No.

What a fucked up day. Any time I hear someone say “President Trump” I feel like I entered a Twilight Zone. I felt a touch of that when George W. was inaugurated. It felt like some kind of long-planned conspiracy had put an alien in the White House, and that unforeseeable calamities were due. The WMD fiasco and the invasion of Iraq bore that out.

Now it is already dark by 5pm. Miserable feelings all around. Watching the results come in last night was nauseating. I especially felt dizzy watching the Florida results go back and forth between who was leading. My home county of Hillsborough voted Democrat. There is that. But Florida is such a fucked up state. It’s like a country of its own with vastly diverse populations.

My friend and I decided to move to Vermont and then vote to secede. That will not happen, probably, but it was fun conversation. Cambodia is also a possibility. I heard that a Canadian immigration web site crashed under heavy usage last night.

I am not going to take my friend Joe to task on this but he called yesterday to ask about something web related, and conversation turned to the election. Asked how I felt about it I said “Nervous.” We did not get into specifics but he was resolute: There was no way Hillary was going to lose. He was not even going to watch or listen to coverage of the returns, and he encouraged me to do the same. He may have been right on that second point. I gave up at some point, crashing to sleep, but woke up around 7:00 to see what happened. Scott Shannon, the normally chipper host of the upbeat morning show, sounded like he was hosting Mourning in America. Any coverage I’ve seen so far looks like coverage of a funeral. Maybe that is what this is.

I have to stand by what I said early in this campaign. When I listened to him in interviews and in speeches I could totally understand the appeal. An easy delivery, spoke off the cuff, sounded like someone I’d want to have drinks with — although he does not drink. He has no conventional vices, as a former business associate commented. Hillary, on the other hand, has a negative charisma that makes her sound like she is condescending to her supporters. But she is so much more qualified. It is like the ultimate in misogynistic hiring, where an infinitely better qualified woman loses the job to a man with no credentials.

As for Trump finding that voice which resonates among so much of America, well, I think those folks stand to lose the most now that he is their President. He is their problem now. He can let them down so badly.

I’ve always known what demagoguery is. I hear it every time I listen to conservative talk radio. Even the seemingly everyman Paul Harvey was guilty of it: Stretched truths and outright lies are floated as unassailable fact, with racial or sexist innuendo left to linger in the minds of the listeners, who complete the thought with their own poison. Hearing that on the radio allowed me to dismiss it as entertainment. Seeing it usher someone into the fucking White House turns the feeding of these revolting American inclinations into real world garbage. This is real.

I am actually trying not to cry but I’m at a Starbucks and don’t need the attention.

This might be the most fucked up day in the history of America. Within my lifetime I don’t yet know if this or 9/11 is the most fucked up day.