It’s been two months since the nightmare 2024 US national election. Two months for us, who aren’t Trumpists, to digest and process the damnedest outcome we could have imagined. US President No. 45/47 now controls every single lever of the federal government.
That guy (I’m still loath to even utter his name) now just might be the most powerful president since Lyndon Johnson in the post-Kennedy assassination/landslide over Barry Goldwater era. Those of us whose bones creak when we try to get out of bed in the morning might recall that LBJ was able to ram through his Great Society/War on Poverty programs in 1964 and ’65, remaking America almost as radically as Franklin Roosevelt did in the 1930s. (Of course, Johnson self-sabotaged by committing half a million US soldiers to the meat grinder in Vietnam, but that’s another topic entirely.)
Those of us who tremble at the notion of 45/47 remaking America in his vision, were all agog when Old Man Joe Biden dropped out of the running and VP Kamala Harris took his spot on the Democratic ticket.
We’re agog no more. Quite the contrary.
Blinding ourselves to the fact that Harris was an awful candidate (no clear message, an infuriating tendency to dodge questions, running almost solely as the anti-Trump, the sex reassignment surgery for federal prisoners ad fiasco, etc.), we non-Trumpists never saw the November 4th gut punch coming. Like all astonishing occurrences, the results have left us stunned. Or, to use the terminology corporate news people are addicted to, we are left reeling.
The 45/47 kayo was so shocking on so many levels that we (again, the non-Trumpists) don’t even know what to do about it or even how to react to it. As if we’ve experienced the death of a spouse, we’ve drawn inward. I warned about this almost immediately after the election. Everybody I talk to…, well, doesn’t want to talk about it.
It’s as though we’ve been beaten to a pulp and can only lie there, hoping against hope there’ll be no more blows.
Maybe we’re regrouping. I didn’t know. What I fear is we’re resigning ourselves to an inexorable fate. The likes of 45/47 and his henchman Elon Musk are now our kings, so why fight it? It brings to mind that famous quote by the late Indiana basketball coaching legend Bob Knight who spewed, “I think that if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it.”
We may not be enjoying the coming Regime, Redux, but I’m afraid we’re relaxing.