What Did You Expect?
What you are about to read is not going to be nice. It’s not going to be eloquent and erudite, but cold and hard.
I’ve been able to vote as an American citizen since 2008. I have enthusiastically voted every two years since. I come from places where elections are not always fair,and after watching millions trapse out of their houses, huts, and shanties in South Africa in 1994, I believe this right to be sacred. This year, I almost did not vote. I could not see the point. Already my unconscious was telling me that the outcome would be what it would be. I saw it coming. I saw it coming since December of 2020, when people were cracking jokes and throwing insults at the then president-elect. Dumkopf’s who didn’t understand that to reorganise four years of chaos was going to be an arduous task. What I saw was that the United States of Trump lived and breathed healthily, and it came to vigourous life on January 6. Since then, it has incubated, fertilized and grown to become an amoeba hell bent on mass destruction. Maturing as scheduled on November 5,2024.
How could you not have seen it coming? I did and I’m a black immigrant woman, who comes from privilege. Extraordinary privilege where my parents are able to fund their children’s education and help them buy homes. But for most of my professional career, I have worked as an hourly worker in retail. For well over a decade, I’ve watched as corporations have cut, shrunk and lied in the name of ‘difficult economic climate’s,’breaking workers backs as bosses have fattened SUV’s. I saw it and wondered how long this could go on, witnessing my co-workers come to work exhausted and afraid,unsure as to how they were going to pay the next round of bills, while some nameless suit descended and told us we weren’t providing great customer service,shortly before they explained the funny maths that accounted for why we wouldn’t be getting our 1.8% yearly raise. How in the actual fuck could America not see the47th coming from a mile away?
When you look at the map of this last election, it’ll be hard not to notice that the States that went blue were the economic centers of this country. An apt visual describing the mounting dividing line that has been inching and now lurched forward. Is it a bigger surprise that those who overwhelmingly voted for the 47thmake between $50, 000 and $100,000 a year? No, it should not. It was in my last job, where I managed men and women who lived in shelters, low-income housing,forced to work with life-debilitating health issues, that the allure of the 47thbecame apparent. I worked for a tech company, an up and coming darling so mismanaged and dysfunctional that it was a miracle the lights switched one when I got to work every morning. I watched them ‘lay-off’ 40% of their workforce and tell the remaining lucky duck’s that we were entering into an ‘age of the new normal. Where a streamlined workforce would provide more efficiency.’Efficiency my ass, when guaranteeing your staff’s weekly paychecks becomes a gamble. And how was it efficient to put pressure on my high-earners, men who literally kept the walls of the store up? High earners who made 20 dollars an hour, with no health insurance in New York fucking City. It’s not efficient, it’s feckless greed. Take a minute and just take what I’ve written in. Now, let me add this: I had bosses who were making well over six figures and gallivanting all over the nation in the name of management, paying for Ubers, gourmet dinners and 300$ a night hotel rooms, whilst I had to pay for my staff’s lunch because I knew some of them could barely feed themselves. Add to the picture a bloviating, snake-oil salesman, with serious insecurity and you’ve got yourself the United States of Trumperica.
The bitter truth is I’m upset at the outcome of the election not so much because of the rampant deregulation that’s going to destroy people and mother nature, but because a man who is so despicable as a human being, is continuously being allowed to win. Big. It’s like how the rest of the world has felt for decades watching the States get bigger and more prosperous as it does awful terrible things. ‘We’re out here hustling and doing the right thing,’ they/I say, ‘how come the baddies keep winning?’ I don’t know how the world answers that, but for me it’s an ongoing conversation with God. The disenfranchised and forgotten are not angels. As disgruntled humans, they are nasty, brutish and short. My staff was awful with many of them professionally and personally attacked me as I protected them. My boss asked me why I was doing this and I replied, ‘because the business needs to run.’ To make a ship sail straight you have to sacrifice even in the face of shit thrown in your face. Biden might not have been perfect, but the crap he took and that he remained empathetic throughout was commendable. And by stepping down he did the one thing no American can ever do with grace: he admitted defeat. For those actions, he will always have my respect.
Donald Trump is the personification of the United States. This nation is about the acquisition of money before anything. That includes family, friends, the environment and God.The Bluey’s of a certain echelon are making just as much as the Reddies at the same level. The difference is one set is more honest about their greedy intentions than the other. Once all the tears are dried, it’ll be back to business as usual: gifting the Big Six your personal rights, cashing out on your investments, and burying your head in the quicksand as you scream pro-choice and climate change action now. In the meantime, those who have too much to lose will make emotional decisions out of desperation, anger and spite, ensuring that acid rain falls on us all.
Unlike most people, I was overcome with a sense of relief on the morning of November6. ‘Finally,’ I said, ‘the world will see this nation for what it truly is.’ And to that I’ll conclude with this: America, grow the fuck up. Seriously. Get your head out of your ass, because whining into your asshole is doing nothing more than passing gas into your intestines. Believe it or not, you’re not the only nation on this planet, much less this continent. Everyone, I mean everyone is struggling with inflation, natural disasters and mass migration. I mean, when was the last time y’all went to Canada? You think it’s the promised land but let me tell you, not every thing functions. And the lack of alacrity in basic Canadian problem solving will make the average American throw a shit fit of epic proportions.I say this not to dog the Great White North (they are lovely people in a beautiful land), but to offer a little clarity to all the American’s who say they ‘just have to leave.’ Leave to do what? Bring your arrogance and lack of communal thinking to another nation? Leave to live the simple little life you think you deserve as an American without paying taxes? Please, tell me why you need to leave? As tourists all you do is tell people in the nation’s you’re visiting how great everything is in their country and how shit everything is in yours.An ass backwards humble brag, because what you’re doing is showing how privileged you are to actually travel freely and open your uneducated mouth without repercussions.Americans are the only tourists I’ve encountered on my travels who say things like:‘so you’re travelling by yourself? And you’ve been doing so for a while? How does that work?’ Which is subtext for: how can a nigger afford to travel for leisure? Guess what? There are a lot of niggers outside of the U-S-of A who have money and travel pretty, pretty regularly for leisure. No American’s, don’t go fucking up the rest of the world, your number one export greed has already done that. Why don’t you dry your sanctimonious eyes, stop writing up the list of so and so's you're going to cancel because they don't share the same opinion as you, stay home and clean up the mess we’ve made. We owe it to ourselves.
