A Premature Obituary for the Last Four Years

 

I remember waking up Tuesday night, November 3th, 2016, checking the computer for the election results and then reassuring myself that in the morning, things would be different, that there was no fucking way that Donald Trump would be elected the President of the United States. Many people reporting feeling like we'd entered a parallel universe, an alternate timeline where crazy shit like the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series happened. Anything is possible, folks; we might wake up tomorrow and see a meteorite hurtling toward earth. In fact, that would be perfectly in character with the rest of 2020, amirite? Actually, fuck that. There have been plenty of worse years in human history. Did you know in the fourteenth century, the Black Death killed between 75 and 200 million people over the span of five years? Hell, the early 1940s were pretty goddamn bad, with World War 2 happening and all. Still, in my lifetime, the last four years have been full of things that I thought would never happen. I always thought people were smart enough not to fall for a charlatan like Donald Trump. I thought if an authoritarian political movement ever took root, it would be led by someone charismatic and intelligent, someone capable of distracting from the evil festering behind the scenes. Trump's appeal, of course, is that he doesn't hide that evil; rather, he puts it on full display. I never thought a large number of people could support someone who tore immigrant children from their parents and then lost the information to reconnect them. I never thought anyone could support someone whose campaign met with Russian agents to receive dirt on a political opponent. I didn't think the so-called religious right would throw their backing behind a man who used campaign funds to pay off a porn star. I didn't think anyone could accept Trump firing an FBI Director for refusing to end an investigation of Russian political interference in the 2016 election. I thought (for a split second) that Trump's attempt to withhold foreign aid to Ukraine unless they investigate the son of his political rival would be too blatantly corrupt, even for Republicans. Now, of course, I am wiser. A quarter of a million Americans have died because of the coronavirus, and it's pretty much all of Trump's fault. He made the virus political, after sitting on his hands while New York suffered. Now, the rate of infection is skyrocketing, and people in my red state don't wear masks. Are we in the dumbest timeline? Christ, I would rather have Herbert Mountain Dew Camacho for President. At least he listened to the smartest man in the world rather than trolls like Rudy Giuliani and whatever the fuck Jared Kushner is.

I don't know what's going to happen this week. I like that over 93 million Americans voted early. I would bet that most of those people feel similarly to how I feel. They've probably lived in a constant state of disbelief for the last four years. They've watched their country transform into a partisan nightmare where reality can be discarded and replaced with alternate facts. I cannot state the pure contempt I have for people that support the reelection of Donald Trump, a obvious sociopath who has never tried to be a President for anyone besides himself. He's the exact opposite of a competent leader. He never takes responsibility for anything. He insults anyone who disagrees with him. He is a habitual liar, a liar so lazy that he seems to lie out of compulsion and contempt for the very nature of objective truth. He has insulted women and military vets, made racist comments, and refused to disavow white supremacists. He has been accused of sexual assault by 28 women. He has made numerous attempts to discredit our democratic process, from telling his supporters to intimidate voters to hiring an unprecedented army of lawyers to challenge legitimately cast ballots in the courts. He is, in short, the biggest piece of shit ever to occupy the Presidency of the United States in the modern era, and it is far from hyperbole to say that he is a threat to the future of democracy in America.

So whatever the hell happens tomorrow, Wednesday, this month, this year, I hope and pray that the next four years are the exact opposite of the last four, that America reaffirms its commitment to liberalism, to equality for all, to hopefulness and progress rather than spite and bile; that we take our ideals seriously and hold all men and women to the same standard that we hold ourselves to, and that we punch nihilism right in its fucking face and send it back to the black pit from whence it came. A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for morality, positivity, and the future. A vote for Trump is a vote for debauchery, vileness, and a dead past that will never be living, no matter how much evil is pumped into its cold, rotting corpse.