Part I:
I’ve Listened

It’s difficult to accept the reality of what happened. Once again, I have underestimated the hate, intolerance, and lack of foresight of the American electorate.

If you’re wondering what happened to the pictures that usually accompany stories on The Cud, they’re here. They’re intentionally black squares. Yes, this column is wearing black in honor of the death of common sense, the United States, and the presidency. May we all hope that these things are resurrected without too much complete destruction of our nation and our world.

I’ve listened to Sanders supporters telling us “I told you so.” Most of them voted for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, or chose not to vote or to write in Bernie Sanders, but don’t see that this only helped to elect Donald Trump through non-support of Hillary Clinton, a candidate who actually represented their ideals.

I’ve listened to the masses and the pundits proclaim that the people have spoken. They did speak: As of this writing, more than 2.23 million people voted for Clinton than did for Trump. The people spoke very clearly. It’s the Electoral College that continues to fail the American democracy—and the world.

I’ve listened to people defend the Electoral College—blindly, without understanding it, continuing to believe that it benefits smaller states despite the campaigns this year spending in just a few battleground states really telling us what matters with the Electoral College. Yes, a few states did elect our president. This year, 94 percent of the campaigns’ events were in just 12 states, and two-thirds were in just six states: Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, and Michigan. I’ve listened, but I’m sick of a few swing states deciding who our president is.

I’ve listened for months how Trump would not accept if he lost because the campaign would have to have been rigged for that to happen, and now I’ve listened to his campaign say that the recount called for by Stein and supported by Clinton is a “scam.” I’ve listened to him lie about everything else, so why should I be surprised when he changes his tune on this?

I’ve listened to months of anger and hate, to the neverending lies coming from Trump—even as those who voted for him, and plenty of others who could not “bring themselves” to vote for Clinton, saying that she could not have their votes because she was dishonest. Yet arguably the biggest liar to ever run—at least that we can demonstrably prove via fact-checking sites, which have been very busy keeping up with the dishonesty of Trump—won the electoral vote.

I’ve listened to Trump supporters shout their victorious vitriol in the wake of this international tragedy. I guess that isn’t about to change. But what strikes me as at least amusing is how the Trump supporters aren’t listening to much. He said he’d build a wall; he’s still going to do it, he says, but now he’s scaling back those plans. He said he’d kill the Affordable Care Act; he still wants to, but suddenly is feeling a bit softer about it. He said he’d have Hillary Clinton investigated; now he isn’t. Already, he is walking back many of the things he campaigned on, many of the things his mindless followers blindly cheered. Yet they seem to not notice.

Get used to it. This is Donald Trump. He lies. That’s what he does. But don’t be fooled for a minute, any of us, because the things he promised he’d do are still things he wants to do and will try to do. They might not happen his first day in office, but in line with right-wing insanity, he will work with the Republicans to make sure they do as much damage to the progression we’ve made in the last 50 years as they can.

Get ready to say good-bye to some great things, and hello to some terrible alternatives.

Part II:
Goodbye and Hello

If the Trump we have seen throughout the primaries and the campaign is the one we’ll see in the White House—and so far there is little sign that he will be any different—then we’d better start saying good-bye to some important things.

Say goodbye to all of the progressive strides that we have made in this country. Say hello to returning to the past under the weak-minded belief that we should never change how we’ve done things, and that we should forcer everyone else to observe them no matter the cost.

Say goodbye to the Affordable Care Act and all the protections it affords the American people. Say hello to people being uninsured, to insurance companies no longer reined in, to all the protections the ACA gave to Americans who will again have their health and their very lives decided by the moneymakers.

Say goodbye to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and all it has done to keep Wall Street under control. Say hello to unchecked control of the country by the very wealthy, and the unbridled greed that they will keep working to bring to us.

Say goodbye to a balanced Supreme Court and with it so many things that have protected Americans—such as Roe v Wade, marriage equality, and so much more. Say hello to the coming generations of conservative ideals that will roll back the rights and protections we have fought to install for many previous generations.

Say good-bye to the protection of the American voter. Say hello to greater gerrymandering, to voter disenfranchsement, and to the strengthening of the unofficial American caste system that keeps the poor poor and the rich rich—all designed to keep Republicans in power by silencing the liberal poor.

Say good-bye to immigration, which has built this country since its beginning. Say hello to concerted efforts to make America white again, to make America Christian again, to make America anything but great again.

Say goodbye to the freedoms that the American people have enjoyed, the civil rights that we have all fought for, and a way of life that has focused on equality and harmony. Say hello to greater limitations on our rights by the government, and of stripping rights we have fought to earn for those who are not white, straight Christians.

Say goodbye to a government that has worked for all the people under eight years of the Obama administration, despite the lack of cooperation with the Republican House. Say hello to the smaller government the Republicans always champion, but one that will operate with more restrictions on personal freedoms at every level.

Say goodbye to fair taxation. Say hello to increased taxes on most of us, which will be needed to make up for the tax breaks the wealthy will get under Trump.

Say goodbye to the unemployment level and low gas prices, which have dropped steadily under Obama. Say hello to a repeat of the Bush years, when unemployment and gas prices skyrocketed.

Say goodbye to freedom of religion, unless you're Christian. Say hello to more church bells and the inaccurate belief that this country was founded as a Christian nation—and perhaps hello to a downhill run towards the requirement of Christian adherence.

Say goodbye to choice. Say hello to being forced into embracing the conservative ideals of never changing anything from the way it has been and being forced to adhere to their constrictive, intolerant beliefs.

Say goodbye to decency. Say hello to a presidency that will be built on the same hate, intolerance, and uncivilized behavior that has dominated this candidate's campaign.

Say goodbye to transparency and honesty. Say hello to more of the lies that he has built everything on.

Say goodbye to whatever respect we’ve had on the world stage. Say hello to non-support of NATO, to cozying up with a throwback Russian leader who is clearly an ultranationalist Soviet, and to a frightening increase in the desire to wage war across the globe.

Say goodbye to the push for an advanced civilization and a unified planet. Say hello to the real prospect of nuclear war.

Say goodbye to the American dream. Say hello to the disaster that this country, and maybe this planet, might become.

Say goodbye to the 240 years of history and the laborious advancement of human rights as we have built the greatest country on Earth.

Say hello to President Trump.

And if you knew these things and cast your vote for him anyway: Shame on you.

Part III:
Don’t Call the Secret Service on Me

In the United States, it’s against the law to threaten the president, even if you’re joking. It’s against the law to threaten anyone, of course, but you can get in a lot more trouble doing it to the president. You’re not just threatening a person; you’re threatening the office. It’s the United States’ version of Lèse-majesté, really; currently, we can speak our minds about the president, disagree with the president, and criticize the president—although who knows what will happen now.

My views on death have changed as I’ve aged. For example, I used to be all for the death penalty. As I’ve learned new things, I’ve come to realize that it isn’t so clear cut. When I hear of someone on death row exonerated by DNA evidence, I wonder how many innocent people have died. The reliability of eyewitness testimony has been an issue of discussion for over a century, so when I hear the statistics that eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable (look up the misinformation effect and confirmation bias, for instance) it frightens me to think of anyone being put to death unjustly because someone who was wrong about what he thought he saw.

I still believe in the death penalty, but only in the most heinous of cases, and only where the evidence is absolutely irrefutable. And even then I still question it.

So I don’t make it a habit of wishing people dead. But these days, I have to admit that the sudden demise of Donald Trump would not make me cry.

The day after Thanksgiving, the first thing I saw that morning on my smartphone was that a lead story that someone important had died. For a split second, before my brain could process the headline, I thought it was Trump. Yes, I even hoped. But it was not Trump—it was Florence Henderson making the big headline. Carol Brady, the mother of TV’s first stepfamily, had died. This was very sad to me on many levels, and for the record I’d much rather have her in the Oval Office than Donald Trump. Heck, I’d rather have any of the Brady kids running the country than Donald Trump—and I don’t mean the kids as they are now; I mean any of THE KIDS. Any of them at those young ages would be a better choice than this guy.

Then the next day I woke to find another major death headline, and once again my heart raced. Could he have dropped dead? Would we be saved from him?

No. It was Fidel Castro. How utterly fitting that one of the greatest dictators of the last half-century died just as one of the greatest dictators of the next half-century is about to take office.

I’m sure that some readers are reeling at my callous rhetoric. Others are agreeing with me. Still others are mortified, but in that secret place in their minds, they’re thinking that I’m making some kind of sense. If you care about the things I wrote about in the “Goodbye and Hello” section, you cannot in good conscience want this man to be president. Sure, we DO have to root for him to succeed, but in doing so we cannot pretend that he will be anything other than an unqualified disaster.

I don’t ever wish someone dead because I hate that person. But these are difficult times, and a Trump presidency will likely destroy us. Even Mike Pence, as bad as he is, couldn’t be as bad as Trump. Then again, I guess it doesn’t much matter, because Republicans will control the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. Soon, they’ll stack the Supreme Court. Will it really matter if Trump died?

Actually, it might. On the one hand, with Trump in power, we can hope that he will keep up his behavior and not get reelected in four years. If the Supreme Court can hold out long enough for him to send the country into a total nosedive, maybe it won’t be too late to rectify things in 2020. But if Trump dies now, and Pence takes over, Pence might just pull a George W. Bush and do a good enough job to fool Americans into reelecting him—and strengthen the far right into doing as much damage as they can over a long period of time.

Advantages, disadvantages. I’ll still breathe a sigh of relief if the man keels over.

Part IV:
Losing the Popular Vote

It seems impossible that Clinton could win the popular vote by more than 2.23 million votes and still lose the election. I wrote a few months ago on The Cud about why the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact needs to take effect, and this only hammers home why. Remember, George W. Bush was effectively elected to the presidency by the Supreme Court of the United States thanks to Florida, but he lost the popular vote by half a million votes. Imagine if we hadn’t had him as president!

But fair is fair: As bad as George W. Bush was… man, I’m really missing that guy right now.

In the history of this country, only five presidents were elected after losing the popular vote.

John Quincy Adams won in 1824, in a race decided by the U.S. House of Representatives, where all four candidates were from the same political party; Adams got 30.9 percent of the vote to Andrew Jackson’s 41.4 percent.

Rutherford B. Hayes won with 47.9 percent of the vote in 1876 to Samuel J. Tilden’s 50.9 percent. (This was an abhorrent election; read up on it for an embarrassing way the presidency was decided.)

Benjamin Harrison won in 1888 despite losing the popular vote to Grover Cleveland by less than a 1 percent difference.

After that, there wasn’t such an occurrence for 112 years and 25 presidential elections. Then along came Bush v Gore in 2000; and now, just 16 years later, we’ve had another one.

That’s the problem with democracy: It lets the masses decide. Oh, that sounds like a wonderful thing, and if saner people made up the masses, it would be just fine. Well, let’s be fair: So far, there are 2.23 million-plus people who appeared to make the saner choice, but the absolutely disastrous electoral system we use in the U.S. ensured that the minority got its hateful, intolerant, dishonest circus clown of a candidate elected. Is that democracy?

We talk about the importance of honesty, but those masses chose to ignore—or were too stupid to see—the dishonesty that is Donald Trump. The Constitution doesn’t make any requirement of an honesty test for presidential candidates, so maybe it’s time that we add a new amendment. I envision one that does have a series of tests for president.

First, a test for honesty. If a candidate isn’t honest, why should that person be allowed to serve as president? All the angry Christians in this country should surely understand that “thou shalt not lie” bit that they claim to revere… oh, sorry, check that; apparently the all the far-right religious folks all voted for Trump. Guess they don’t practice what they preach.

Second, a battery of psychological tests. I’m pretty sure that Trump is not a mentally stable person. It’s bad enough that he never released his tax returns, and as such we have nothing to go on when considering his conflicts of interests; but forget that, because I’d be much more interested in seeing how he’d fare on an MMPI-2, the standard in psychological testing. If a candidate is not mentally stable, he or she should not be allowed to serve no matter how many people vote for him. Come on—even the military boots out people who aren’t mentally stable! Perhaps it’s time to do that with our presidents, senators, and representatives.

Third, civics tests. You wouldn’t choose a doctor who knew nothing about medicine or an engineer who had never built anything, so why the hell should we settle for ANY candidate who doesn’t have at least a basic understanding of civics, politics, history, and foreign relations?

Fourth, science tests. I’m sick of hearing idiots like Trump deny climate change when our very planet and the future of our species is at stake. I’d say we should disqualify them for believing in creationism over evolution, but of course they’d argue that that’s a religious test, which is prohibited by the Constitution. It isn’t; it’s a scientific test. But I’d lose that argument, because in this country people who believe in invisible men who live in the sky and that the Earth is six thousand years old are legally allowed to screw up the country for the rest of us, so I guess I’ll forgo that one. But if a candidate doesn’t understand the scientific method and critical thinking, and can’t understand that in science the word “theory” does not mean “wild idea” but “factually supported explanation that has been repeatedly tested and confirmed,” then he has no business being president.

These are all pipe dreams, of course. Amending the Constitution is no small task, and telling the unhinged masses that they should support something that will eliminate the idiot candidates that they routinely support is not likely to be received well—especially if you call them “unhinged” and their chosen candidates “idiots.” I can’t help it; when I’m despondent and depressed, I lose all sense of decorum and call them like I see them.

Part V:
Hanging on to Hope

There is one last hope that will be played out before this piece runs, and that’s the recount. Shortly after the election, some computer experts noticed some alarming numbers in several swing states that Clinton apparently lost. What they noticed was that in those states the counties that used computers to vote had her 7 percent down in votes when compared to the counties that uses paper ballots. This is alarming statistically, and well worth investigating. There were concerns about hacking and rigging the election—Trump whined about a rigged election, but we knew the only way that that might happen is through hacking. One cannot help but wonder.

Gabriel Sherman of New York Magazine reported:

“The group, which includes voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz and J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, believes they’ve found persuasive evidence that results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked. The group is so far not speaking on the record about their findings and is focused on lobbying the Clinton team in private.”

So what if they were hacked? What if we discover that Clinton actually won those three states? They represent 46 electoral votes and would give her the election. But what about other states? Are there irregularities there?

Trump calls this recount effort “sad.” This is from a man who was vehement about ensuring that the election would be rigged—if he lost. He doesn’t seem as vehement if it means he could end up losing; now, he cites Clinton’s debate statement that Trump would have to accept the election results, her concession speech, and her claim that her supporters had to accept the results and give Trump a chance. But Clinton was speaking in terms of a fair election, and if the investigation discovers that there was manipulation, then of course these investigations and recounts should happen.

But time is running short. Trump is about to be elected president by the Electoral College—or is he? There are petitions out there trying to get electors to cast their votes for Clinton when they are duty-bound to cast them for Trump. There are many states where this can happen without repercussion—where electors who have pledged to vote however their state votes can vote however they wish. This is yet another atrocity in our system, but it balances out the atrocity of the electoral system as a whole.

The reality is that Trump will likely be sworn in and serve as our next president, right or wrong. If the Bush v Gore issue in 2000 taught us anything, conservatives usually get their way when it comes to politics. They got their way in 2000 with a conservative court halting recounts and effectively installing the Republican candidate who lost the popular vote and probably would have lost Florida and thus the electoral vote in the recount.

We can hope. That’s about all we can do now. We can hope that if something was rotten in the voting machines, that the experts in the know will uncover it and right a terrible wrong.

But that’s all we can do is hope. Because, barring something extraordinary, here comes Trump. Get ready for the real possibility of Hell on Earth. Don’t worry—I don’t mean that in the mythological sense. But it’s as apt a metaphor as any for what is likely to come.

Like Dr. Farnsworth said in Futurama, “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”

David M. Fitzpatrick is a writer living in Maine, USA. His many short stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies around the world. He writes for a newspaper, writes fiction, edits anthologies, and teaches creative writing. Visit him at www.fitz42.net/writer to learn more.