Maybe Our Country Got What It Deserved

      So, here’s the question, really the essential question: How could our fellow Americans have done this? How could they have elected this man? This conniving psychopath?

      Because, they knew, didn’t they? They absolutely had to know. It was inescapable, wasn’t it?

      There was, after all:

      The botched pandemic response and the bleach recommendation. The outright bribing of foreign officials. The violent coup he provoked and watched placidly on TV. There were, of course, the endless obvious lies and then the photos of classified documents tossed around the toilet. And the felony convictions and the accumulation of other legal accusations.

      And so much, so much more.

      And yet 77 million of my fellow Americans voted him in, voted to install a seriously disturbed man, a sociopath, a psychopath, to the most powerful job in the world.

      I’ve heard and read a number of explanations.

·       Inflation—the price of eggs and rising gasoline prices and all that.

·       Fears of an immigration invasion stoked by a relentless right-wing propaganda machine.

·       Racism, and the no-longer-hidden overt rise of white supremacy.

·       Misogyny, obviously. The two times he won, whom did he beat?

·       Democratic voters who sat on their hands for a number of reasons, including Gaza and the incumbent president’s inability to successfully communicate his achievements.

·       The belief, by fundamentalist charismatic Christians that this failed real estate grifter was somehow divinely destined to save America from the godless left, the “demoncrats,” who are doing Satan’s bidding.

·       Owning the libs.

·       Anti-incumbency backlash.

·       Social media.

      And more, much more.

      So, my fellow Americans voted despite the warnings from the psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health experts that their candidate was “mentally unstable and unfit … a dangerously mad man.” That he had “severe, untreatable personality disorder—malignant narcissism,” which makes him “grossly unfit for leadership.”

      Plus, of course, in case they didn’t notice, and they apparently didn’t, he didn’t know anything about how to govern.

      We’re told, now, we should try to understand. We should talk to those 77 million who voted for him, try to understand all those reasons, try to engage with them. But don’t condescend to them; stop using personal pronouns and just try to get them to see.  

      But what if we can’t actually get them to see? To understand that they’re the ones getting screwed the most. What if we can’t sit down in a small-town midwestern diner, shoot the shit and explain that what he’s been doing has been batshit crazy and they—and ultimately all of us—will suffer from it?

      Maybe, after all, too many of those 77 million are just—let me choose the appropriate phrase here—too damn stupid to get it? Could be. Maybe, in fact, they’ve now gotten what they deserved. Unfortunately, the rest of us are getting it, too.