The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Well, the election came and went, ending with a whimper, not a bang. Contrary to what me and my snowflake pals figured, Trump won fair and square even though he’d been saying for months the contest was rigged. Unless he won. Hurray for democracy! Hooray for the will of the people! And a hearty congratulations to a man impeached twice, convicted of felonies, charged with other crimes that will now be thrown out, indicted for trying to overthrow the government after the election he lost. Hurrah for the Yew Ess Aye!

Plenty of us on the sore losing side will no doubt spend our misery parsing the votes, question the tactics or blame the candidate and the old guy who waited too long to step off. We’ll scratch our bewildered heads and lick our wounds, maybe even set our hair on fire and pour salt in those wounds. We’ll ask ourselves what kind of evangelical votes for a criminal, an adulterer, a man wholly lacking in religious belief? We’ll wonder why the rural red states would vote for an urban billionaire who lowers taxes on the rich and cuts programs for the poor, most of those in their homelands. We’ll boggle over women voting for a rapist and an avowed pussy grabber. We’ll be amazed the Palestinians voted for a pro-Netanyahu yahoo. And shake our collective heads over Latinos and folks of color casting a vote for a xenophobic racist. Call Puerto Rico an island of garbage and they still side with the guy. So much to process, so much to learn. We’ll chase our tails in search of clues and answers, but believe me, it’s a waste of time. My time anyway.

I don’t think the folks who voted Trump back in for another crack at our Constitution are deplorables. The guy gained votes from young people casting their very first votes, from Latinos and blacks, legal immigrants, from women, from men, from whites. Especially whites. Hell if I know what they’re thinking. Maybe they just don’t believe the news. Or don’t watch or read any news. Maybe they don’t believe in science, education, the government itself. Or maybe the price of gas was all it took, the cost of a dozen eggs, how high rent became, what a house costs. The economy, stupid.

Maybe they just want the borders secured, illegals sent packing to where they came from. Possibly — probably — they’re sick of all the woke talk, the pronoun nazis, the sex changers, the statue removals, the safety nets for people other than themselves, Hollywood liberals, sex ed, the smart ass college elites.

Sure, run some studies, conduct more polls, doublecheck the demographics, see what’s at the bottom of this. They say a country gets the leaders it deserves. Which seems about right this time. Some of us just don’t really know what country this is. We live in our lefty bubbles, we listen to NPR and PBS, we think because we graduated from a university we got the news. We’re comfortable in a house we own, us and the bank. We drive cars that get decent mileage. We’re smug and complacent in our inflation proof lives. We’re happy and we can’t for the life of us understand why the others aren’t. We just want to help them, can’t they see that? Can’t they see that??