It’s done. Thanks to the Great State of Pennsylvania, Joseph R Biden is the president-elect of the United States of America, and Kamala Harris will be the first woman and the first person of color to become vice president. (And, I predict, the 47th president after Biden! That’s right, folks, you read it here first, right here on Simple Tricks and Nonsense!)

Donald J Trump is finished. He hasn’t accepted it, of course. He’s raging petulantly on Twitter that no, in fact, he won. He did, he did, he did! He won! Bad things happened… illegal votes (whatever the hell those are!), stolen election! He WON! Classy to the end, Don. But it doesn’t matter. Whether he can pull it together enough to walk out of the White House on January 20 with a modicum of dignity or will need to be carried out by men with butterfly nets, his time is done. I’m seeing videos of cheering throngs in New York and San Francisco. The mayor of Paris has tweeted “Welcome back, America,” and I’ve seen reports that church bells are ringing in Munich. I remember a lot of jubilation when Obama won, and Bill Clinton before him, but this… this feels different, doesn’t it? It feels something like I imagine V-E day must have. Maybe because we know, on some level, that we dodged the same authoritarian horror that was put to rest that day.

I’m not going to gloat, though, or let the celebrating get too far out of hand. For one thing, like I wrote the other day, I know that the next few years are going to be an uphill battle for President Biden to get anything of substance done. And Trump is still going to be around for two more months and who knows what kind of rat-fuckery he might get up to in that time? He will, without a doubt, call for recounts or attempt some kind of lawsuit. I don’t believe either of those efforts will change anything… but at the very least, the rhetoric is going to be brutal for the next couple months. I hope he doesn’t try anything crazier than those last-ditch gambits. Maybe someone should consider taking the Nuclear Football away from him?

But that’s something to think about later, perhaps. For now, I’m going to leave with this clip of CNN correspondent Van Jones. I think he says everything that needs to be said on this historic morning. This morning isn’t a victory so much as a relief for a hell of a lot of people. As bad as the last four years have been for me, they’ve been a genuine nightmare for people of color, immigrants, homosexuals… basically anyone not-white and male. I raise my glass to you people. You’re still here. You made it. We all made it.

As of this moment — 7:30 PM on Thursday night, November Fifth in the accursed Year of the Plague Two Thousand and Twenty — I am reasonably confident that Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States of America. Votes are still being counted in a handful of states and everyone in the nation — hell, everyone in the world — is chewing their fingernails to the quick waiting for the final tallies, but the numbers are all trending solidly in that direction. My candidate appears to have won. The long, exhausting reign of Donald J Trump will soon be over.

But I have to be honest, I’m not feeling very triumphant right now. This is probably going to seem a bit silly, but… do you remember the scene in Return of the Jedi when the Super Star Destroyer, aka Vader’s command ship, the Executor, is destroyed? It’s a turning point in the big space battle at the film’s climax; a Rebel fighter plows through the Executor‘s bridge and the out-of-control juggernaut heels over and pierces into the Death Star below, exploding in a gargantuan fireball. On the bridge of the opposing Rebel cruiser, a cheer goes up from the officers in the backgrounds… but Admiral Ackbar doesn’t join in. Instead, he looks downward and then slowly leans back in his seat. His expression — as much as you can read the expression of a latex space-salmon — is curiously somber. Even a bit sad. I’ve always interpreted this as Ackbar mourning the waste of the hundreds of thousands of lives that were surely aboard that destroyer, sailors not unlike his own crew, just doing their jobs for their service and their government. They may have been enemies, but Ackbar is an empathetic creature in my view and takes no pleasure in the things the war demands of him. And of course, the battle isn’t over yet.

Do you understand where I’m going with this? I am Admiral Ackbar in this scenario. I’m watching the Executor go down but there’s no pleasure in it for me because I know the cost of this victory, all the wasted lives lost to COVID and god knows what else, and the war is going to rage on. Perhaps literally, if Trump manages to entice the Proud Boys or other, shall we say, low-information types to violence. At the very least, he’s not going to concede and extracting him from the White House will be… frustrating. As will be a Biden presidency with Mitch McConnell still in charge of the Senate. My liberal dreams of quick action on healthcare, climate change, voting reform, and a thousand other things all slammed into a brick wall when the Democrats failed to crack the Republican majority. And even with Trump himself gone, Trumpism isn’t going anywhere. His base will make him a martyr, and I don’t expect their awful behavior is going to be shamed back into the shadows anytime soon. These hardheaded loudmouths will be spewing their conspiracy theory garbage and making life difficult for anyone they perceive as different from them for a long time to come.

So yeah, my guy won, but it’s something of a Pyrrhic victory.

Still… Trump will soon be gone, or at least out of the spotlight. And what a relief that will be, just to have a respite from the daily outrage and the constant, constant nattering…

The Destruction of the Executor on Disney Video

It’s here at last. The Day of Reckoning. We’ll either save democracy today, wrest the levers of power away from the rapscallions and scoundrels and, yes, the fascists… or we won’t.

I find myself thinking of Bill Murray’s character at the climax of Ghostbusters, when the Stay-Puft marshmallow man is marauding through New York and the boys decide the only chance of defeating him is to cross the streams of their proton blasts — the one thing they’d been warned never to do because of the danger that entails. Facing near-certain doom, Venkman gets an almost beatific look on his face as he says to his friend and colleague, “See you on the other side, Ray,” before pulling his trigger.

Yeah. That’s where I am right now. Come what may, see you on the other side…

Bruce Springsteen recently asked us during his SiriusXM Radio show to consider what’s gone missing in the last four years:

“There’s no art in this White House. There’s no literature, no poetry, no music. There are no pets in this White House. No loyal man’s best friend, no Socks the family cat. There are no images of the first family enjoying themselves together in a moment of relaxation: no Obamas on the beach in Hawaii moments, or the Bushes fishing in Kennebunkport, no Reagans on horseback, no Kennedys playing touch football on the Cape.

Where’d that country go? Where did all the fun, the joy and the expression of love and happiness go? We used to have a president who calmed and soothed a nation, instead of dividing it. We are now rudderless and joyless.

We have lost the cultural aspects of society that have always made America great. We have lost our mojo, our fun, our happiness, our cheering on of others— the shared experience of humanity that makes it all worth it. We need to reclaim that country once again.”

“Rudderless and joyless” so perfectly describes the last four years, doesn’t it?

To be fair, this bleak hellscape we find ourselves enduring isn’t really the doing of any one individual. This didn’t just happen suddenly, much as it may seem like it. It’s taken a lot of people, a lot of enablers and dirty-tricks artists, and frankly a lot of apathetic and just plain stupid voters, across a span of 40 years to push the United State of America to this point of near total breakdown. But all that negative karma, all that mean-spiritedness and hard-headedness and emptiness of soul that has washed over our land since 2016, although it’s been building for a long time, was finally instantiated in and catalyzed by one man. One man who, like an abscess, has provided a center for all that horrible inflammation to accrete around and, finally, to erupt through.

I have often theorized that there’s an alternate universe someplace where another Donald J. Trump, born without money but otherwise suffering the exact same pathologies, ekes out a shabby living by dealing a penny-ante game of three-card monte on a folding table down at the very end of the Atlantic City boardwalk, the end that only the most gullible and wide-eyed hayseed tourists ever reach. He’s a con artist through and through, right down at the molecular level, no matter which universe we encounter him in. Unfortunately, we live in the universe where this vulgar, ignorant, greedy, hateful man somehow got himself into a position where he could poison the whole country — the whole world, really, as everything is interconnected — with his sociopathic, insatiable narcissism.

But tomorrow we have a chance to lance the boil and hopefully drain some of that pus out of our system. We can toss out that immoral, sexist, racist bully with the ridiculous combover and the strange orange makeup and the too-long tie and the schlubby suit, that wanna-be mobster, the Con Man in Chief and his whole damn Trump Crime Family. We can be rid of coke-fiend Don Jr and moron Eric, both so desperate for daddy’s love, both so confused that no amount of cocaine or endangered-animal heads on the walls seems to fill the hole in their souls. We can be rid of Steven Miller, the reptilian neo-Nazi Wormtongue who’s been whispering in Trump’s ear, and Bill Barr, who will give you that jowly hang-dog expression and tell you that he is the one being persecuted even as he guts the justice system. And we can be rid of the princess Ivanka and her dead-eyed, greasy-haired consort. Boot them all to the curb, and take their power-hungry bootlicking enablers in Congress with them. If there is any justice at all in this universe, the whole damn Republican party is about to be massively repudiated and sent to the metaphorical desert to think on their sins for the next 40 years or so.

At least that’s my hope. I have a hunch that it just might happen. I don’t think the GOP understands how righteously pissed the left, as well as a whole lot of moderates and even members of their own party, really are about the travesty of the last four years, how tired we all are of the neverending psychodrama shitshow chaos that surrounds and emanates from this White House.

We’ll see, of course. We’ll see.

Confession time: I didn’t watch the presidential debates. What would have been the point? We already know these men, we know what they’re about and how they conduct themselves. Anyone who claims to be undecided at this point is simply being obstinate or hasn’t been paying attention. Also, they probably shouldn’t be allowed to handle sharp things or have access to the car keys.

That said, I did review the highlights of last night’s debacle, and if I somehow had been among the obstinately undecided, Joe Biden’s final statement would’ve closed the deal for me. The question posed to him at the end of the event was “What will you say during your inaugural address to Americans who did not vote for you?” And here’s his response:

“I will say, I’m an American President. I represent all of you, whether you voted for me or against me, and I’m going to make sure that you’re represented. I’m going to give you hope. We’re going to move; we’re going to choose science over fiction. We’re going to choose hope over fear. We’re going to choose to move forward because we have enormous opportunities, enormous opportunities to make things better.

We can grow this economy, we can deal with the systemic racism. At the same time, we can make sure that our economy is being run and moved and motivated by clean energy, creating millions of new jobs. That’s the fact, that’s what we’re going to do. And I’m going to say, as I said at the beginning, what is on the ballot here is the character of this country. Decency, honor, respect. Treating people with dignity, making sure that everyone has an even chance. And I’m going to make sure you get that. You haven’t been getting it the last four years.“

Bolded emphasis is mine, because those are the bits that matter the most. Science over fiction, hope over fear, decency, honor, respect. And treating people with dignity. That’s what I want America to be, that’s what I want from my government, that’s my definition of “presidential”… and all of these things are demonstrably beyond the current occupant of the White House, and of his party in general. The Republican Party, whatever it may once have been, has become the party of ignorant cruelty, and I want to see them crushed. I don’t know if I will. After 2016, who the hell knows what’s going to happen? But it’s what I want. Every last one of those filthy bums, from Trump to Mitch McConnell to my own senator, Utah’s self-appointed “constitutional expert” and all-around douchebag Mike Lee, need to be ousted from their positions of power and exiled to the desert for 40 years to think on what they’ve done. Enough of the playground bullies and smug gloating knaves. Just enough. I refuse to believe that neo-Nazis and know-nothings outnumber people who want this country to work for everyone. The only question is whether or not the GOP will be able to cheat their way into another victory. I hope the Democrats are prepared for that this time… that they’ve finally gotten it through their heads that the other side is not honorable and is not going to work with them. Ever. Until they are made to. We’ll see.

And in the meantime, I will cling to the ideals, as liberals tend to do, as I have so many times before: Science over fiction, hope over fear. Decency, honor, respect, dignity.

Debate transcript courtesy of Rev.com