After living in England for over three decades, I returned to a country that was beyond recognition. January 2014 saw me landing in Las Vegas and starting a new job that would fizzle out in a years time. I had not been privy to a stateside election in years and already the country was rumbling about 2016.
Leaving Vegas, and winding up in the last resting place of an immigrant camel drover, I found myself surrounded by snowbirds who all seemed to be republican. This did not bother me to any great extent as I had lived in country where the two main parties were mirror images of the Donkey and the Elephant: Labour and Tories.
I favor neither party but instead have always looked to the “runner.” In the UK it was more important to vote for the party. The Prime Minister was sort of an addition to the whole thing.
Donald Trump, this country’s president elect, was, in essence, a television reality star. The orange male equivalent of Kim Kardashian without the sex tape. A loud mouthed goon who was rude, crude and a man who obviously appealed to a large amount of people.
The moment I realized that this man with the ridiculous hair and bullying attitude was being taken serious, I thought of Greg Stillson from Stephen King’s 1979 b00k, The Dead Zone.
Stillson was a buffoon, a joke to the people of the country and yet when the book’s protagonist, poor doomed everyman John Smith, touched the candidate he saw him starting World War III; with nuclear missiles.
The picture was perfectly formed in my head as I watched small clips of Trump’s rallies. Surely, I thought, this man will not last long in the final stages, there must be someone more qualified. Alas the republican party chose this lunatic to be their presidential candidate and once again I thought of King’s madman Stillson.
For those who have not read King’s book, Greg Stillson was mad, not “angry” mad but nutty as a box of frogs mad. He had an anger management problem and some severe wiring problems under his bonnet.
I cannot for the life of me remember what colour his hair was but it is not important. What is important is that in my mind, from the first televised appearance of Trump, he was, and is, Greg Stillson.
There was no hard hat, or throwing hot dogs to the crowd, but Trump fit the bill of the madman who would bring an apocalyptic end to America like a tailored glove.
This is not the first time that someone has made the connection. Google “The Dead Zone” and Trump’s name comes up. (Sorry, but I cannot for the life of me refer to this man as president.) This entire election has been surreal and this has been a nightmarish end to a vicious election. One where both sides played the internet like an instrument.
Perhaps this has been on the cards for a long time. I truly do not know. I had taken on another country as my home and never envisioned coming back. The return home was not planned.
It was odd coming back to the country that spawned me. The whole place was different and PC mentality was making everyone touchy and overly protective. The racist card was being thrown down everywhere and an entire political party was backing a homophobic, misogynistic reality television star with multiple bankruptcies to his name to run the country.
Now it is over.
Stillson Trump is in. The man who cannot, apparently afford the good tanning gel, the kind that does not turn your skin orange, is the 45th president of the United States. He has chosen a vice president who echoes his sentiments exactly in regards to the LGBT community, minorities and immigrants.
History has been made here. The electoral college, not the people they chose Hilary by popular vote, God help them, have put Trump in charge of the country.
Young people are taking to the streets to protest Trump as president on the same day he was announced the winner of the race. This has not, to the best of my knowledge, ever happened before. (Of course it might have but living in the UK I might have missed it.)
Despite all the Pollyanna’s out there who now say we have to grin and bear it and that we must stick together, I hope you remember that when this once mighty nation has crumbled under one man’s lunacy.
The electing of Trump has been called a “white lash” by Van Jones. With all due respect sir, I disagree. I think this was a “Black lash.” Caused by far too many people who were upset over an eight year time period that the president of the US was a black man.
Before signing off and leaving politics behind for another four years, I would like to point something out. This election was massively influenced by social media. Each side promoted enough vitriol to damage the most secure of egos.
On Facebook alone there has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth and a common misconception. Younger members of the American public seem to believe that a president serves eight years. Not so, my dear Millennials. A presidential term is still and always will be, four years.
With two American presidents serving two terms in office, it is easy to see where the confusion started. It is also the sort of ignorance that enabled someone less qualified than your cousin Murray, the city dog catcher, to be elected president.
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