I had to break the news to my wife that Trump might win.
We'd been in that bubble that believed he did not have a chance.
A comfortable place.
We had gone to see two movies that Tuesday afternoon so that we could avoid any bluster he made about the thing being rigged.
Our plan was to get back home in time to watch Hillary give her victory speech. We had a snack in between the films and I saw a TV screen in a bar with visuals announcing that Hillary had won Connecticut and Trump had won Kentucky. It reassured me – no surprises in those two. But after the second film I turned the phone on to summon the Über and the texts from friends were all there. Walking outside on the sidewalk people were standing and looking at their phones and there were gasps, and "Wow"s and "Whaaaaaat?"s and even an "Oh no…" or two… and so I told her there was a chance he might win as I was flagging down the driver.
A few months ago my older brother was ordained a deacon in the Catholic church. We went to the ceremony in the Cathedral. My wife whispered to me "No women up there" with as much contempt as could be fit into the wind of her throat without rustling the vocal chords – all of which might have caused a shriek of wrath. So that is who she is and I knew she would not take Tuesday night's shocking narrative well as the Prius stopped at the curb and we climbed in the back seat. We couldn't stick our heads in the clouds on this one. She was gone … … …
There has been an anger in our household ever since. In times of tension with us I am the angry one and she is the depressed analytic. Roles have been reversed this time, at least for now, but at least it is a righteous anger and a righteous depression we carry. Need I analyze the hell out of this election result? No. The buffoonery, the trivia, and the minutia are all there on the record for our children to gasp in horror about long after our funerals and the likelihood of being some dark force's Orwellian tool always lurks when it comes to parsing policy.
You see, I am an anti-wonk and don't give a fuck about policy, so the only language I can muster to talk about politics is the unconscious, animal brain archetypes beneath (and occasionally above) it all. Policy is an illusion; Symbolism is what cuts deep down into the soul, the psyche, the subconscious. And so I can work thru this 62-million votes worth of suckerpunch by exploring what it all symbolizes. I detest everything this man symbolizes, from the elitism to the apathy, past the pomposity and into the sniveling monarchical assumption of intellect. My wife is past her initial anger over the whoring nature of his ego and also really gets into seeing these fetid Jungian archetypes he incarnates. She always reminds folks "Never deny the shadow" and the sun is certainly fucking blocked at the present moment.
So all we have now is our freedom of speech. Protesting, marching, organizing, resisting… these are all in the family tree of free speech. And so are writing, painting, hiding under one's bed, performing, streaking, dancing, folding one's arms and shrugging, leaving to get a beer, leaving, coming back, sculpting, photographing, rhyming, rapping, crapping, flapping, blogging, flogging and driving aimlessly around the neighborhood with the radio on. It is all ours today as much as it was on November 7. Maybe even more now.
I'm still kind of shell-shocked so even though this is about all the speech I can muster on the subject of this Roccoco spectacle of shit, I am comforted that this republic's foundation of free speech is a shit-ton stronger, and profoundly more formidable, than anything he and his nepotistic goonsquad can send our way. Don't mistake this devil for America. Compose the America you are and the America you want with the speech you inately possess. Our screenplay for the next four years can make a better movie than the Pennsylvania Avenue reality show getting ready to air in January.