Originally, the title for this post was going to be A Blanket Apology to All Greenlanders, but then I thought it would be unfair not to include Gazans, too. And Panamanians. And Mexicans. And Canadians. Trump seems to be slobbering all over your rightful territories. He is, after all, very much into real estate, and couldn’t care less about people. He also has a toxically narcissistic sense of entitlement.
But now, with his efforts to dismantle USAID, he is having a negative impact on 141 countries worldwide. He’s making it sound as if he’s saving this country a fortune by doing this, but in reality, according to USAFacts, USAID spending has never constituted more than 0.6% of the national budget, and last year it was only 0.3% of the national budget. This spending is a mere pittance to us, but it is spent to support economic growth, global health, education, and humanitarian aid in less fortunate countries, and the withdrawal of these funds will be catastrophic. And their suffering will cause worldwide chaos that will surely splash back on us in numerous ways, so it isn’t even wise policy for those who want to close our country off from all others. If you don’t want the wretched refuse of other countries’ teeming shores to wash up upon yours, then it’s in your best interest to help them be less wretched at home.
And his tariffs will not only be a crushing blow to the targeted countries, but also a crushing blow to Americans as well, as the cost of, basically, everything skyrockets. Even if a product is made in America, if even one of its parts is made overseas, then those idiotic tariffs will mean that part will be much more expensive, and the cost will be passed on to the consumer. And the countries who are penalized in this way will also impose tariffs on us, so all of our foreign goods purchases are going to be more expensive. This is no way to make America great again. Trump’s punishing of the whole world is unconscionable, but if that doesn’t get your attention, maybe the fact that it will punish us, too, will wake you up.
And unilaterally declaring that the Gulf of Mexico should now be called the Gulf of America is a total outrage. He’s not the emperor of the continent. The impudence! So now, what? Should I also apologize to all the fish in the sea? Probably.
And then, of course, he has officially pushed us past the point of no return when it comes to Global Climate Change, so… Good god, what a nightmare. This is a stain on this country from which we may never recover.
America really has no excuse for this disaster. There was ample opportunity to prevent this orange slime mold from oozing across this country and infecting the entire planet. Were it not for our general apathy and our mortifying gullibility, it wouldn’t have been hard for the numbers to have been different enough to have given the world a lot less to worry about.
I actually have a lot of nerve even trying to defend us. But for the sake of individual Americans, and for the sake of the good opinion of future generations, for what it’s worth, most Americans did not vote for this guy. Here’s a numeric breakdown:
- 244,666,890 people are eligible to vote in this country. Of those:
- 89,154,358 could not be bothered to get off their asses and vote, or, quite possibly, were prevented from voting due to Jim Crow-like restrictions.
- 155, 512,532 people actually voted. Of those:
- 77,303,569 voted for Trump,
- 75,019,231 voted for Harris, and
- 3,189,732 threw their votes away on a third party or a write-in candidate that had absolutely no chance of winning, and those voters knew it.
So, yes, Trump got 49.71% of the popular vote, but in truth, only 31.6% of the people who were eligible to vote for him did so. Of course, we’ll never know for sure how many of the disenfranchised people and the couch potatoes actually would have voted for him, but the fact that they didn’t, or couldn’t work up the energy, says a lot. To wander further into speculation-land, if those who threw their votes away decided to vote for Harris, that would have been enough. Or if even 2 ½ percent of those who didn’t vote at all had voted for Harris, that would have been enough. It was that close. That is why voting rights need to be closely guarded, and people need to understand that every vote matters.
Aside from the above (which is bad enough), a lot of disappointed people are trying to say that there was voter fraud in terms of ballots. They’re saying the election was stolen. These are the same people who said that the election was not stolen in 2020, because it went their way. I’ll hazard a guess that from now on, assuming Trump “allows” us to have presidential elections again, every side that loses a presidential election will think the election was stolen from now until the end of time. Somewhere along the line, we have forgotten how to be good sports. It’s sad, really.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think either election was stolen. I just think that this is a very polarized country, and for some reason, enough of us this time around were willing to elect someone who is a felon, a rapist, a proud pussy-grabber, a stealer of classified documents, an admirer of dictators, and a man who delights in financially profiting off his presidency, and that only scratches the surface of his heinous deeds.
As a side note, this instinct to vote for less than competent individuals is not a purely MAGA phenomenon, unfortunately. One of the other individuals who got votes this election was a guy named Lucifer Everylove. I kid you not. He was only able to get on the ballot in Utah, but still, he was able to secure 2,653 votes. Apparently, this is a mostly homeless guy who sometimes gets work as a DJ who goes by the name “Justin Case”. And yes, he did change his name legally to Lucifer Everylove. His platform is rather vague, but in the past he had been virulently anti-Trump. He even once got close enough to throw mini Russian flags with “Trump” written across them at the man himself. (The picture of that in the article is kind of awesome, to be honest.) He was also into free and fair elections and a free and open internet. All great things. But he has since had a spiritual awakening. He says the name Lucifer, or “bearer of light” “chose him” at that time. And as his surname says, he loves everyone, including Harris and Trump. He said that if he could speak to Trump now, he’d say, “Can I give you a hug?” Oh, and he was once imprisoned in Honduras for smoking cannabis.
Here in Washington State, there’s a man who calls himself GoodSpaceGuy, and he can be counted upon to run in pretty much every election, regardless of office, and has done so in every imaginable party, including some he has made up for himself, since at least 2003. This time around, in our Nonpartisan primary for US Senate, he actually got 16,826 votes, which, needless to say, did not launch him into our general election. Whenever he runs, regardless of party or office, part of his platform is about space exploration and space colonization. He also calls for population control through a birth fee.
Maybe Lucifer Goodlove and GoodSpaceGuy should be running mates. They could start the “I don’t take voting seriously” party. Don’t get me wrong. Everybody has a right to participate in a democracy, and express their own political opinions. And I hate that this country has boiled itself down to a two party system, and that those parties seem to be increasingly insane and/or disappointingly useless. But in a game where the stakes are so obviously high, it infuriates me that people waste their time backing those they know can never win. Not only is it a waste of time, but it makes us look crazy and/or dangerously flippant to the rest of the world, when they count on us so much.
So again, to all of the rest of the world: I’m so sorry. In case you are wondering, most of us really do think we have no right to take away your property. Most Americans are not hellbent on world domination. Most of us not only think we should keep our noses out of your sovereignty, but also that we should extend a helping hand whenever we can.
Most of us know that the world is not some big Risk boardgame, in which he who conquers the most territory wins. It’s disgraceful enough that we have a space force, created by guess who, who’s logo is a rip off of Star Trek. What was wrong with just letting NASA do its thing? It was hard enough to avoid making the militarization of space a priority with them, without adding an actual military branch dedicated to it into the mix. Most of us, like you, just wish this idiocracy would just collapse into itself and disappear.
For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure that the Toddler’s attention span is exceedingly short. He’ll get bored and turn his eyes away from your land sooner than you think. If he were given a pop quiz, he couldn’t point your country out on a map, nor could he tell us your capitol city or your nation’s leader, even if he has been there and met that person. Seriously. The man is as dumb as a box of rocks.
Our embarrassment of an executive is a loudmouth, and most of the outrageous things he says are either products of his increasingly demented mind, or a twisted desire to dominate the news cycle and divert attention from the destruction he is doing within his own country to his own people. I guarantee you that you are a lot safer than we Americans are, regardless of whom we voted for. I know that’s cold comfort, but that’s the best I can do from inside this political hurricane.
If it makes you feel any better, even though he got 49.71% of the people who voted to do the unthinkable, according to fivethirtyeight.com, America’s most accurate polling predictor (if any poll can be called accurate), Trump’s overall favorability rating is at 46.5% at the time of this writing. That suggests that there might just be a certain level of buyer’s remorse going on amongst his base.
That gives me a tiny glimmer of hope for the future. Let’s all pray that when/if the dust settles, most of the damage he has caused will be repairable, and that those repairs will only take decades, not a century or more. Let’s also beseech whatever higher power may be out there to give us the wisdom to at least learn from this and put safeguards in place so that it can never happen again.
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