I can still remember the catatonic state of mind that was November 8th, 2016. I entered the day so ready to see Trump lose. I was never a huge Hillary fan, but saw a trailblazer in her quest to be the first woman President, and saw an orange-faced maniac, idiot fool on the other side. It seemed so obvious. It wasn't.
Those agonizing hours, with the early start of returns in the rust belt seeming fallow. Soon it would get worse and worse of a nightmare, Trump's slow win moving to an eventual inevitability. Even when it was more and more assured - despite CNN's best efforts to give us hope - I couldn't believe it. Forget his politics. I didn't care that it was a republican winning - but moreso a racist, sexist, misogynist, idiot. That last one was the most pressing. We've had racist President's before. We've had womanizers. We've had horrible people/ We never had a lazy idiot who never wanted the job.
I remember the dark feeling that hung over the air in the days following his election. I remember having a meeting with a client - a mother of two, half-latina American. She was almost in tears. I remember hoping, just hoping, we understimate Donald Trump - we didn't.
The last four years have been an embarrassment. From the early days of his presidency with the Muslim Travel Ban. From the latter stages with his abhorrent handling of the pandemic. For all the madness in between - the "Cofveve"s, the slew of embarrassments in the global stage (him pushing past presidents of other nations). The weird love of dictators - the way he took a susceptible part of America and radicalized it. Trump was a disaster from the start, and worse of all he was our disaster. Even at that point, more people in America disliked him than liked him but that didn't matter - he was our President.
Four years later, we vote him our. As so many people have said, this is a "Welcome Back" for our country, an opportunity to repent for our ills of electing an idiot, and beg for forgiveness to be a leader. I know the next four years aren't going to be perfect. Biden will already enter a political environment with staunch opposition from the Senate, from divisions within his own party of how far to push legislation. It won't be perfect - the Tea Party 2.0 is likely around the corner, putting aside any sort of Trump TV type movement. The fight isn't done, but the initial battle is over.
Trump represented everything wrong with America - the unearned brashness and attitude, the myopic nationalistic point of view, the stupid fake machismio. All of it was just the worst. The last four years was a series of idiocy that started right from the top. Add to it evil as well - the bans, the children in cages, the stripping away of women's and LGBTQ rights. The stoking of tensions on racial violence and police violence. All of it was just an unending, unbearable mix that reflected so poorly on America.
That all ends now. At the top we have a decent, smart, strong, generous man. He isn't perfect - sure, but he's so immeasurably better. Joe Biden is my President; Kamala Harris is my Vice President. After four long years it is just great to be respectful for and proud of my President again.
We've lived four years in some never ending horror show. A lot went well in my personal life in the Trump era - from buying an apartment, changing jobs, growing older - series of vacations and memories. But I know I'm lucky to have been out of the line of attack for so much of the Trump administration's series of horrors. I know people who've directly been impacted. I've seen the images of kids in cages, of violence in teh streets, of nazis holding tiki-torches, of his borish, fat puddling mass of shit on screen over and over again. Enough is enough - and I'm so glad my country felt the same.
A weight has been lifted on all of us. The USA can go back to being a leader and have an equal seat at the table. We can quickly undo a lot of the issues of the worst impulses of the Trump campaign - the feckless decisions to pull out of various climate accords or roll-back regulations. All of that gone. We took a weird turn for four years, but we can proceed further into the 21st Century with pride of what America is. We survived this four year incarceration in our own homes, awoke from our never ending nightmare. It took four years but we've made it to the other side.
