i can't find it now but in 2016 i remember when he won the first election there was this viral video of various lefty journalists. it was like a bunch of them saying things like "you are probably feeling kind of sad right now. it's ok. it will get better and one day we will win." the cast of characters included multiple women with multicolored hair, a cartoonishly obese black woman, some very skinny white men, an asian dude wearing a very obviously fake mustache (???), and a jew.  i realized in that moment that they didn't just lose the election. they lost the war. from that moment forward, any victory that they would have would be temporary. these people have never won a debate that didn't involve snark and condescension and censoring their opposition. they have never had a job that involved lifting anything heavier than an ipad.  now looking back at the 2020 election, i see it for what it was: a hollow win. an empty achievement. and what followed was a four year long aberration. why are there topless transgender people dancing on the front lawn of the white house? why isn't the president taking press conferences? why is no one allowed to talk about his very obvious and very public mental decline? why are we even having this discussion about men in women's prisons? why is the taliban in charge of afghanistan 23 years after september 11? what the fuck was anyone in government actually doing after hurricane helene? it was like this unending clown show where every week was some totally avoidable self-made catastrophe.  what changed? before, only we could see it. now they can see what we are seeing, but they don't understand it. they have never actually been confronted with the truth before. the ring has been cast into the fire. the eye is destroyed. and the ground is falling into the abyss all over mordor, and the orcs can't understand what is going on.
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