Take a good look, America.
This is your “lesser of two evils.”
This is the result of your third party, middle finger protest vote.
This is the fruit of you checking out and opting out altogether back in 2016.
I hope it was worth it, though I can’t imagine how it could be.
I think you’re beginning to see you made a mistake, I sense your silent regret, and I hear you carefully walking back your decision.
I even see you responding with apparent shock—but for the life of me I can’t imagine you’re surprised right now, even though you claim to be.
More disturbing than you voting for him out of supposed necessity, or choosing an independent candidate that ensured his ascension, or abstaining from voting at all—is you acting like this wasn’t the logical outcome, that this unmitigated global disaster wasn’t all but inevitable.
What the hell did you expect?
If you’d been thinking clearly, you’d have known that this was always going to play out this way.
Of course he was going to legislatively assault women.
He was a professed predator and serial adulterer with a storied history of sexist behavior and spousal mistreatment, before you ever stepped into the polls on that Tuesday in November. If you voted for him after he said he’d grab women by the pussy, don’t act surprised that he’s now grabbing them by the uterus.
Of course he was going to separate migrant families and imprison their children.
He spent his entire campaign stoking the white fears of people of color; leveraging every lazy FoxNews stereotype designed to emotionally arouse nationalists and supremacists. He showed you his hostility toward Muslims and his resentment of immigrants in stump rambling stump speeches and spectacularly ignorant tweet tantrums.
Of course he was going to disregard the Constitution and the rule of law.
He is a career criminal; a professional financial predator who has left a trail of multiple bankruptcies, broke unpaid vendors, crooked business dealings, and tax records he has fought tooth and nail to keep concealed. He was publicly amorous toward Vladimir Putin for a year before you ever voted. What story did you tell yourself about why that was?
Of course he was going to try and repeal LGBTQ rights.
He grew beholden to the phobic religious extremists of the Evangelical Right, and his Vice President has advocated for reparative therapy to help people pray away their gender identity and sexual orientation. Did him wrapping himself in a rainbow flag for a thirty second photo op really make you think he was going to evolve beyond his party?
Of course he was going to ignore school shootings and mass murders committed with semi-automatic weapons, largely by unhinged, homegrown white men.
He has been in bed with the NRA and the gun lobby since day one, never once sending any other signal—than promising he will choose money over lives every single time, and that the only violence he will ever respond to is from dark-skinned or foreign people.
Of course he was going to be malicious toward the planet.
He spent his campaign denying climate change and targeting native American lands for drilling and cozying up to corporate polluters and mocking Science. Why would you have ever imagined he’d give a damn about melting glaciers and dying honeybees and vanishing coral reefs?
None of this malevolence should be shocking and you really don’t have a right to claim incredulity, if you were paying attention—but I suppose you weren’t paying attention, otherwise you’d have heard the warnings.
Hillary Clinton tried to warn you.
Barack Obama tried to.
The Free Press tried to.
65 million Americans tried to.
Most of all, Donald Trump tried to warn you.
He spent his entire campaign inciting violence and degrading women and showing his intellectual ignorance and broadcasting his hostility toward vulnerable people groups. In fact, as the election approached he seemed to be going out of his way to intentionally be so incendiary and vile and nonsensical, that he’d guarantee his failure by disqualifying himself in the eyes of reasonable people.
But even he couldn’t convince you.
Even he couldn’t penetrate your hatred of Hillary or your adoration of celebrity or your apathy about the process or your laziness regarding the issues—or whatever kept you from seeing what seemed so obvious to so many of us.
Donald Trump showed you who he was. He let you know from the beginning what he was planning, the kind of violence and cruelty and malice he was capable of and prone to dispense.
As ugly as he is—he comes as advertised.
He prophesied this full-blown kleptocracy with absolute clarity.
The real surprise to so many of us who saw it all coming—is how surprised you are right now.
