Never Again

Can we even celebrate?

Like, are we allowed to be happy that the worst president to exist loses his job today and slithers back to his swampland mansion while he awaits the arrival of the biblical flood waters of lawsuits set to cascade down from the karmic skies above?

The day I marked in my mental calendar is finally here, yet I’m not sure any amount of self-indulgence on my part will properly convey the message I’m aiming for here.

What I can say is that after six agonizing years of this maniac menacing our airwaves, our Twitter feeds, and our thoughts, it’s a fucking mechayeh to be rid of him.

And he’s not coming back.

Members of Cult 45 assure us he’ll be president – some even suggesting that the government is keeping Trump in office right now with the help from the plot of a Nic Cage movie. Or in, um, slightly less insane fashion, he’ll come back stronger than ever and retake the White House in 2024, jUsT yOu LiBs wAiT.

He’s not, but hold your sighs of relief.

America’s darkest years were borne through a festering, malignant cataclysm that metastasized uninterrupted for decades under the shady canopies of our political discourse. The years of US-sponsored upheaval in the Middle East, South America, the Caribbean, etc. boomeranged upon our shores in the form of MAGA. With a little help from our dearest old friends out east, our own tactics became the instruments of our dark descent into the present dilemma we now face.

Division, delusion, destitution, disruption, destruction.

It’s all the worst ills we exported turned inward.

The chickens finally roosted.

The taste of our own medicine is choking us into oblivion.

And yet, it’s not too late.

By the time you read this, the country will likely be back on the road to recovery. Transformational reforms progressives spent years fighting to enact will indeed be given life. We’ll even get new stimuluses soon, even if they aren’t quite what was promised a fortnight ago.

No, Joe Biden isn’t ending poverty or redistributing wealth anytime soon.

But it’s a start.

Far more desperately needs doing. We as a nation must reconcile with the fact that our government is broken and disturbingly susceptible to the basest forms of cronyism and fascism.

I mean, Jesus, 74 million people wanted this never-ending B slasher film to KEEP GOING.

400,000 people dead from COVID-19 couldn’t sway these delusional saps from egging on the serial murderer we let steal migrant children and imprison them in concentration camps.

THAT LAST SENTENCE HAPPENED.

FOR FOUR YEARS.

It’s bleak, man.

We can’t pretend that Biden being the man in charge now somehow instantly ends Trumpism and dampens the ambitions of its emboldened acolytes.

They’re insurgents fighting a civil war fueled by conspiracy theories and white supremacist victimhood.

It’s not over.

Surviving COVID is priority one but as of yet, the plague of unbridled institutional racism aided and abetted by our education system, federal and state statutes, and craven conservative scoundrels (including some Democrats) continues infecting the public consciousness at its very roots. Society’s whitewashing of reality is literally killing us, its effects on depressingly-public display with each hollow call for “unity” and “forgiveness”.

We failed abroad, and we failed here in our own backyards.

Refusing to bring up touchy subjects for fear of alienating friends and loved ones erupted into the Pompei-esque hellscape we witnessed two weeks ago.

Never again can we avoid our nation’s demons. Because the next time they storm the Capitol, they might just win.

That Martin Luther King quote about the arc of history wasn’t the Reverend’s guarantee that in the end, the good guys always win.

It was encouragement to keep fighting for justice.

We’ve made strides, but the dream is very much unfulfilled.

Today is day one of the rest of our lives.

Make it fucking count.