Mourning, sprinkled with memes

From former school of the arts student Kym Harris:  Some of you have never waited for a high school cast list to go up and it shows.

About the states that haven’t finished counting their mail-in/early votes yet: here in Colorado and elsewhere, we process those ballots as they come in, so they can be quickly added to the election day tally. Why some states handicap themselves by requiring that those early votes can’t be counted until November 3 is beyond me. Seems to be a Republican tactic. We already knew that Democrats did the majority of early voting. After all, we’re the ones who believe there’s a pandemic going on. Why is anybody surprised by the leaning-blue outcome of the late counting of that early voting?

The “all lives matter” crowd is extremely upset to learn that all votes matter. —Meme

I’ve never been more disappointed in this country and ashamed and disheartened about our trajectory, regardless of the outcome of this election… I had some ill-founded faith that experts and professionals still held a modicum of credibility, and that when faced with widespread condemnation across the board, even staunch single issue voting Republicans would mostly see through the lies and empty promises and vote him out in a dramatic landslide that would preempt any legal assault on the democratic process. —Caren Armstrong

Déjà blue, n. The sinking feeling of depression at concluding that half your country is willing to forgo competence and character in the most important job on earth. —Meme

…the America I want to see—in which people care about others, believe in objective reality and the expertise of folks who dedicate their lives to studying it, and at least strive to one day not be a country full of *insert any marginalized group*-hating racists. I’m grief stricken that we are evidently not even close to the America I believed in, and we probably deserve the massive dumpster fire legal fallout of this election that’s about to happen to us.—Caren Armstrong

We’ve had a national election with downtowns boarded up and fenced off, with streets blockaded, the kind of thing you see in dictator-run countries, the kind of thing we’ve never seen for an election here until now, until Trump.

Canada probably feels like they live in the apartment above a meth lab right about now. —Meme

I just want to make sure I’ve got this straight—per the Trumpers, we must stop counting votes in Pa. & Georgia because it’s illegal to count votes after Election Day—but we must keep counting votes in Az & Nevada because the law says all votes count? —Meme

I include the memes because one of the things I love most about Americans is our ability to find something to laugh about in almost any situation, no matter how dire. I believe, I hope, it is one of the features of our national character that will help us survive this crisis.

The sense of mourning I’m hearing is an echo that repeats endlessly these last few endless days. It is the dismay of learning so many Americans voted for the man who is so clearly incompetent, unethical and dishonest. Americans voted for the man who has deepened the divide between us, who has promoted white supremacy and racism. Americans voted for the man who has undone what little progress we’d made against climate change. Americans voted for the man who has willfully and baselessly undermined our faith in every government institution, even the CDC, even those mainstays of democracy, the election and the peaceful transfer of power. Americans voted for the man willing to take actions that result in the deaths of the vulnerable, if there’s a chance he can profit from them. Americans voted for that man. Not as many as voted against him. There’s that consolation. But many. We had believed that in the end, people would do the right thing. And so we mourn, as we witness the demise of a faith held dear.