Apathetic Victory

Well, shit. How did this happen?

Ideally, this election should have been about Bernie versus Donnie rather than the usual two parties. Bernie was not a democrat and Donnie is not a republican and it's interesting that neither party could field a winner from their own club house. It was all about free-agents even though the democrats went with their home-grown gal.

I like Hillary and she would have been a fine president. She was extremely qualified. However, when you see who *beat* her, you have to accept that the American people don't really give a shit about qualifications. That's painfully obvious. The presidency is- for now- an entry-level position.

It used to not matter who won. Even when GW Bush was first sorta-kinda elected, you just had to shrug and figure that everything would be alright because, well, this is America. Well, this is America now. We have a wholly unqualified asshole about to enter the White House in January. He's not an idiot that we can live with- he's an asshole. He has always been an asshole and he did nothing to hide that ever and certainly did not change to run for the presidency. He tried to tell us and actually we listened and shrugged and admitted we were cool with that. It's OK to be an asshole. It's suddenly presidential.

Monday morning quarterbacking cannot be avoided. The media is 24/7/365 Monday morning quarterbacking. I couldn't help but notice that on election night there were commercials about every five minutes on MSNBC. You would think that on such an important night that Brian and Rachel and the revolving panel would have our full, unpromoted attention. But, this is America, brought to you by... well, I don't know. The thing with commercials is we accept them as the ubiquitous noise they are. It's the background din that's just always there. I don't know who the sponsors were but it was like watching an episode of "The Walking Dead" with 4-5 minutes of action or plodding plot development and then a few minutes of commercials. Lather, rinse, repeat. Maybe it was Breck?

Anyway, when I would watch MSNBC, it was odd that the graphics kept showing us how close the race was while every pundit assured us that Hillary would win and that the GOP was dead. I didn't get that. If it was so close, how was she a lock? We had just had a game 7 of the World Series that was tied in the 10th inning. You can feel all you want but, you can't call the game until the last out is recorded. That's the way baseball works. Politics works that way too- after the fact though

All these smart men and women were telling us that Hillary would win. Even the conservative pundits were saying this. For some reason their words of defeat are supposed to carry more weight because they are presumably being honest in accepting defeat. Well, similarly knowledgeable Cubs fans just knew the Cubs were going to lose too.  We're all pundits on this side of the television.

So, nobody really knows about this shit. Don't tell me that Trump voters knew anything. They are as seen on TV. Word is though that a very silent majority of wealthier, educated suburban, white female Trump supporters put him over the top. I noticed a distinct lack of political signs in the neighborhoods around here. No Trump. No Hillary. Odd. The sign was that there were no signs. That seemed to suggest a Trump loss. He had so many prominent republicans un-endorsing him in the last months that you couldn't help but believe he would lose. Of course, no one really knows how they voted on Tuesday or how they intended to vote all along. It was all apathetic deflection. And apathy won, dare I say, BIGLY.