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ISTOCK/SCARLETSAILS

We forget so much, so quickly, don't we?

We forget that we don't need to break ourselves before we can build. We don't have to sink so low to prove how tall we can stand. That our successes don't have to come from despair, that our victories don't have to be borne out of panic and fear, that we can triumph without needing to have our backs completely against the wall.

We forget that we can just keep moving forward from where we already are. So we don't. We stall out. We reverse. We succumb to our worst impulses for the dumbest of reasons and we self-destruct because we treat rock bottom like a mattress to collapse on at the end of a long day.

I'm pretty dizzy right now. I can't really feel my fingers. And even if I could, the words coming out of them would be numbing, because we're going to elect a racist sex offender who has failed at everything he's ever attempted. We're going to hand over our entire government to the tantruming children whose only successes in eight years have come via preventing anyone else from enjoying... anything. Their primary aims have been to shut down bodies—governmental AND physical—and they now have total control of our laws and our way of life.

Eight years of a president who—despite unprecedented obstructionism—still managed to help pull us into a future the rest of the world seems to be enjoying, a world we can see enjoying it thanks to the interconnectedness we're all able to indulge via this here internet, and we're still this angry, and this upset; And as he leaves us, we will trash everything he's worked for out of empty spite, and force him to hand his office to a man who has spent the better part of a decade denying his very citizenship.

At age 70, an '80s-era punchline finally decided, for the first time in his life, to try applying for a job instead of just having untold wealth gifted to him for the wasting. And so his first job application was for President. Never held a single public office in his entire life, and he gets to have the single most important one in our country. He just... gets to have it.

And it's not as if he wasn't going to turf the economy, regardless. He absolutely will. That's coming. He's never found a financial situation he couldn't thoroughly fuck in less than 4 years. Not one. You can start him on third base and he'll get picked off at first. It's literally the story of his entire life. So we're already going to lose what little financial security any of us had.

But people are going to leave. They're going to. Sure, a lot will stay and fight, because Lord knows we love a fuckin' fight, don't we? But too many are going to look at what just happened, and see the government doesn't want them, and other governments would love to have them, and decide maybe there's not so much to fight for here, because when you get down to it, this land was never really ours in the first place. And they'll look around, and they'll say, "Yunno what? Australia's got internet. Fuck it."

And even if Trump had the attention span and the wherewithal to staunch that bleeding, as our best and brightest slowly leak over our borders for the next four years (provided he doesn't start a fucking nuclear war in that time) he doesn't have the knowhow to combat it anyway.

Too many of us put too much trust in a rich man whose wealth has only been attained via pure privilege and hand-me-down affluence. He's earned none of this. He's earned none of what he has. Even now, the power he's amassed wasn't won, or even taken. It was gifted to him by angry, upset, racist, sexist people, scared people, terrified they're going to be left behind, abandoned and ignored, reviled in the history books their grandchildren will be reading. So they've decided to buy into the fantasy that a rich guy is going to make them rich too, and give them the power their hate has denied them. But he's not going to do that. He's never done that. Donald Trump will never keep you fed. You are his food. You've never not been. He is a man whose every insult has been 100% projection. He's been reading the story of the scorpion and the frog for over a year at his rallies.

You knew what he was and you still let him climb on your back.

And you know what's really got me hollowed out? It's not that we didn't turn out, because we did. They did too. And they stepped on us.

I'm hollowed out because a few months ago I told my wife that I believed, down deep, there simply weren't enough hateful, self-hating, aimlessly angry and hurt people to stop the rest of us from moving forward for the benefit of all. Progress was slow, and clumsy, and annoying, but things couldn't be so broken, to such a degree, that this racist, homophobic, xenophobic, sociopathic multiple sex-offender could be the most popular choice for a people on the verge of truly making history.

And now I'm a liar. I lied to her. I believed in a lie and I convinced her to believe it too and I feel so small and stupid.

We didn't have to do this to ourselves. We still don't.

I can only hope we don't forget this so soon.

But we probably will.