OK, SO the Global Pandemic Happened, Part 2: Toxic Trump

OK, So... I dont think future generations will fully grasp just how stressful it was to live through the Donald Trump presidency from 2016 to 2020. Combine that stress with a global pandemic, and you've got a recipe for disaster. I will have to do a post just about 2016 and how that forever scarred the psyche of Democrats everywhere, and created a fear-based anxiety about polling, elections, and a general uncertainty and doubt about actual electoral realities on the ground. But I digress. So let's start with the most recent events and how it relates to my damaged emotional state. Donald Trump was arguably the worst president in modern US history. Do not let anyone try to rehabilitate his image in the future. He created a cult of personality that used chaos as a ladder. Every single day it was one crisis or another, and our President was either willfully ignorant, totally incompetent, or knowingly malignant. Not sure which of those three characteristics were the worst. He was unfit, dangerous, and a sad symptom of the anti-education, know-nothing deplorables that are an extremely loud minority in our country. He was so exhausting - which was likely a strategic decision to wear down the opposition. It got to the point where turning on the morning news was so stress-inducing and mood depressing that I had to stop watching altogether. The anti-immigrant, anti-muslim, anti-anything not white, male and Christian was so disturbing to me. I worried a lot about Sean's family members, who were immigrants from Iran. There was actual talk of revoking naturalization for some citizens - unheard of! Sean was born in the US, but his parents were not. I worried about them. I was also grateful to live in progressive California, which felt like an island or some autonomous region separated from the mainland. It made me actively consider supporting California secession at some point. Would rather have a President Gavin Newsom than a President Orange Cheeto. I have to be clear - as a middle-class white man, I was fairly immune to most of the egregious Trump policies. That doesn't mean I didn't care, and didn't actively protest against them. I actually care for my neighbors who don't look like me. So we spent the global pandemmic stuck inside, nowhere to go, and the news featuring an incompetent President every single hour of every single day. The cortisol levels must have been through the roof in America. And then the election cycle of 2020 happened. Trump was deeply unpopular, having never enjoyed approval ratings above 40-some percent. I knew he would lose to just about any Democrat that would run against him. Despite not being my first choice, I was so happy that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. The race was still close in Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania on election night. So the race was not called for Biden until Saturday, later that week. I remember watching CNN on Saturday morning and the moment they called the race...i could hear screams of excitement from neighbors in other apartment buildings. Spontaneously crowds formed in West Hollywood to celebrate. Fuck the pandemic, we were going to celebrate. We danced in the streets, we drank champagne, someone was passing out roses, celebrities were driving by and waving to the crowd. It was as if the nation let out a pent-up release of energy, exploding everywhere and onto everyone. It was an orgasm after waiting four long years. The best line was from then-Senator and VP-elect Kamala Harris: "We did it. We did it, Joe." WE DID IT JOE!