A Long-Awaited Calm…

The kids are in bed, and the house is quiet. Today is my wife’s 41st birthday and the boys and I made her a cake, which despite the challenges shopping for the ingredients with two kids actually ended up being a lot of fun.

Regardless, today the 2020 election was finally called for Joe Biden, and so now is the time for a bit of reflection…

What can I say? In a year like 2020 where each month has felt like a decade and it seems like we faced an even uglier challenge than before around every turn, today feels strange to be finally confronted with something we’ve craved for so long … calm.

This entire week has been a blur and every night that passed without any of the remaining states calling a result I know had so many of us nearly comatose as we watched America’s democracy dangling by a thread. As the week progressed and more and more mail-in ballots were counted for Biden, it felt like things were going to get better, but as the Trump propaganda machine churned up on schedule about rampant voter fraud, you couldn’t help but think that this asshole was still going to manage to pull it off somehow.

I mean, I suppose even now that could still technically happen, though I think it’s unlikely given that pretty much every allegation of potential fraud has been disproven by the local media in each of the states in question.

I know, I know – “Fake news! Blah blah blah!”

I can’t wait to relegate that term back to The Onion where it belongs.

Because Donald Trump’s presidency has just been, in a word, tedious, and I don’t even want to hear Republicans try to compare it to eight years under President Obama because we’re never going to agree that those two aren’t even in the same galaxy. One president fueled racism and sexism and bigotry and divided the country with anger and bitterness … while the other one tried to give everyone equal access to healthcare.

One of them spoke eloquently and was a friend to the international community while the other one picked fights every chance he could get and spent most of his time beating his own chest.

But tonight wasn’t about Donald Trump.

That’s one of the things that I enjoyed the most in listening to President-Elect Biden’s acceptance speech was that he didn’t resort to name-calling and bitter jabs and language meant to rile up the audience as he spoke. He was gracious, and humble, and also direct in the type of country that he believes America to be.

And I don’t know if him and Senator Harris can get us there, but I sure as hell have got a lot more faith in those two than I’ve ever had in the Trump family of con artists and hucksters.

I may not be as naive as I was 12 years ago when President Obama was first elected and everything felt like rainbows, but I’m not so cynical that I’m ready to be a Republican who just wants to burn the whole thing down while keeping a modest cut for myself. I understand that government can’t solve everything, however I do think that it’s reasonable for it to establish the rules and standards around which we live our lives in a modern society. So I’m looking forward to having a president once again who cares about climate change and accepts that systemic racism is a thing that we should work to eliminate and recognizes that capitalism has done a lot of great things, but it’s also created a tremendous wealth gap in which those at the top take advantage of those at the bottom.

More so, I think we can look to a President Biden to actually build on the policies of his predecessors and not simply strive to dismantle everything done by the guy who came before him.

They’ve got a lot of work ahead of them, and there’s going to be a lot of resistance. Of those 70 million people who voted for Trump, some of them – hopefully not many, but certainly some – will vehemently hate everything that they set out to do and will claw tooth and nail to hold onto their ugly, MAGA principles that have been enabled by our president for the last four years.

That said, my hope is that for the rest of the people – the ones who aren’t racist or sexist or generally horrible – my hope is that Biden/Harris can find a way to bridge the gap to those people help address some of their concerns with regards to the economy and government regulations and not becoming the socialist state that many fear Democrats want for the United States.

I hope that they can inspire positivity as opposed to hatred.

We’re going to have our very first female Vice President who’s also a person of color – think of what that says to younger generations who haven’t felt the full struggle that their parents and grandparents have felt due to their gender or skin color yet!

I feel comfortable letting my kids listen to these leaders speak as the biggest role models in politics – something I certainly haven’t felt from the Trump admin over the last four years.

I don’t expect them to solve all of our problems, but I do think that they’ve got a good shot and moving the ball forward again.

Congress is going to be a struggle, particularly if Republicans maintain control of the Senate.

Rich folks certainly aren’t going to be excited about paying more in taxes, and the business world in general might be worried about having a leader who doesn’t put economic growth above anything and everything else.

And lord knows that in his two months left in office, Trump is going to continue kicking and screaming and throwing his little tantrums, and he’s probably going to do a few more ugly things before he finally gets evicted in January. The most ardent of his base will likely continue to protest, and while I hope that it doesn’t come to it, it wouldn’t entirely surprise me if we see some more violence between both sides as his impending legal battles only prove the end of his presidency to be more certain.

My own personal goal, which starts with this blog post, is really to try and get all of the Trump trolling out of my system so that I can completely and utterly forget about him and instead focus my thoughts on the future without him.

I’m sure that even after he’s left the White House, we’ll continue to hear the Trump name for years to come because he’s going to rely on that enthusiastic base to feed both his bank account and his ego. I read a rumor the other day that he might start up his own television network, you know, because Fox News abandoned him and all! So we’ll probably continue seeing those stupid, red hats for the foreseeable future.

It’s not a perfect solution. In fact, it’s only the very start, but I do know this – electing Joe Biden to replace Donald Trump puts out the fire of having a crazy person in the most powerful position in the land. 

There’s so much more to do, but I think this is a really good start.

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