If you could afford it and your kid was smart enough, I hope they went to law school. Over the next few months, the number of lawsuits filed and billable hours could fill a Trump tax auditor’s ledger. Psychoanalysis, Life-Coaches, liquor store owners, and Ouija Board makers will see a dip in business should Biden’s lead hold. After a sleepless night, I got out of bed early, made a few calls, and like most of America tuned into my favorite news silo and started monitoring the overnight election result changes.
Of all the numbers, consisting of relatively minute [hourly] percentage point changes, the one that scared me most, was that as of 11 am this morning, 48 percent of Americans approved of Donald Trump. I have been writing columns, blogs, diaries, and journal pieces for over a year saying this presidential election was not a referendum on Donald Trump, it was a referendum on America. Borderline traitorous behavior, 230,000 dead—through selfish neglect, tens of thousands evicted from their homes, and 40 million going to bed hungry, nearly half of America echoed Dickins, ‘please sir, I want some more.’
Almost half of the country indicated to black and brown people, gay people, those with pre-existing medical disorders, and the poor, ‘kick rocks.’ I had hoped that Biden would win in a landslide, not for the sake of Biden but to restore the goodwill, the faith, and confidence the world had in the United States. I had hoped that Biden would have won in a landslide to reaffirm that people of color and other marginalized members of our society had a home they could believe in.
Some of you may be asking, why not see the glass as half full; after all, half the electorate voted for Biden. America has been saying it would share the nectar of freedom and democracy for 244 years. The canteen was bone dry when we slaughtered Native Americans and enslaved Africans. Jim Crow separated the contents of the glass into white and black. America finally began to pour when the Supreme Court recognized the folly of separate but equal, but the pitcher leaked; Blacks were given a chance to see the water in 1964 but the lid was still tightly sealed, real freedoms were denied, and dehydration left Black Americans parched.
Just a narrow victory by Mr. Biden would be more than a disappointment it would be an indictment on us all. The small percentages of the people of color who see their lives as transactionally disconnected bargaining chips, separating them from their brothers and sisters and whites who see that willing disconnection as a reward for their readiness to live economically depressed voted for a man devoid of compassion. People mistake the lack of displays of open racism for the elimination of racism. No, white-hooded bigots no longer stand on street corners, they cover their sins in Trump flags. Unlike old Dixiecrats like George Wallace, who once stood in the door of a University to block black enrollment, Republicans just deny that Black Lives Matter.
Continue to Vote for Change.