care AND your social security.

And yet half of America, knowing this, decided they want four more .. no, it being trump… forever more years of this. And worse.

We now know the truth about that half of America; they not only chose that all of that evil continue; they ran towards it with open arms and embraced it, with all of the strength in their bodies.

It’s a travesty. Even before mail-in votes are counted, trump has racked up two million MORE votes than he got in 2016. There were more votes cast for Joe Biden as president than in any other election in American history. And yet – there still isn’t a clear winner.

The Dems wanted and needed a landslide, a total repudiation of the evil that the trump administration has perpetrated, but that didn’t happen.

But the polls! The polls! I mean, most of us were suffering from PTSD from believing the 2016 polls, but come on! How could the polls have been THIS wrong again, in 2020 …? All the experts swore that they’d gotten all the bugs out, and that this time – FOR SURE Were the polls that wrong? Were people lying to pollsters? How did the Democrat message get so garbled.

And here we are.

Trump will not concede; he will never concede. Predictably, at 2:21 a.m., in the wee hours of November 4. trump attempted to falsely claim victory, saying that it was a “fraud on the American public,” and “an embarrassment to our country” that he hasn’t been able to fully celebrate his win properly.

“Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump said, while also suggesting he would take legal action to keep further ballots from being counted, insinuating that Democrats were committing fraud as key states continued to count hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots.

“Millions and millions of people voted for us today,” he said, “and a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people, and we won’t stand for it.”

As expected, trump will be petitioning the Supreme Court for a stop to the counting of the remaining ballots, again insisting that the remaining ballots, which number about 25 million from mail ins and the military, are somehow illegal.

“We’ll be going to the US Supreme Court; we want all voting to stop, we don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list.”

So how to explain this mess? Racism? But Obama won twice, and with a majority, so racism might not quite be the issue. Could it be misogyny? A vote for Biden, at 78, almost guarantees that at some point, you might have a black FEMALE president. Trump spent a lot of time hinting that Biden was too fragile to survive, even claiming that Joe Biden would be “shot” within three weeks of taking office.  (While he meant ‘shot’ in the sense of exhaustion, he had no problem with the more violent connotation so many of his supporters hoped he was insinuating.)

Trump also told his supporters that they would never have to see Kamala Harris as president in Biden’s place.

“People don’t like her,” the president said at a rally in North Carolina, recounting her falling poll numbers on the Democratic primary trail. “Nobody likes her. She could never be the first woman president. She could never be. That would be an insult to our country.” (ABC News)

And recently, he went even further, when he told his supporters at the retirement community, The Villages, in Florida,  “We’re not going to have a socialist president, especially a female socialist president.”

And here we are.

In the Senate, despite the $100 million spent in South Carolina on Jaime Harrison’s campaign against Lindsey Graham, Graham won 55% to 43.7%. Mitch McConnell beat Amy McGrath, 58.2% to 37.8%. Even Joni Ernst won her race, which no one could have envisioned. And Maine’s Susan Collins, believe it or not, will hang around to continue playing her Lucy to the Democrats Charlie Brown for another six long and dithering years.

I’m numb. My head is splitting, and my ears are ringing. The TV is blaring CNN updates, while MSNBC keeps me informed on the computer. But the numbers are unchanging, no matter how much attention I pay to them.

Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele reminds us that, “Democratic Americans still don’t understand what Donald Trump represents, and that it’s what 50% of Americans want.”

Joy Reid (MSNBC’s AM Joy): “I just wonder what all of this says about us. I think it raises real questions about what America is, at the end of the day, and whether what trump is, is more like what the American character is, than people ever wanted to admit.”

Randy Rainbow tweeted, “Woke up with a hangover in a stranger’s bed. But the stranger was America. “

And the comments pour in. On Facebook, “I feel like I was lied to my whole childhood. I was so proud to be an American, that we are the greatest country in the world. Now I see America for what it is – a bunch of horrible, selfish, stupid people who are unAmerican run the country. And the rest of us are screwed pawns.”

From Richard Kay, “To all the people I talked to previously about the extent of Trump-supporting rednecks, Christian fundamentalists, gun-crazy yahoos in the USA, and those people I was talking to, who replied, “oh, they’re only a small % of the country; the majority of citizens are good people.”  Well, here’s proof you were wrong.”

From Jim Wright/Stonekettle Station, “It’s not over, of course, and Biden may indeed yet win. But even if that happens, it’s pretty obvious that at least half of our country would have been those Germans who embraced the Nazis. It’s about what I figured.”

Gary LeDrew: “It is looking like about 4 years before we can open the border. Not much hope for the world and mega deaths for USA “

From Daniel C. Castellano: “After all that has happened. After all that they have seen. Still, they say, “Yup, that’s my guy.” 67 MILLION people. They are despicable. Every last one of them. If one of them is a friend or relative of yours, I’m sorry. But they are awful, awful people. Every. One. Of. Them.”

Wayne Baggs: “Many believe one gets what they deserve. The beginning of the end. Goodbye health care, social security, public schools, right to choose, balanced courts. I love watching train wrecks. They wanted the GOP; they got the GOP. Let the shit show begin. The cowards were only getting started.”

David Corn, (Mother Jones): “Close to half of the American electorate voted for a man who just declared he would try to block election results and undermine American democracy to remain in power.”

Annie G. Robinson: “It’s like a family in our neighbourhood was accused of committing murder. We then determined that only a few family members were guilty, and the rest were innocent. Now we’ve discovered that the guilty family members are actually serial killers, and are acting proud of it, sticking their middle fingers in our faces. And a few that we thought were innocent are guilty also. The truly innocent ones are shocked and heartbroken, and now they, too, are under threat. That’s the way I feel about the US this morning.”

Glenn Morgan: What I DON’T look forward to … is the DOUBLING DOWN of HERR TRUMP’s denigration of the Free Press… he will now try to CRUSH DISSENT of journalists such as CNN & MSNBC, and truly try to DOMINATE the airwaves and Social Media with his insane blather.”

Peter Winholt: “Whoever wins, the loser is America. They have chosen, by close to the same margin as last election, to embrace the values that Trump has shamelessly flaunted in the campaign. The only difference now will be in which direction the U.S. is facing going forward. Where they are standing is in the middle of an Idiocracy, having chosen Q-Anon over science, lies over truth, and sociopathy over empathy.”

Michael Moore: “Sadly, as to why our fellow Americans did not repudiate Trump yesterday in a massive way, as to why nearly 70 million Americans still embrace a bigot and a psychopath — well, we must have that discussion soon as to who we REALLY are. Shameful. Apologies to our Black brothers and sisters, and apologies to the rest of the world.”

Shameful indeed.

To be continued ….

=RT=

Roxanne’s column appears here every Sunday 

Roxanne Tellier has been singing since she was 10 months old … no, really. Not like she’s telling anyone else how to live their lives, because she’s not judgmental, and most 10 month olds need a little more time to figure out how to hold a microphone. She has also been a vocalist with many acts, including Tangents, Lady, Performer, Mambo Jimi, and Delta Tango. In 2013 she co-hosted Bob Segarini’s podcast, The Bobcast, and, along with Bobert, will continue to seek out and destroy the people who cancelled ‘Bunheads’.