What Rough Beast

Ah, America. The grand experiment is over indeed, now that we have elected a pussy-grabbing protofascist.

This election will be analyzed and dissected for years to come (and I can't wait [sarcasm] for Ann Coulter's take on it). There are many reasons behind Trump's win, of course. However, after viewing the map of county wins, I have a few questions for all the aggrieved white people, especially in the Rust Belt states, who voted for him:

You do realize Donald Trump is a narcissistic con artist who is only out for himself, don't you? He doesn't give a shit about you. You were useful to him, nothing more. He enjoyed seeing you come to his rallies, scream his name, and prop up his ego. (One proof of this is that he said he'd like to continue the rallies even after he gets into the White House.) He was born with several silver spoons in his mouth, a one-percenter from the get-go, and you expect him to care about the likes of you? Don't make me laugh.

You do realize he's not going to fulfill his campaign promises, don't you? He's already backtracking about repealing the Affordable Care Act. He doesn't even comprehend, since he doesn't know jackshit about policy, that you cannot keep enrollment despite pre-existing conditions and kids on their parents' insurance and scuttle the rest. The program doesn't work that way. (If you don't believe me, ask Mitt Romney, since Obamacare is basically Romneycare expanded to the entire country.) Not to mention the fact that the insurance companies themselves, as well as the hospitals that have eliminated most of their uncompensated care, are going to fight him tooth and nail on any such thing.

You do realize he's not actually going to build the effing Wall, don't you? Logistically, how would that even be possible? How high is it supposed to be, thirty feet? How much concrete and rebar (and barbed wire, presumably, for the top) would that even take? How many roads would have to be built, in remote desert areas? How many trucks, hauling how many loads of concrete and gravel, into these remote desert areas? What happens in summer when it tops 115 degrees out there? Who's going to design the wall, and how long will that take? What about putting out contracts to bid, and how long will that take? Also, who will work on such a massive project? (Unless you plan to force all the undocumented immigrants and Muslims from the concentration camps into indentured servitude to build it.) I work for the VA. Do you have any idea what a nightmare a simple procurement job such as buying medications for our pharmacy can be? How much more of a nightmare do you think procuring materials for a thousand-mile-long (or longer) Wall will be? Unless Trump declares himself President for Life (and he's already 70) what makes you think he'll even live long enough to complete it? Plus, who's going to pay for it? (Mexico sure as hell isn't, even though Trump says he will "make" them, and by the way, how would he even do that? Nuke them until they hand over the money?) Are all you aggrieved white people who voted for him going to pony up, you who are already complaining about your taxes? But then again, if Trump rams through his massive tax cut, and deficits explode (as they inevitably will) what are you going to do then? Still go ahead and built the frakking thing? And you're complaining about the size of the national debt now? Just wait till Trump's beautiful Wall adds to it.

I tossed these things off in just a few minutes, off the top of my head. And this doesn't even touch the fact that you, Aggrieved White People, just voted for a man who has a monstrous hard-on for Vladimir Putin; who asked during a briefing why, if we had nuclear weapons, we couldn't use them; who lies to you, his constituents, as often and as naturally as he breathes; and who has no respect for 51% of the human race, namely women. He made no attempt to hide who he was, and you voted for him anyway, because you want some kind of Sugar Daddy to come along and fix you.

Honestly, you disgust me. The Party of Personal Responsibility, my ass.

I know time machines don't exist, but I can't help feeling that somewhere out there some geek has secretly built one and popped back a hundred years to whisper into W.B. Yeats' ear.

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?