The Electoral Community College

Like many of you I was devastated by the election results last week. I mean really devastated.  I am just now uncurling from the fetal position I’ve been in.  I’m regrouping and trying to make the best of a horrible circumstance. Trying to make lemonade from lemons, water from watermelons and peanut butter from peanuts.  It’s not easy but I may have found one positive element to extract from this disaster.

I’ve decided to swear off all of the political shows I had been watching in a not so healthy way. I am now living in a politics-free zone. No more MSNBC, no CNN, no nothin’. This frees up an enormous amount of time which I can now devote to . . . to . . . ah yes, that’s the dilemma I now face.  Certainly, I’m going to start reading again; and probably writing more blog posts. My gain, your loss. The perfect illustration of one man’s ceiling being another man’s floor.

This election has reinforced in me the notion that America is indeed, a wonderful country.  One in which, as we like to tell our children, anyone can become President regardless of their background or to whom they are born.  (Except if you’re a Jew or a woman—or worse yet, a Jewish woman).  And now, I find that America is even greater than I had thought. Because it seems that you can also become President despite being a sexist, racist, bigoted, xenophobic, misogynistic, draft-dodging, amoral ignoramus incapable of putting two sentences together. Apparently, there are no restrictions whatsoever in America for entry to the White House. Evidence for sure that we are a land of freedom and opportunity. Is it any wonder we’re a beacon to oppressed people across the world? Unfortunately, they now have a less than zero chance of making it to our shores

So many interesting facts have come out about this election.  One that has completely absorbed me is that according to exit polls something like 25% of the people who voted for Trump thought he was unsuited to be President. 25%! Unfit for the freakin’ job. Remarkable! Did they think he was running for dog catcher!?? Which leads me to an exit poll I conducted of myself.  I overwhelmingly came to the conclusion that 100% of those people were morons and unfit to vote.

I wrote to a few friends that one of the saddest ironies about what has happened is that we will now have a president who doesn’t pay taxes. And proud of it.  Almost all thought that was one of the lesser calamities that has befallen us.  I agree . . . but in terms of irony and a definitive example of the kind of person who will become the leader of the free world, it speaks more than volumes. It speaks entire libraries.

Now that all the votes have been counted, we find this interesting anomaly: Hillary won the popular vote, more people voted for Democratic Senators than Republicans and the total vote count for House members was overwhelmingly in favor of Democrats.  Yet, we now have a wholly Republican government. In another country, this would be called a coup—in ours, we call it the electoral college and gerrymandering.

A long time ago,there was a season of Dallas in which they killed off Bobby Ewing only to have him reappear the next year.  The explanation given to us viewers (yes, I admit I was one) was that the entire Season 9 had been Pam Ewing’s dream—that it hadn’t actually happened.  Well, each day since last Tuesday, I wake up hoping that I’ve been living in Sean Hannity’s dream and that the 2016 election hasn’t really taken place. But unfortunately, this isn’t a network drama I’ve been watching.  It’s reality TV at its very worse. God help us.