It is the first Monday after the 2020 United States election, and Donald Trump lost. After January, he will no longer be president.
It is the first Monday after the election, and there is news that a promising vaccine for covid-19 is on the way, with more likely to follow.
For the first time in four years, I don’t have to mentally filter good news through a “will this help our fascist carrot stay in power” sieve.
I’ll add the caveat that everyone else has — this is not a decisive victory for our nation. Trumpism has exposed a nasty underbelly which has always existed, and which polite society was able to overlook. Trumpism isn’t going away. His supporters — not just conservative ideologues, but devoted, dangerous MAGA cultists — will be with us for years.
What should be clear, though, is that Trump doesn’t represent “half the county” as some pundits would claim. He won about 30% of all eligible voters, and likely less if we include ineligible adults and young adults. They didn’t win. Sanity and competence won. Clear, unambiguous. Biden represents stanching a long-festering wound that would have drained what soul our society has left. President-Elect Biden has already prepared a litany of Trump reversals. Goodbye Muslim ban. Welcome back, DACA.
I’ve already seen some from the accelerationst wing of the anti-anti-Trump left refuse to accept the good news. I find it hard to blame them; after our 4-year nightmare, it’s hard to escape the death spiral, the heaping pile of shit that’s been shoveled on top of us. They do need to get over it, though. One prominent leftist writer described Biden’s election as “the most worrisome development of the past four years.” During a period in which we saw immigrant children separated from their parents, locked in prison cells and even possibly trafficked to American parents, in which we read an op-ed by a sitting Senator calling for the military to murder protestors, that statement is, simply, fucked.
Take a week to wallow in what’s been done to us. Hell, take a couple months; the interregenum before the inauguration has the potential to be rough.
But stop the intraparty firing squad. Internalize the win. He tried to beat us. He failed. Like he’s failed at so many things, he failed to beat us. Things matter. Truth matters, candidates matter, actions have consequences.
Now go have a socially-distanced, well-tipped delivery brunch and donate to those Georgia runoffs while you’re at it, hmm?