Americans Are Having a Hard Time Processing What Feels Like a Surreal Election

Two versions for Two Americas

We live in two Americas with two completely separate realities. On one side, Obama’s America has been fought for and restored, with his trusty Veep now in power. The people ran against a president they believed was an existential threat to Democracy - but more than that, he challenged the very idea of the left’s definition of “decency.” The Obama presidency could be defined mostly by that idea. Now that Biden has won, Obama seems to be trying to wrest America from Trump’s hand and yank it back to the period between 2008-2016. There were parties in the streets. Journalists at CNN rejoiced that they too had joined the fight to help bring Trump down, along with MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, PBS. If the media was blamed for putting Trump in power, they reversed course to ensure his loss.

To Trump supporters and many in the GOP the Democrats are getting what they deserve from never treating Trump like a legit president from day one. They fought him with everything they had, which included punishing anyone or any company that voiced support, committees and hearings and impeachment, non-stop media obsession with his family, his weight, his hair, his orange color. But worse, to them, the media manufactured COVID fear so they could rig the election against Trump - they knew they had no other way of defeating him. On Election Night they were vindicated by the massive support shown for Trump and the rebuke of the “woke left.”

We usually vote on Election Day and Trump gained momentum as we headed towards November 3rd. He easily would have won had there been no mail-in ballots. That put the bulk of votes weeks prior to Election Day. And that too has made the election seem unfair or surreal. Everyone could feel Trump’s momentum but the votes were banked way before it started.

The left’s growing hysteria about Trump seemed to swirl around a person who simply doesn’t exist but was manifested by their fears as a super villain in a Disney movie. He kicked the left into waves of hysteria where they began seeing witches everywhere. Racists, rapists everywhere. Trump taunted and ridiculed and trolled the left into hysteria every day on Twitter and seemed to enjoy it. If they didn’t like him, he was going to bully them into submission.

What the left wanted, what they needed, was to watch Trump finally break down in defeat. They needed the witch to hang. They needed to vanquish the super villain into a blaze of fire. They needed to see him whimper and cry. But all they’re getting is yet more defiance by a man who refuses to be canceled. And that right there is not only the key to Trump’s success but it will be the key to any politician who tries to run for POTUS. They have to be brave enough to take it and take it and then take it some more and spit in the face of the “cancel culture” machine. That is what the silent majority wants. They’re terrified of the left, even if they were horrified by Trump.

Trump was never going to fold. He was never going to give the left or the media the satisfaction of watching that moment of humiliating defeat they were looking for. So here we are, locked in the surreal zone with Biden as the defacto Obama stand-in, though it really just feels like Obama is back in power with the same staff, undoing everything Trump has done - even though a majority were okay with his actual policies. Anyone who knows this country and its people can see what’s coming next and how ugly it’s going to get.

In Kamala Harris we have the ultimate achievement of the Obama era to bring the first black or mixed race woman as Vice President and then perhaps to run for President. But everyone seems to be forgetting how badly she sank in the primary. She is in power because she and Biden both got a pass from the press but will that pass continue for the next four years? How bad will the attacks from the right get? How easy will it be for them to gain more power by sewing fear of Harris and her “army of socialists?” Well, put it this way. The last time that happened there was a take-over of the House and the Senate two years after Obama was elected.

Meanwhile, in the other America Trump’s loss is hard to accept, not just because they watched him attacked viciously and regularly for four years but because if he was a super villain to the left he was a superhero to his supporters. They watched him survive what no other human could have, which included IMPEACHMENT and COVID. Then they watched him - at 74 years-old - do five and six rallies a day. There was not an attack against him he could not survive. Until the election.

For the first time in my lifetime and probably ever an election was held where the heat of it was not on Election Day. For our entire history, candidates have campaigned for Election Day, not for weeks or a month before. That means it felt like Trump was going to win and in fact it still sort of feels like he won because his campaign gained so much momentum in the last days of the election that it has thrown the whole thing way off. It wasn’t like HW Bush or Jimmy Carter, whose failures were visible by both sides of the political aisle. No, Trump was actively pushed to defeat. And that was also unprecedented in America.

I personally hope I never see an election like this one where such a massive media machine was rigging an election using their influence and dominance to shape public opinion. It was surreal to watch and, frankly, frightening. The left clearly noticed but did not care. The right noticed and felt helpless against it, which has only driven the division further between the two camps - but also has fueled many a conspiracy theory as to why Trump didn’t win.

Now we have to endure endless victory lap columns by those who brought Trump down - they don’t just want to gloat and pretend like the election was a fair fight (it wasn’t) but they also insist that all 73 million who voted for him admit they too were racists and xenophobes because why else would they have voted for Hitler? Nowhere to be found? Self-reflection.

Trump’s popularity can’t be written off as “white supremacy” or the fear of the first black president. There has to be a moment where the left realizes what it has become - and how it polices and persecutes those who step out of line. You’ll never get a word of this from the media because they are also too afraid to step out of line, too afraid of being called out on Twitter, too afraid of losing their jobs.

Without a news empire that can address the whole truth and deliver it to all Americans fairly we’re lost. With an activist press that uses all of its power to help one candidate win an election we are lost. And with a president who refuses to accept defeat and sees value in blowing up the process just to protect his own ego we are lost. On the left you just get Trump hate. On the right you get the delusion of hope that maybe Trump can pull it out.

Trump’s supporters can’t accept the reality of his loss, and the left can’t accept the reality of why he almost won. We don’t know their world and they don’t know ours. This has to change. This might be the second time in our history where we do seem to need or want two Americas with two different leaders.

It is a mess, my friends. It is an unholy mess.