BY MAX BURBANK | I do not know how to write this article. Clearly I’m too stupid, as I never for an instant entertained the idea I’d have to. It’s cold comfort that almost every political writer out there is in the same boat — a big, listing, boatload of stupid.
I’ve scrapped six or seven approaches since around 2 a.m. Wednesday morning. I thought about framing it as an obituary. You know, “After a protracted battle with xenophobia, white identity and churlishness, America died on November 9, 2016, at the age of 238.” That’s crap though. Clinton won the popular vote — so it’s not that dead. Coughing up blood? Maybe. But it’s not plug-pulling time yet. Let’s not be alarmist; at least not until the entire family has gathered at her bedside and figures out if the damage is irreversible. Look, the midterm elections are in just two years. Surely, until then, we can feed America pudding through a tube and hope for the best.
I thought about playing against tension; doing a goofy, elated, edge-of-hysteria thing: “Well, I was 100 percent wrong when I said a Trump victory was demographically impossible, wronger when I wrote that America was better than this, and most wrongerest of all when I said a human-shaped, orange leather bag of weasel bile would never be elected president because this wasn’t Bizarro America, so there’s a really good possibility I’ve been wrong on everything! Trump IS going to make America great again! ISIS WILL be defeated on January 21!! We WILL build the biggest, most beautiful wall, and not only will Mexico pay for it, they WILL include a 20 percent gratuity!!!” I crumpled that draft and missed the wastebasket, and I am not ashamed to say it was because I could barely SEE IT through my tears of RAGE, HEARTBREAK, and TERROR! Also because, as my middle school gym teacher told my parents, I am so bad at sports it may be diagnosis-related.
I avoided writing this column by turning to Facebook, because I’m co-dependent, but like my friends at a comfortable electronic distance. An old student of mine had written “Oh my God. The White House Interior Decoration.” I found that funny, heartening and brave. I responded, “If you can make jokes, I can at least get out of bed and make coffee.” Then I went into the kitchen to find my coffee machine had died during the night and was not so much making coffee as spitting occasional gobs of mostly steam at the grounds. Now I’m not superstitious; I don’t believe in signs and omens. But when Mr. Coffee speaks directly to you by committing suicide?
It’s hard to write this column because I am sad. I am very, very sad, and you should feel sad for me because as a middle-aged white man, while I did not vote for Trump, I do know this election was all about me and my delicate feelings. I’m uncomfortable about America right now, and if this election taught us anything, it’s that you need to be focused with laser-like intensity on my needs. Sure, those needs are, at the moment, diametrically opposed to the majority of my cohort, but screw that! A MIDDLE-AGED WHITE GUY IS SPEAKING HERE! IN CAPS!
I’m so sad and scared for women and Muslims and undocumented immigrants and the disabled and the LGBTQ community and Jews and anyone whose skin does not fall in the day-glo orange to lily-white range. I’m worried for Trump’s political opponents; for Republicans whose support was a mite too tepid; for everyone relying on Obamacare; for journalists — from the dogged investigators all the way down to crappy little joke-boy pundits like me.
And I’m really, really sad for Hillary — and if you aren’t, screw you. Whatever you think about her, you know she worked hard as hell for longer than many of you have been alive. She worked harder in a week than most of us will in our lives. All those times I was laying on the couch in my bathrobe (okay, underwear) watching “The Flash” on the CW? That woman was working, and it really looked like she’d be the first female President of the United States, and instead it’s that guy who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy to impress Billy Bush. You think you’re bummed out today? You don’t know from bummed out.
I blame the cake.
You know the one I’m talking about. That damn Trump cake made for his victory party. You saw it. That was not a cake sculpture of a winner. That was a cake sculpture of a paunchy, slack-faced dude for whom it was just sinking in what a ginormous loser he truly was; a man who’d bitten off several Trump Steaks more than he could safely chew; a snake oil salesman moments away from being tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. It was a cake sculpture of the man we expected to see. Shame on that cake sculpture Trump. And more shame on me for believing a cake sculpture. That is the true message of this election. Never, never put your faith in a cake sculpture.
So I’m sad. Many of us are. But that’s today. Tomorrow we pick ourselves up and begin to fight. We abandon our foolish talk of fleeing to Canada or Ireland or wherever, because who the hell wants an American on their couch right now? Seriously, they’d be worried we’d drink the liquor, steal the silver, and leave the dog in a family way, and THEIR CONCERNS WOULD BE LEGITIMATE!
Silver linings? Well, the likelihood that I get to keep writing my crappy little joke-boy “political satire” has gone up. At least until they work their way down to sticking small-time wannabees like me in Trump Re-education Camp #1138. I wonder, will they let me bring my laptop? Do you think they’ll have Wi-Fi?
