Friday, November 8, 2024 at 12:46 AM

For the entirety of my adult life, I’ve always believed that my political beliefs were righteous, that the other side was wrong and callous and unfeeling and did not represent the will of the majority. I believed that, even when I was in the minority party, the opposition, so to speak. It wasn’t just some bias either; it was my fervent belief that I was in the right and they were wrong, on politics, on economics, on social issues, on everything! My strong-headed convictions were unshakable, immovable; I believed deep down in my soul that I was on the right side of things, of history!

I believed all that until last Tuesday and the elections! I believed that Donald Trump and his followers were the lowest of the lows. I believed that they were heartless and racist and xenophobic and misogynistic! I believed that they could never win a presidential race, except through gerrymandering and the Electoral College. I believed that right would prevail; my right, because I was on the good side, the righteous side.

Well, I was in for a rude awakening when the results started coming in last Tuesday night! Not only was Trump winning, but winning everywhere and among almost every demographic, including women, although not among black women. His support among minority men and women only helped to solidify his lead over Kamala Harris. It was an outright victory, and a significant achievement for this flawed man. It will go down in history as one of the most consequential wins in a presidential election, I believe, if he carries out all, or most of his campaign promises.

I have always believed that his followers lived in a bubble. I called them lemmings and much more unflattering and denigrating adjectives. I’m not going to name all the unpresidential baggage he carries with him, or his convictions by juries of his peers, or his hawking of Bibles and watches and sneakers while campaigning. His boorish attitude towards women and minorities and the disabled. There are so many disqualifications in his immense repertoire of bad behavior that his victory seemed inconceivable. What a ting!

And now, with that irrevocable dispensation given to him by the electorate, of all of his malfeasances, his sins, his corruption, he is free to rule as he likes. He reminds me of Henry VIII. Having total power, petty and vindictive, vainglorious, thin-skinned, and always out for revenge. I can’t see anything positive about his victory; but then again, apparently, I am the one living in a bubble!

What do the almost 80 million Americans see in this man that I failed to recognize? Is it that the values of everyday people have changed so drastically? He was vastly outspent by his rival. He was portrayed in the most negative of ways by his own former colleagues, and yet he prevailed. I must have missed something, because he increased his total votes in almost every state in the nation!

We can blame Joe Biden, racism, misogyny and all the other negative mindsets for Ms. Harris’s defeat. We can try to find rhyme and reason for this political earthquake; but in the end, it might be me, and those who think like me, who live in the bubble!

So, all of us who are now living in this melancholic bubble, licking our wounds, on the verge of going over to the dark side, must rethink our own politics, see what we missed, or how what we tried to impose upon others, especially socially, backfired in the most profound sense of the word. We didn’t try to understand them, because we were so sure that we were right. There was no bending of the arc, bubble boy!

Glen