So here we are, finally, after the most interminable fucking grind ever from a political system built on interminable grinds, come at last to the dolorous day. Confidence is hard to come by in this febrile season, but it looks as if the US will narrowly reject the Amber Antichrist’s bid to be elected Dictator and grudgingly admit the distaff side into the corridors of power; albeit with the now-traditional insistence on strangling said power with congressional dysfunction. Will anyone really be that surprised if the Supreme Court remains short-handed right through to 2021?
I guess there should be a tiny shred of positivity to be drawn from this result, if it does in fact transpire, but FOR FUCK’S SAKE AMERICA, is this the best you can do? Just barely managing not to elect one of the world’s worst human beings to your highest office? Wallowing in his bigotry and bullying and bluster, the howling icestorm void of his untrammelled id, the constant bare faced mendacity? Faced with an actual physical incarnation of the Seven Deadly Sins, where are the ostensibly godly? Right the fuck on board, of course, trampling one another in their urge to champion his gangrenous iniquity.
Who knows. Maybe the result will be clearer, stronger, less emblematic of a bone-deep rot. Maybe this awful election really is the last gasp of a dying order, a final skirmish in the already-lost war of moribund nostalgic conservatism against blossoming modernity. The demographics are against them, somewhat. Their power bases crumble, somewhat. There is no future in a return to the past.
But the fault lines aren’t going away anytime soon. There is no special virtue in America that renders it immune to the troubles plaguing Western democracies all over. There will always be angry, resentful people, yearning for real or imagined better times, yearning for scapegoats, yearning for the lash. There will always be another grasping scumbag strongman to pander to and exploit them, and another, and another, until one of them wins. Sooner or later, one of them always wins.
It’s hard not to see Donald J Trump as a harbinger.
Gah. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to keep up my Twitter embargo today. Or, obviously, get much work done.