I'm mostly sorry for Ukraine. We did this to ourselves but Ukraine is out there fighting for its life, fighting for democracy, and wasn't that something the U.S. once promoted? Something the U.S. once stood for? Making the world safe for democracy, the arsenal of democracy ... Well, we've got a brand-new brand now.

It's been a rough 12 months for me and I didn't really have the emotional bandwidth to follow along with this election, the awfulness and lies, the lies and insanity. I was so out of it that I felt not-bad about the election a month ago. But as the days dwindled down even I was picking up on the signals. The Washington Post and LA Times and USA Today not endorsing a candidate, for example. This was no new moral stance for them, some greater-than-great objectivity for even their Op-Ed pages. It's: They thought he would win. It was a cowardly move that won them nothing but contempt. Like all cowardly moves.

Even the night of I was more detached than normal. Our friend Ward had a few close friends over to either celebrate or commiserate. Some professed to be, in the phrase of the day, nauseously optimistic. Soon they were just nauseous. My immediate thought, which I said out loud, was the Democratic party needed to nominate more straight white men since the woman thing wasn't working. As Bill Burr said last night on SNL, “Alright, ladies, you're 0-2 against this guy: Oh and two!” That pissed people off but he wasn't wrong. One guy's beaten him, Biden, and that took a global pandemic. One guy from either party, by the way. Republicans had 10 other options back in 2015 and they all fell down. They could've taken him out after Jan. 6 but they all fell down.

But I don't know if the straight white men thing is the answer. I don't know if we're just too sexist and/or racist a country, or if there's just too many masters of misinformation out there, the Fox Newses of the world, or if the legit media keeps failing us by normalizing the roughest edges of the roughest major party candidate who ever feigned fellating a microphone, or if it's the new technology allowing the new propaganda to seep into our lives and brains and souls. I don't know if the Democratic party is just too polite. I suspect so. They're playing tennis at Wimbledon when it's rugby on a muddy field in the middle of winter. With cheaters.

I do know that if you voted for Trump because you're worried about the price of eggs, you're an idiot. If, however, you voted for him because you're racist and/or sexist, well, you backed the right person. You're getting what you wanted. Ditto if you're rich and want a tax cut, or if you love Putin or don't care about Ukraine. Or if you just don't like American democracy. I'm not a huge fan of it myself these days. When Biden won in 2020 I began to think of the Trump years as an aberration. Now the Biden years look like the aberration. We laughed at Trump when he put his stupid name on all of his buildings. Now he's doing it to the times. He went from hotelier to era.

I like something the actor Jeffrey Wright posted recently:

Fuck it. Hard week. Let's go. Right is right. History will applaud us.

Good attitude. I like something my friend Craig Wright posted the day after:

Everything that was true yesterday is true today. Some of it is more evident now, and more present; and some is less evident now, and less present. But it's a closed system, this world. The good always goes somewhere. Find it. 

Two Wrights don't erase a massive wrong. But it's a start.