After the Election

After the election, I went to a graveyard.

The occasion was the birthday of John Philip Sousa, the legendary “march king” who composed the official march of the Marine Corps and other rousing, patriotic tunes.

He is buried at Congressional Cemetery and every year they celebrate his life with a program and a concert.

A John Phillip Sousa impersonator told some corny anecdotes about Sousa and his band (“Madame, please lower your hem and raise your C”) and then the Marine Corps Band marched into the cemetery, horns and drums playing in a tub-thumping beat.

I was leaning against a gravestone as I watched this. Congressional Cemetery is a “living” cemetery that encourages visits. Kids and families were sprawled among the marble tributes to long-dead politicians.

The band, known as the President’s Own, stopped at the grave of John Philip Sousa, and launched into “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

You’ll recognize the tune if you’ve ever watched the July 4th fireworks in Washington, DC. It’s played at the finale.

Some in the crowd at the cemetery stood and placed their hands over their hearts.

I’ve been reading a lot of history lately, including the very lengthy but fascinating Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America, which is history from a Native American perspective, with Native nations as protagonists and colonialists as “the other.”

Watching the Marines perform in blood-red uniforms, I was reminded that this patriotic tune would be heard quite differently from victims of American power.

These same Marines will perform at the inauguation of Donald Trump in January.

Owning the Libs

Later in the week, I was in Georgetown, walking behind a couple of young women. They were mocking their classmates for being upset by the election results.

“Oh no, I’ve lost all my rights,” one of them said, laughing.

They don’t have the rights to control their bodies that their mothers and grandmothers did; a source of amusement to them.

After the election, someone on Twitter said that he had voted for Trump since I referred to his supporters as “chuds.”

Well.

Congratulations, you threw away democracy to own the libs. I hope it was worth it.

Into the Memory Hole

I watched a lot of TikTok videos. The common theme, particularly among young white people, was that Trump didn’t do terrible things last time, so why would he this time?

This ignores two major facts:

1. He did do terrible things, like the Muslim Ban, putting kids in cages and inspiring the January 6th attack on the Capitol. A whole year of death and horror – 2020- has been placed in the memory hole, a passage of time that Americans never discuss as if under mutual agreement.
2. Democrats stopped him from completing his most horrible tasks, like putting his enemies in camps, surrendering Ukraine to Putin and abolishing the Department of Education.

Those guardrails are now gone. The Supreme Court eliminated our system of checks and balances by making the President a king.

Welcome to the Find Out Part

The mass delusion is astonishing, millions of people who think that the leopards won’t eat their faces.

I watched a news story about a Latino family who voted for Trump. This family had relatives who were undocumented yet, they naively believed that the INS wouldn’t deport them because they were good people who held jobs.

LOL.

An INS agent with a quota to fill won’t care. It will be a lot easier to find the “good” illegals because they’ll have homes and workplaces that can be raided.

Prison stocks are up. An American gulag archipelago will soon be constructed, filled with “good” immigrants. And a lot of companies will grow rich with government contracts.

Because we live in an oligarchy now. Musk, Thiel, Bezos and others have captured our democracy with doddering Trump at the helm, a useful idiot.

After the election, the chuds of Freedom Corner celebrated, dancing on the dead end street between the DC Jail and Congressional Cemetery.

Trump said he would pardon the J6ers with a typically meandering and vague promise.

Prisoners held in the jail called in to the corner and described how they would be walking out of the jail on January 20th. Some even fantasized about attending the inauguration. Imagine that: J6 criminals at the Capitol that they attacked.

But who will actually be freed? The J6ers can’t even agree among themselves who should get a pardon. All J6ers? Just the non-violent ones? What about the ones who are Nazis, child molesters and murderers? Should they go free? What about the ones that J6ers think are snitches or antifa?

I think that they will be disappointed. This is a government by and for the rich now. The J6ers are cannon fodder.

The Find Out phase will be brutal, as Trump voters discover that he wasn’t serious about lowering prices but he was serious about a nationwide abortion ban, deporting even the “good” immigrants and prison camps for anyone who speaks out.

Wonderland Ballroom

It was a very long week. One looked for hope anywhere you could find it.

I met friends at Wonderland Ballroom, which is not a ballroom, but a dive bar (by DC standards) in Columbia Heights. Located on a corner, with outdoor tables, it’s a good spot to sit and have a beer as the city streams by on bikes, scooters, cars and busses. There’s even a soccer field across the street. A lot to watch as your mind goes blank.

Trump voters deserve the consequences of their decision. Let them Find Out as family members get deported, OB-GYNs stop practicing in their communities and tariffs make everything much more expensive. It’s the only way they will learn.

We will be fine.

Located in the blue dot of DC, we won’t experience the horrors that will soon impact the rest of country. There is work that we can do, on the local level, to keep friends and families safe. We will retreat, retrench and wait for a better day.