by Ernie McCray
I always thought
I was hip to what’s going on
but I sure
got this past election wrong.
I mean I spent a day
just a week before election day
sitting in a chair,
on a patio
at the Crystal Pier
breathing in
the Pacific Ocean’s
breezy air,
a strawberry margarita
and a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips in my reach,
as my eyes followed the activities
playing out on the beach,
frisbees flying
waves being ridden,
lovers strolling hand-in-hand
in the sand.
I had but one thought on my mind,
a wish that I could be among those who had gathered
at Howard University having a goodtime
awaiting the moment
when a bright and beautiful Black woman
would become
our nation’s first woman president,
so very certain that such would happen
no matter what the polls were saying
because I thought the data-collecting folks
were shucking and jiving and telling jokes
and my assuredness
wasn’t about her policies,
what she’d do about climate change
or Gaza or Ukraine…
No, none of those things,
as it was just about
who this man and this woman candidate
were as human beings
and he was seen, falsely and clownishly,
weaving a tall tale,
in front of many empty seats,
about immigrants eating their neighbors’ dogs and cats,
along with other nonsensical utterances comparable to that,
while she had a rainbow of people,
by the thousands, up on their feet,
dancing and cheering and singing
and contemplating
a promising nation,
powered by joy, by hope,
by love, by compassion,
by decency,
chanting, in reference to our shortcomings
in these areas in the past:
“We’re not going back!”
Why would any loving person
argue against that?
And experiencing such as that
how could I have concluded,
given the choices we had,
that millions of Americans
wouldn’t want a president
who could bring people together
like that?
So, in such a frame of mind,
based on what I had been witnessing,
when I’d hear of more people than ever
voting and registering and volunteering
I visualized people like me,
voters feeling that we
would finally be free
of having to put up
with four more years
of an obnoxiously unkind vengeful man
who will offer us nothing
but a ring side seat
to madness and sadness
and mindlessness
at one of the most
incredibly troubling times
in the history of humankind,
never the less.
Oh, I surely lost some of my hip creds
in this mess,
a victim of my imagination,
I guess,
foolish enough
to have trusted that we,
as a citizenry,
valued living in a democracy,
where we could make progress
toward being the best we can be.
So, here I am, at 86,
still at it a little bit,
wondering what little
I can do to make
this country I call home
fit my taste a whit.
Of course, having no real idea
how things are going to go,
I do hope, particularly,
because of all the talk
about deporting millions of people from our country,
that we, through taking to the streets,
and demanding that our politicians,
whomever they might be,
locals or state representatives
and those in D.C.,
will find ways to see
that not a single child
is CAGED
which to me
was Donald J’s
greatest sin.
And we just can’t ever allow
him, or anyone else,
to commit such a crime against humanity,
in the form of children,
ever again!
“We’re not going back!”
Why would any loving person argue against that?
I agree. Not going back to the current Administration of poor old Joe and Kamala. Onward and upward.
I think you have your directions mixed up a bit there Mike Meyer.
Did you mean to write ‘off the cliff and hurtling downward towards the rocks’ with poor old poopy-diaper dementia Donald the Rapist (who still hasn’t paid his victim a dime of what the jury awarded her) and JD ‘I can’t compete with Musk’ Vance the Bro Trad-wife of Trumpie?
Did you see that post JD put up about that? I mean, holy crap!!!
If your directions are not mixed up, then I’m guessing you are going to be real surprised when face meets rocks reality because tariffs alone are going to just shatter the economy. By year 2 of our dear “Dictator on Day 1” leader, I don’t expect much to be going well for We the People who just don’t need any more taxes layered on top of what we already have to pay. Along with another Trump Tax-Cuts-for-the-Rich plan that won’t even trickle pee down on the rest of us, this is going to be awful.
Just like he did last time. He drained in 4 years the surplus of eight years of Obama economics after Wbush trashed us, then handed off a dying economy and a freaking huge new federal debt load ($9 Trillion) along with a Pandemic he absolutely screwed up even with him starting the mask mandates and closing schools…that the MAGA so hated and blamed Biden for???!!! And who started the crash project for the Covid shots? Oh yeah, the Orange Menace using federal funds that the MAGATS also blamed on Biden.
Serious lack of cognitive awareness in this country, and a dearth of critical thinking skills. And no sense of history at all!! The GOP MAGA congresscritters even cut FEMA funding right before Hurricane Helene clocked the red-state south, and now I’m seeing pleas from people in those mountains who are living in freezing temps in FEMA tents… Good luck with that. Or not.
sealintheSelkirks
Thanks Ernie! I always appreciate your writing and you’ve finally got me to stop lurking and say something.
I love this. Thank you Ernie! Many of us feel the same way!
Great piece, Mr. McCray. Agree that I am surprised and saddened about the election results and concerned about what’s to come. Thank you for sharing your opinion.
This piece perfectly exemplifies exactly why the DNC and their gullible followers got completely blindsided by the wave of dissatisfaction that brought this orange POS back to power. We have become completely balkanized into our individual silos of limited data and most “liberals” really have NO idea how the other half lives and struggles. :-(
45/47 didn’t win as much as the DNC lost as more than one-third (38 percent) of the eligible adult population didn’t vote at all in this year’s election, either because they aren’t registered to vote or are registered but did not vote. Let that one sink in for a bit.
Ernie:
Your sentiments are shared by many of us, who also saw what we wanted to see and heard the messages that resonated with our long-held preconceptions about the electorate.
The problem is that we have not been sensitive enough to shifting demographic dynamics and social media’s manipulative role in informing this next generation.
I am reminded of Peter Douglas’ wise counsel, which says that “the ocean is never saved. It is always being saved.”
Our democracy is a living, breathing, dynamic process that must be continually retuned to adapt to threats from outside and within. The Framers fully understood this and despised the emergence of political parties.
The traditional role of political parties has been eroded by the far greater outreach and effective coalition-building capabilities of innovative social media campaigns.
The bottom line for us aging Boomers and true believers is that our best role as servant leaders is to continually educate this next generation of citizens and voters in essential American values and civics, and the ideals of our democratic governance structure, for which many have died to preserve.
We must all become storytellers regarding past and modern-day profiles in courage that is the most effective way of showing this next generation examples of who we are as a Nation and how we practice our core beliefs.
Great perspective!
Amen thank you for an awesome expression
Yeah, it’s going to be a tough 4 years. Let’s hope it’s only 4. This country is more divided than it’s been since the civil war. And civil dialogue about it has been scarce. It’s like a crazy mob boss has been put in charge of out whole territory. It’s good to see Democrats getting organized to try to fight back and minimize the damage, like Newsom calling for a special session of the legislature to try to “Trump-proof” California.
Got it wrong! Well, so did I. I had too much faith in my fellow voting humans that they would care more about truth, morals, decency, and the erosion of all our rights, than the price of eggs costing 20 cents more or…..unfounded hatred…..It’s like “throwing the baby out with the bathwater. So sad.
Bernie Sanders posted this a few days ago:
And you wonder why people in this country are angry? Under 2 minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW5OrThp57k
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And he’s correct, it is Class War and nothing else. And bluntly, the rich have all the real weapons to enforce their will on the 99% of us along with a HUGE technological advantage to implement their power. Economic and psychological warfare with armies of lawyers, judges, DAs, cops, and bought politicians to do their bidding because they hire our peers to keep us in line. And if that doesn’t work, they WILL use the weapons of war technology WE have paid for by taxing us. Those of us that were there in the 60s and early 70s found that out, didn’t we?
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And here’s a short story from Daily Kos about Joe Schmoe and his cousin John Doe all about how Fox ‘infotainment’ rotted the brain of one of them:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/12/8/2290828/-What-the-Hell-Is-Wrong-with-These-People
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I had a couple people email me after the election that said they wished I hadn’t been correct about who I thought was going to ‘win’ the election (by hook or by crook I said) and that is still debatable which transpired I think. These were people who don’t vote that I conversed with and explained why I thought the election was just another ‘least worse’ vote for a lousy candidate, and why they should still try and cast a ballot.
I always hate being correct in my gloomy, cynical pessimism but it’s why my longest and best friend calls me the “surfing Cassandra,” prophet of bad news.
sealintheSelkirks
I rarely agreed with much that the recently retired Neoliberal NY Times columnist Robert Reich had to say over the years. He could always be counted on to somehow end up being an apologist for the right wing corporate Democrats that the paper is owned and operated by and for. So I ignored him most of the time, and considered him a hack.
So he retires, and no longer has his corporate shill editors hanging over his shoulder monitoring his every word, his every sentence, probably telling him what he could and couldn’t say, and suddenly he puts this out?
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/do-not-move-to-the-center-democrats
It surprised me to be honest. But the time for ‘No retreat no compromise’ was before the neoliberal Reaganite Bill Clinton presidency of which he was a part. Should have been even earlier to keep that rat bastid Reagan out of his Alzheimer’s 2nd term; should have buried his Fascist ass under a avalanche of votes.
It is most definitely just a bit too late…by decades.
As for the silly Democrats ‘calling out the multimillionaires and billionaires’ who infest BOTH PARTIES, who actually believes that is in any way even possible? If you do I have two pieces of property in Florida, inland from Sarasota on the West Side, for your dream home in the sun! I’ll sell ’em to you cheap…and no I don’t know what Hurricane Harvey did to them last summer. Probably inundated the Highland County community I would guess… Alligators I’ll throw in for free!
We need a new party, but even duct tape can’t fix stupid.
If we even have another election of course. That is somewhat in doubt because I don’t think Herr Drumpf was kidding with his speech comment at the Christo-Fascist ‘Turning Point USA’ convention that ‘all they had to do was vote one more time and they won’t ever have to again’ comment. He doesn’t have much of a sense of humor from what I’ve gathered from his PhD psychiatrist niece Mary Trump…
Another Republican Great Depression in the meantime I’m guessing, eh? Maybe people really will start eating the cats and dogs this time with tens of millions more poor citizens in this country than in 1929…and they’ll be white not the Haitians who were wildly targeted by the GOP lies about that non-event.
Wait until the SNAP/Food Stamp benefits and Medicaid are cut for the working poor, just under 39,000,000 like all those people working in $7.25 minimum wage GOP-controlled states. I find that an interesting way to stop using tax money to subsidize giant retail big-box stores owned by…GOP multi-millionaires and billionaires, etc?
Think Trump’s donors/owners are going like that much? Or will they just not care (like Melanoma’s coat said a few years ago?) and just let their employees continue to starve while sickening and dying because they can’t afford health care? There are always more waiting to take their place, eh?
With the number of corporate ‘donors’ (are these bribes?) shelling out a million dollars each for the inauguration of the guy promising to cut their taxes. Again. So maybe those are a tip instead since they already know they’re getting the bonus?
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My grandparents told me about those years, raising my parents during them. I don’t have good feelings or memories about those storytelling times, and I’ve been trying to recall more out of the dusty brain’s attic.
sealintheSelkirks