Post-Apocalypse Update: The Day After Yesterday

Have a new Salem

Dear America,

The unthinkable has happened. The blustering tangerine has beaten the war-mongering lizard by the rules of the Electoral College. I worked last Tuesday, but while I was at work I paid close attention to the election map, as the numbers on both sides rose with Trump taking an early lead and Clinton closing the gap over the course of the night. But they didn't close quickly enough, even with California's stupid number of electoral college votes, to catch up to him. The red bar was reaching ever closer to the middle point of 270, until it finally crossed it, leaving the blue bar behind.

The world ended. Nuclear missiles were launched simultaneously from Russia, China, Japan, North Korea, and Mauritius. Yes, even Mauritius. Simultaneously, a zombie virus outbreak happened in New Jersey, parts of California fell into the ocean due to a fault line collapse, and there were riots in Albuquerque. People who weren't straight, white, cisgendered, heteronormative, neurotypical, Christian men were rousted from their homes, beaten, and dragged across the Mexican border

The riots were unrelated. Albuquerque just likes to riot. We don't even send the news to report on them anymore.

Actually, none of that stuff happened. There were, however, a lot of people who were very upset that a very rich white woman (who was an Apex Politician with a ton of connections and decades of experience) lost an election that she wouldn't have been in had her party not put her there instead of the socialist (and possibly atheist) Jew who wouldn't toe the party line that the people actually wanted. They ardently ignored all the evidence of corruption in their own ranks for fear that the literal devil would take office.

And then what happened was an overly blustery capitalist democrat who was running in the wrong party took the win.

Today, the world is still spinning, the sun still came up, and anyone who doesn't have the privilege of free time to attend protests and rallies got up and went to work like I did.

Of course, not everyone has obligations to keep the world spinning. Some people have reasonably large audiences and feel it necessary to stoke the fires of burning it.

Hi Arthur. I missed you.

"Didn't you learn anything from Brexit?" I hear some people asking nobody in particular. I ask in return, even though the question may not be directed at me in particular, "Did you?" Did you not learn that belittling and insulting the people that you want to win to your side does not work? Meet with people. Talk to them face to face. Speak to them respectfully. If your ideas are better, win them over with those ideas. Stop calling people racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, or whatever other -ists or -phobics you can think of and explain to them why they're wrong. You might find, as I have, that if you approach someone with an open hand instead of a clenched fist, you may win them over. That's how the country slowly moved Left-ward politically over the decades.

By the by, Trump has already pledged to protect the LGBTQ community (yes, he even used the "Q"). His plan to block Muslims? Gone from his website. The Republican Senate and House? They hate him. And he's a capitalist Democrat. This may be scary for some people, but the world hasn't ended. It won't end in January when he takes office. Every speech he's made since winning the election, he's sounded humble and determined. His bragging is all but gone. We probably won't see World War 3. And in 4 years, you'll get a chance to vote him out if he's not doing his job properly.

Assuming you'll actually go out and vote. I saw the numbers. Half of you easily didn't.

So who did I vote for? I'm not telling you, because I don't feel it's necessary to signal to either side any particular brand of loyalty. I voted for the person who I felt was least likely to start World War 3.

I'll tell you this much, though: The DNC? This is on you. You did this. You could have listened to your constituency, but you had a master plan in place and by God nothing was going to stop you. Enjoy it. Now both parties are broken and tired and falling apart, and that's the silver lining to this whole thing. Maybe in four years time, we'll have a viable third party candidate in case this happens again.

With a detached sort of love,
-Salem

PS: My dear progressive friends. Please watch this.