Help me understand what just happened

Processing November 5th

Good morning, Diary

It’s been a while. I’ve been too distracted, and dejected, to focus my thoughts. I think that like many of my friends, I have just been trying not to think – about the election, the consequences of the election, the litany of Presidential appointments with names that would be comical if they were being announced by SNL’s Michael Che and Colin Jost, and not on CNN. I actually can’t say for a fact that they were announced on CNN, because we have not watched any news since the election. Apparently, we are not alone. My social media feeds regularly report plummeting viewership across the liberal media universe, the universe we usually reside in. FOX News, on the other hand, has seen its ratings soar by many reports. Please help me understand this. I can fully understand why people have decided that they do not want to hear Joe & Mika telling us how horrible Donald Trump is - every morning for another four years. We get it, but four years was enough. But did forty percent of whom I assume to be liberal MSNBC viewers suddenly develop an interest in hearing what Sean Hannity has to say? I really am confused. Help me to understand.

Over the last month, my wife and I have immersed ourselves in activities designed to avoid our current political reality – that half of the country, including many of our own family and friends and neighbors and colleagues, voted for Donald Trump. So we disappeared - first for five days in New York City, surrounded by liberals, and another five days in French speaking Quebec City, surrounded by people we couldn’t understand. Last week we went on our first ever cruise, scheduled months ago, deliberately departing immediately after election day, knowing that we would either be celebrating or drowning our sorrows. We now have a new favorite bartender, Bayu, from Bali, whom I am pretty sure we will never see again. He does make a good martini (and no one must drive home on a cruise ship). There was little in the way of comforting conversation on this trip, but I did hear some great advice about martinis. One is good. Two is too many. Three are not nearly enough. (#rimshot) Especially after November 5^th.

I grew of age in the 60’s, so I am old enough to remember worse and perhaps even more vitriolic societal polarization: enough shootings and political assassinations to inspire the song, Abraham, Martin & John, enough riots and ransacked cities to make the lead story on the nightly news - every night for weeks on end. Daily marches somewhere for equal rights for minorities and women and LGBTQ+ friends before most people even knew what LGBTQ+ stood for (but I think TQ+ showed up later), and marches to end the war in Vietnam. So, I know we have been here before. Kind of. Two steps forward, one step back? Why does this seem like more than one step back? Why does this seem like a rejection of everything that we have fought for and that I thought was what all Americans believed in? Fairness. Equality. Honesty. (and not sexually assaulting women or trying to overthrow elections?) That the FBI and Department of Justice and our NATO allies were the good guys. That Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin were the bad guys. It did not matter if you were Republican or Democrat or whatever. These were American values, or so I thought. What happened here? Did I miss a meeting? A decade?

In days of yore we debated who among our nominees were better qualified or how our candidate would best advance the economy or reflect and protect our values. Now we try to win elections by spending millions of dollars running ads “informing” voters that Haitian immigrants are eating our cats and trans folks are using the wrong bathroom? Seriously? Help me out here, Diary, I am feeling really confused and dejected right now.

Talk soon.

jcs

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