How Is It That I’m Carrying Around So Much Rage And Depression At The Same Time?

Biden won. Trump lost. I’ve been working for the past 4-years for this. I should be happy?

6 min readDec 17, 2020

And that means Trump’s getting to me. Not that it ultimately matters. Not that I’m coming to believe any of the conspiracy theories he’s spewing. More the onslaught alone, which is endless and limitless, especially since it’s unbounded by fact or evidence. You can assert anything you want as truth for forever as long as you don’t have to back up or prove it’s really true.

Also, the number of people who still blindly support him, including some of my friends, including at least publicly many party leaders. As if they are the model citizens in this country and passed their “citizen test”, while I, and a lot of the people who did not vote for Trump especially if they live in big cities, do not, and thus deserve to have our votes tossed out.

And the scam Trump is running right now is a loyalty test, pure and simple. Which is what makes it such a dangerous test of Democracy. And a determination of whether loyalty to an individual, however much you may like him, and believe he’s doing the right thing and not erratic and incompetent, means you don’t care if you live in a dictatorship and throw out what this country has stood for after 200 years, gladly.

So yeah, that’s it in a nutshell: infuriating and depressing.

I guess the good thing maybe is fewer people don’t care. More people are engaged with politics than ever. Although the people I know who don’t vote because they don’t see how politics affects their lives, still didn’t vote. And I can envision them living their same lives under a dictatorship as in a Democracy and saying “see”?

The few people in Trump’s party these days who’ve done their jobs, are not just getting fired and/or slandered, they’re getting torn apart. And you begin to wonder why they’re willing to pay such steep a price. Just to do the right thing. And it’s not even the “right thing”, really. It’s the baseline of what they are actually elected and are paid to do.

Also, one big miscalculation Trump seems to have made is underestimating the pride state office holders feel for their state. So when Trump immediately, reflexively started calling Republican-run states that didn’t give him a win poorly run and corrupt, that got their hackles up too. Because like most of us, they’re proud of where they come from. Good. And that would be Georgia or Arizona or Michigan, not Trumpland. You only have to watch football to know how deep this kind of thing runs. It’d be almost but not quite like Trump defaming the Crimson Tide in Alabama. Or attacking the Steelers in Western Pennsylvania. Nobody there: Democrat or Republican, is going to stand for that kind of thing…

At the same time, virtually no big time Republicans have got their backs. At least not out loud. The people who are standing by and giving a sore loser in many states by many votes (in many a lot more than he beat Hillary Clinton), a hell of a lot of room to rampage, are people — by and large — who pledged an oath to defend the Constitution, not a vow of loyalty to Trump. And that’s truly shameful.

And what’s even more shameful is their mealy-mouthed blanket excuse that “Democrats did the same thing when Trump was elected.” Nope. They didn’t. Hillary Clinton conceded the day after Election Day. President Obama had Trump over to the White House one day after that.

I’ve always reserved a special animosity for people who refuse to step up because “it’s not my job”. Especially when it is their job.

Also, Trump’s behavior is no surprise. We all knew Trump was going to do this, because it’s what he’s always done, in business and in life. When things don’t go his way with investors, with creditors, he refuses to settle up, sues the hell out of everybody, and launches unrelenting personal attacks. Until he gets so annoying, they figure out some deal that’ll make him go away. That’s always been the biggest head-scratcher for us: why anyone would’ve ever done business with this guy given his well-documented history of this, and the high percentage chance they’d be on the receiving end one day?

Then again, I’ve worked for a horrible boss, and after quitting and swearing I’d never work for them again, went back after a few years because it was a good opportunity, and my mind told me “it couldn’t have been as bad as you remember it.” It was.

And anyway, there’s no compromise to hand Trump this time. No out. No deal. So he’s stuck. This time Trump’s failure is that he lost the election. And his only possible remedy for that is for him not to lose. And that’s not happening.

And that’s got him blowing hot air at mega-hurricane force. And because he is President, that ill, unremitting wind blows through all of us. And for some of us, it resonates, and constantly reinforces a message for the future: Trump has been betrayed, but since the rules don’t count anymore, the answer isn’t to start figuring out a way to win back the White House in 2024. It’s to believe nothing now is legit, and as Trump always, always, always reminds us, if you don’t love Trump, you don’t love America.

And we haven’t even mentioned the pandemic, where seems like Trump has given up on doing anything, other than making sure he gets proper credit for the vaccines that are coming. Which, according to him, means all the credit.

How can people love a guy who insists on that, but not at very least also saying something like “I know you’re suffering, I grieve your losses, I’m working hard for you to get you this relief…”?

Even now, those Republicans who do at least implicitly acknowledge Biden’s victory, are already complaining about his cabinet choices, whom they have to approve (unless he goes the “acting” route like Trump did), largely based on mean or controversial things they Tweeted in the past. Really? Mean or controversial things that they Tweeted?

This election, as soon as Trump lost, became a test of how much mindless loyalty Trump’s supporters would show to him, even as a loser in defeat. Perhaps enough to “flip it”, as he likes to say.

That’s why all those polls showing Trump supporters buy into his theories about widespread, nationwide actually international election rigging are a bunch of bunk. Some may. But overriding that is the conviction Trump must win even if he lost, and no stunt he pulls to achieve that goes too far. So far at least. And Trump is at the head of that pack.

I have to remember when Trump says of Biden getting 80,000,000 votes and counting: “Ridiculous”, that I, proudly, am 1 of those 80,000,000 votes. So that’s how, and it’s not ridiculous at all. Time to plant my U.S. flag, come what may.

How Is It That I’m Carrying Around So Much Rage And Depression At The Same Time?

Biden won. Trump lost. I’ve been working for the past 4-years for this. I should be happy?

Written by Tepolansjokar